Ghost of Tsushima Now Considered a Major Influence for Big Open World Games | Push Square

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First released for PS4 in 2020, Ghost of Tsushima has reached an age where it's now influencing the biggest open world games of today, which were given the green light from publishers around its original launch. Star Wars Outlaws creative director Julian Gerighty has cited the title as his «biggest reference» point during development, joining other teams that used the Sucker Punch Productions effort as inspiration. Studios that made Rise of the Ronin, Final Fantasy VII Rebirth, and Assassin's Creed Mirage have all pointed out the title in the recent past.

Speaking to GamesRadar, when the topic of Red Dead Redemption 2 is brought up, Gerighty responded the following: «It's super interesting because my biggest reference was Ghost of Tsushima, which is more on the Kurosawa side of inspiration than the Western, the John Ford side of the inspiration for George Lucas. He continues by pointing out he feels Ghost of Tsushima leaned into its player fantasy. „This is the story, the world, the character, everything fits together with the gameplay guiding everything. That's the fantasy of 'you are a samurai ninja in Japan'. That was one of the guiding lights for this.“

After our recent Star Wars Outlaws Preview, we ourselves got a small sense of how that influence has directed the open world structure of the game. Both titles use a fog of war to uncover the map, with activity and locations icons only added to it when you discover something relating to an item or quest there. It makes exploration and discovery in Star Wars Outlaws feel more natural — as it does in Ghost of Tsushima.

As for what other developers have been saying, Rise of the Ronin studio Team Ninja served as „strong motivation“ due to the similar settings while the game was included in research conducted by Square Enix for Final Fantast VII Rebirth as it looked at what other open world games are doing. Then, the Japanese language option in Ghost of Tsushima gave Ubisoft confidence to include an Arabic language