Dec 2

Dec 2 Ghost Of Tsushima's Non-Crafting System Is This Generation's Best Crafting System | Winter Spectacular 2020

It is that time of year again where we take stock of the previous year’s video game releases and decide which one “floated our boat” or “tickled our pickle” (yep, never saying that again). This year’s “Game of The Year” selections all feel a bit more consequential, given that we are all about to embark on a whole new console generation and, hopefully, a whole host of new and exciting experiences to discover together. I figured then that when considering my GOTY for 2020, I should consider the generation as a whole and its trends. This led me to Sucker Punch’s Ghost Of Tsushima. The tale on Jin Sakai and his quest to free the island of Tsushima from invading Mongols is great, the combat is brilliant and the world is stunning. However, the reason that Ghost Of Tsushima stands out to me is because of how the game handles this generation’s defining mechanic - crafting.

Don’t lie. You can hear this image, can’t you?

Crafting systems are by no means a new or exciting phenomenon in gaming. Minecraft has been around for 11 years and it is a game built entirely around crafting while survival games use crafting as an integral mechanic to build tension. However, this generation, more than any other, has seen AAA games add some iterative tilt to standard crafting and added it to their gameplay. Whilst I understand the desire to add a crafting mechanic (it's up there with levelling as a core form of progression at this point), it has had a direct knock-on effect for people like me who, quite honestly, do not have the time for it.

There are AAA games who’s crafting mechanics make perfect sense and actually enhance the overall experience, such as The Witcher III. Having to research a monster, gather the materials for certain balms and potions, brew them and only then fight them added to the overall sense of joy when the beast was eventually slain. But having to manage crafting slots in Dragon Age: Inquisition was irksome, building bases and constantly repairing weapons in Fallout 4 is unnecessarily time-consuming and all Ubisoft games this generation managed to make crafting a chore that I didn’t want to take part in. I want to play my game, not have to spend an hour researching what type of ferret I need to kill 15 times to get a certain pelt that I can then take to a specific NPC in a different city to make into something else to eventually craft slightly better ferret armour that I will inevitably replace in 10 minutes. Crafting is the very reason I have steered clear of most AAA open-world experiences in recent years - until Ghost Of Tsushima decided to flip the script.

Ah yes the traditional samurai weapon… explosives.

Throughout Jin’s journey of honour and revenge, he can utilise plenty of different weapons and skills, from exploding arrows to smoke bombs. In other AAA open-worlds like the brilliant Horizon: Zero Dawn, time would be spent before and even during combat to stick together the right scraps needed to get the job done. That’s not the case in Ghost Of Tsushima. Instead, when you are infiltrating a Mongol encampment, you will find a quiver of arrows. Collect them and bam! You have a mixture of different arrow types. Crawl underneath a Minka and you might find some sticky tar, when collected it instantly gives you sticky grenades. What this does is rewards a player for investigating an area and finding unique infiltration spots, not with random bits of junk that clog up your inventory because who knows if you’ll need it later on. This takes up your time in a menu after you’ve completed whatever encounter you were doing. Ghost Of Tsushima instead rewards you with the exact thing you might want, when you need it most.

This goes even further with upgrades and cosmetics. There is only a very select type of crafting materials that can be collected in the world: three types of metal, three types of wood and three types of cloth. When you collect these materials, which can be done with very little effort when exploring Tsushima, all you have to do is find one of the many armourers and weapons specialists scattered around the island and simply give them the materials to upgrade your gear. Sorted. Even cosmetic changes are easy, simply having to collect the universal material “flowers” rather than having to scour a shorefront for a specific shade of red flower to give your katana’s hilt a slightly different finish. The team at Sucker Punch have shown players like me some much-appreciated respect when considering their crafting system. Someone there understands that not all of us have the time or the energy to build everything and sometimes it is okay to suspend reality and have resources just magically created.

I am sure the next generation of games will further innovate on crafting. After all, games are only going to get bigger, more immersive and even more focused on the finer details of realism. I can’t stress enough how fine this is. If this is the kind of experience you are looking for there is nothing quite like making that killer battleaxe all by yourself. But, there needs to be an understanding that crafting isn’t for all of us. Sometimes we don’t want to think about how to create an exploding arrow capable of eviscerating hordes of enemies, we just want to use an exploding arrow to eviscerate hordes of enemies. And then be on our merry way.