Why Ghost of Tsushima Won't Always Be Historically Accurate

Ghost of Tsushima takes place in 13th-century Japan, a setting that imparts a playground of cultural and historical elements to work with, but Sucker Punch says that the game won't always be historically accurate.

The deviation from accuracy is intentional, says Sucker Punch co-founder and Ghost of Tsushima programmer Chris Zimmerman. He spoke to GameSpot about historical accuracy in Ghost of Tsushima, a topic that'd inevitably come up in such a game, and said that when Sucker Punch does take liberties with the story, it'll be intentional.

"The way I think about it is: we're going to deviate from historical truth, we just want to do it intentionally," Zimmerman told GameSpot. "A lot of the support we get from our friends from Sony in Japan, and our Japanese friends in Sony US, and all the cultural consultants we've assembled to help us do this stuff, is to make sure we don't deviate accidentally. There are things we are going to do that are different and we want to choose those wisely."

Zimmerman used the game's birds and other parts of the landscape as examples of what'll be true to the Japanese setting. The Sucker Punch team traveled to Japan to record the sounds of nature to use in the game, and the statues that were seen in the game's demo actually came from the 13th century.

Some of the dialogue was also changed to better stick to Japanese customs. Zimmerman mentioned that the part of the demo that's shown in the trailer above where Jin and Masako meet each other was rewritten. It originally had Masako saying "Hello, Jin," but was changed to have her start with "Jin" instead at the request of Ghost of Tsushima producer Ryuhei Katami. Jin's horse also doesn't have a name in the game's Japanese dialogue. It's called Nobu in the English voiceover, but Katami said that naming the horse was "an American thing" and that it doesn't happen in Japan.

One of the more notable changes that history buffs will pick up on is how the samurai look. Zimmerman said that the idea most people have of samurai comes from anywhere between the 16th and 18th century, but the 13th-century look is quite different. Sucker Punch plans on giving players the version of the samurai that they expect.

"The armor that you see him wear, it's not 13th century armor. It's more warring states period armor. Because, honestly, the 13th century armor is pretty jarring looking, it's not what you'd expect. It's really boxy. It doesn't look aspirational. And we wanna make sure that what we give you is your fantasy of what being a wandering samurai is."

Ghost of Tsushima is coming to the PlayStation 4 but does not yet have a release date.