Ghost of Tsushima is not the first foray into the open world genre for developer Sucker Punch. Before this they worked on the InFamous series, games about people who found themselves in a sandbox world after acquiring powers. One aspect of those games was a morality system that took you between hero and villain (or hero and antihero, in the case of the last title) depending on key choices. It seems, however, with Ghost they are sneaking away from that.
Talking to IGN, Creative Director Jason Connell confirmed that the game would lack any type of karma system. They wanted the game to focus on a set character development of Jin as he evolves from his noble beginnings to something else in the changing world around him.
“We thought about [a morality meter] because we had the karma system in [Infamous: Second Son], but we realized it was more important to us that we wanted to tell a human story of someone who is this way and has to evolve into something else, versus transform completely into something else,” Connell said. “He doesn’t flip flop back and forth, it muddied it up for us. We really wanted the story to reflect his transformation.”
It probably doesn’t come as any surprise, since in none of the footage we’ve seen from the game have we seen anything resembling good/bad choice system. It sounds like those who dug InFamous will have to settle for a more set narrative this go around in feudal Japan when Ghost of Tsushima launches in July.