Ghost of Tsushima dev attempts to explain why PS5 features are only available in Director’s Cut

Sucker Punch Productions has attempted to explain why Ghost of Tsushima’s new PS5 exclusive features will only be available in the upcoming Director’s Cut.

Set for release on PS5 ($69.99) and PS4 ($59.99) on August 20, Ghost of Tsushima: Director’s Cut will introduce the new Iki Island expansion and several PS5-only features that won’t be available to owners of the original game.

“Thanks to the PS5’s ability to render cinematics in real time, cutscenes in Ghost of Tsushima and on Iki Island on PS5 will now offer lip sync for Japanese voice over,” Sucker Punch Productions communications manager Andrew Goldfarb said when the game was announced earlier this month.

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“We’re also happy to confirm that Ghost of Tsushima, Ghost of Tsushima: Legends, and the new Iki Island expansion will all take advantage of haptic feedback and adaptive triggers in the Director’s Cut.

“There will also be enhancements to 3D audio on PS5, as well as drastically improved load times, 4K resolution options and framerates targeting 60 FPS.”

While Ghost of Tsushima is already playable on PS5 via backward compatibility, offering faster loading speeds and the option to boost frame rates up to 60 FPS, the new PS5 features introduced in Director’s Cut are only available to those who pay for the new version.

In an interview with Press Start, Sucker Punch creative and art director Jason Connell was asked how the decision to charge for the PS5 upgrade and frame it within the context of a Director’s Cut came about.

Connell suggested that PS5’s new features were tightly connected to its new story content. However, he made no mention of how the same story content could be released on PS4, without said features.

“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,” he said.

“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.”

Existing Ghost of Tsushima owners will be able to upgrade to Director’s Cut on PS4 for $19.99, or upgrade to Director’s Cut on PS5 for $29.99. Players who purchase Director’s Cut for PS4 will also be able to upgrade to Director’s Cut on PS5 at any time for $9.99.

Further reading

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A new Ghost of Tsushima Director’s Cut trailer shows off the Iki Island expansion

Jin travels to the island to battle a Mongol tribe led by a shaman known as ‘the Eagle’

Elsewhere in the interview, Sucker Punch senior staff writer Patrick Downs said the Iki Island expansion is of a similar size to one region in the main game.

“The way to think about it is that the size of Iki and the content, you know the breadth and depth, is analogous to an act in the main game,” he said. “So if you think of the first region, Izuhara, it’ll have that variety and depth of content, and playtime, of course.”