“Ghost of Tsushima Served as Good Encouragement for Creating Rise of the Ronin,” Director Says

As an open world action-adventure game with a period Japanese setting, Rise of the Ronin has drawn a lot of comparisons with Ghost of Tsushima, and the more that we’ve seen of the upcoming Team Ninja game, the more prominent the similarities between the two games have become. It’s no surprise, then, that Sucker Punch’s 2020 samurai epic served as very direct inspiration for the Rise of the Ronin development team.

That’s as per Rise of the Ronin director Fumihiko Yasuda, who revealed in a recent interview with Automaton that with Team Ninja setting out to create its first open world game, Ghost of Tsushima was one of the games that the studio took cues from, citing its combat and the level of research that was poured into its Japanese setting.

“Rise of the Ronin is our first open world game, and Ghost of Tsushima was one of the games we used as reference, and I personally enjoyed it,” Yasuda said. “I felt inspired by the fact that a game set in Japan had been researched to such an extent by the developers, and had also received high praise for aspects such as its combat system. At the same time, I wondered why we couldn’t release a game like Ghost of Tsushima back then. Ghost of Tsushima served as good encouragement for creating Rise of the Ronin.”

Meanwhile, Yosuke Hayashi, producer at Koei Tecmo, said that beyond its similarities to Ghost of Tsushima, Rise of the Ronin also features the “unique characteristics” that one would expect to see in a Team Ninja game.

“It’s not that we weren’t conscious of Ghost of Tsushima, rather that we think the most important thing is to foster the unique characteristics of Koei Tecmo and Team Ninja games,” he said. “I’m confident that when you play Rise of the Ronin, the game’s tactile feel, combat and other aspects of ‘Japanese-ness’ will seem different and better when compared to other titles.”

Rise of the Ronin is set to launch exclusively for PS5 on March 22. Read our impressions of the game’s first three hours through here.

Meanwhile, Ghost of Tsushima will finally be launching for PC on May 16.