5 Years Ago, PlayStation Gave Us Assassin’s Creed In Japan, Long Before Ubisoft Actually Got There

In 2020, at the height of everyone staying inside and away from others, one PlayStation exclusive promised a journey to a foreign land and ancient time, where you could play as a noble samurai with a sacred mission. It was a perfect release for the time. Playing as Jin Sakai, a man devoted to avenging his fallen allies, you were given a straightforward and compelling distraction. Even though the battles along the way were many and gratuitous, they didn’t demand perfect timing, and the quest indicators and large icons telling you where to go remind of every big flagship PlayStation title. Progression was super easy and straightforward, with , set in Japan with dual protagonists, but it already felt like the idea was dated. Ghost had satisfied that itch that people felt for an open world stealth game where you could run around swinging your samurai sword, or quietly assassinate people from behind.

Even though the game featured its own original world and characters, it had every feature of what fans of other existing franchises already loved and what we could imagine a Japanese Assassin’s Creed would have been like — an easy way to travel via the horses (like Red Dead Redemption 2 or GTA), reasons to mess around with the Photo Mode, and surprisingly deep side quests where all of the narrative juice was secretly hiding. At the start, the game gave you a horse, and with that you could roam around the open world freely, plucking herbs and flowers along the way. You could find beautiful meditation spots or soak in the springs to recover in between battles. The game paired the delightful tourism of visiting feudal Japan with the epic samurai fights, and branching skill trees with plenty of combat options to explore, things that were all desperately fun during a morbid time.

Ghost to me was one of the first PlayStation exclusives I had ever played, and playing a handful of others, God of War, Horizon Zero Dawn, Ratchet and Clank, showed me that Sony had nailed a certain gaming formula of its own that worked extremely well, even if certain hallmarks began to look repetitive.

Ghost of Tsushima just doesn’t overthink how simple it has to be, and that’s exactly why it succeeds. Getting from point A to point B in game is extremely easy and pleasant and boss battles can be scaled up to be as tough as you’d like them. You will find yourself eye-rolling at the main campaign, where you can predict every plot point and twist, chapters before they happen. But as with many megahit RPGs, the more complex storytelling is there if you travel off the beaten path — a side quest about a woman samurai companion who’s gay was both fascinating and historically accurate, and Sucker Punch’s creative director expressed surprise to me when I told him in 2020 that I had taken the time to explore this storyline to its end.

Looking back at Ghost, we can see that it didn’t exactly do anything ground-breaking or revelatory. It is what you think it is — a thinly disguised Assassin’s Creed set in Japan with no ties to that franchise’s epic lore. But timing is everything and Ghost had that in spades. It was perfectly engineered to arrive on our doorstep when we needed it most, and for that, I’ll always have fond memories.

Ghost of Tsushima is available on PlayStation 4, 5, and PC.