Ghost of Tsushima's 'huge' map could take many hours to complete

The upcoming PlayStation 4 exclusive Ghost of Tsushima isn’t going to be the kind of game you can play through in just a couple of sittings—in fact, it could take you up to 50 hours to complete.

This estimate was given by Ghost of Tsushima creative director, Nate Fox, in a recent interview with Voxel. Fox was reticent to place an exact figure on the game’s length, saying that “results were quite different” when tested with players as some preferred to explore the game rather than fire through the main story.

But when asked if the game could take “30, 40, 50 or more hours” for those players who like to stray from the main story and explore, Fox responded “Yes, absolutely,” adding “However, I would highly recommend that everyone get off the main route and get lost on Tsushima Island, there is a lot to discover there.”

More than the main story

It’s unsurprising that Sucker Punch doesn’t have an exact figure for the overall length of Ghost of Tsushima—open world games have always tended to vary wildly depending on their players, especially when they have a large and full map to explore which, it seems, Ghost of Tsushima does.

Speaking with IGN Nordic, Fox said that the game’s map “is huge”, covering “the biomes you can find on main land Japan, from snowy mountains to bamboo forests, to waterfalls and rolling grasslands, it’s all there.” Adding to that sense of scale is the game’s lack of map markers which Fox hopes will encourage players to “get lost in Tsushima” and find “all sorts of hidden stories and items you get access to by following your curiosity.”

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As well as making the map large, Fox emphasised that Sucker Punch has tried to create something more than just an empty open space:

”We want to give enough stuff to keep it electrifying for the player. We didn’t want to make a huge map and have nothing on it. So it’s packed with people, items and stories to explore.”

Players looking to get even longer out of the game and challenge themselves will also be able to take advantage of its varied difficulty levels which were confirmed around the time of the game’s announcement by co-director Chris Zimmerman and recently re-confirmed by creative director Jason Connell in an interview with the Washington Post:

“If the game is too easy and you want it to be a much more challenging experience, you can take it up a notch. If you find the game is a little too hard, you can take it down. Again, this is an effort to try to get as many players as possible.”

With so much to do and explore, Ghost of Tsushima has the potential to be a game that takes a lot of players through to the release of the PS5 in Holiday 2020. Ghost of Tsushima will launch on PS4 on July 17 2020.

Via VG247