When Sucker Punch Productions and Sony Interactive Entertainment lifted the curtains on Ghost of Tsushima Director’s Cut, many were surprised – and upset – that PlayStation 5 specific features were paywalled, requiring existing players to fork out $9.99 at minimum to enjoy features exclusive to the new hardware. In the past, such upgrades have been offered for free, leading to Sony attracting criticism for the pricing strategy.
In a new interview with Australian publication Press Start, Sucker Punch Creative and Art Director, Jason Connell, said that the upgrades in question are not “generic hardware upgrades.” They have been incorporated into the Iki expansion and are “tightly connected” to Jin’s experience on the island.
“The thing that I think is important for people to know is that, those features that make it so specific to the PS5, we didn’t just work on those as a generic hardware upgrade, they are fully enveloped into the Iki expansion and Jin’s experiences on Iki,” Connell explained. “They were really tightly connected to one another, so that’s kind of the reason why we didn’t look at them as kind of separate. We really wanted those two to sing together, and that’s the base reason why.”
Elsewhere in the interview, Connell revealed that Sucker Punch has added the ability to hide the quiver in the game because it’s somehow a “very commonly requested” feature that wasn’t too difficult to implement.
Ghost of Tsushima Director’s Cut will release for the PS4 and PS5 on August 20th. For more information, check out our previous coverage.
[Source: Press Start via VGC]
