Sucker Punch Productions has said that Ghost of Tsushima‘s Iki Island expansion will offer “a different viewpoint on the sense of Mongol expansion” and the studio hopes players will find the mysterious new villain just as compelling as Khotun Khan.
Speaking to GamesRadar, creative director Nate Fox said that Jin’s journey to Iki will see “another side of how the Mongols were looking to conquer this space and using a different tack than Khotun Khan.” The villain in this story is Eagle – a female Khan as well as a shaman.
“One of our big considerations was: how do we create a villain who is a compelling Mongol leader, who reflects actual Mongol history, but also is an absolute contrast to Khotun Khan,” senior writer Patrick Downs told IGN in a separate interview. “To give us something different, and new, and surprising. And then with [The Eagle] in particular, there are aspects of her as both a khatun, which is essentially a woman khan, but also as a shaman…how does that change her goals, her style of leadership, what she’s trying to accomplish? And how does that affect Jin in ways that maybe he hasn’t been challenged before on Tsushima?”
Eagle’s role as a shaman opens up more opportunities for a fantasy story, but Sucker Punch didn’t want to stray too much from its previous approach.
“We do want to respect the world that we’ve created in Ghost of Tsushima, which is grounded historically,” Downs continued. “We wanted to keep that, although there are touches of supernatural elements like the Guiding Wind, for instance. It’s not literally supernatural in the way that Legends is, but…we took that as a springboard.”
Ghost of Tsushima Iki Island will become available on August 20th.
[Source: GamesRadar, IGN]
