Ghost Of Tsushima Considered Pirates, Rob Roy, And Musketeers For Game’s Focus Before Samurai

Today is the big day for when Ghost of Tsushima launches on the PS4. If you bought the game digitally, most likely you’ve already been playing it and enjoying the path of the samurai. But as the game launches and people get their first tastes, it’s interesting to think about what could have been, as the initial ideas for the game were quite different.

Sucker Punch Co-founder Brian Fleming took to the PlayStation blog to talk about some early ideas for the game. It wasn’t always about feudal Japan and samurai, it seems. All they really knew in the beginning was they wanted an open world that focused on melee combat. They thought about pirates, something with The Three Musketeers, or even Scottish folk hero Rob Roy. But after reading about the Mongol invasion of 1274, they finally found what they were looking for.

“Early on, we concluded that we wanted to build a large, open world experience — and one that featured melee combat. But beyond that we were uncertain. Pirates? Rob Roy? The Three Musketeers? All these were considered — but we kept coming back to feudal Japan and telling the story of a samurai warrior. Then one fateful fall afternoon we found a historical account of the Mongol invasion of Tsushima in 1274, and the entire vision clicked into place.”

Ghost of Tsushima is now available exclusively on the PlayStation 4. For an idea of what the critics are saying about the game, you can check that out here. Our review of the game will be coming shortly.