By Gene Park
In a surprise announcement Monday morning, Sony and Sucker Punch Studios announced free multiplayer content will be added to the hit single-player samurai game ’Ghost of Tsushima.’
"Ghost" has been tearing up the charts this summer, rivaling another Sony exclusive "The Last of Us Part II" in sales. It was July's best-selling game, and became the fastest selling new intellectual property for the PlayStation 4, beating out marquee title "Horizon: Zero Dawn."
But like "Horizon," "Death Stranding," "Spider-Man" and "God of War," "Ghost" was a story-heavy singleplayer game. Not so anymore. The new multiplayer mode will be based around Japanese mythology. A Sony blog post says it will focus on cooperative gameplay, and players can choose from four classes: Samurai, Hunter, Ronin or Assassin. There'll be story and wave-based attack modes.
Sucker Punch also announced a four-player Raid mode, taking a page from massive multiplayer online genre games like "Destiny" and "World of Warcraft." In short, this is an ambitious-sounding add on to the base game. Did we mention it's free?
This makes us wonder whether Sony will be stepping up its first-party multiplayer entries going into PlayStation 5. While the PlayStation 4 has a healthy multiplayer base (no small part due to being one of the best selling machines in history), Sony's first-party offerings have focused on rich, immersive and high-fidelity "prestige"-style storytelling.
It was only "Uncharted" that mostly flew the multiplayer flag for Sony studios, and it's worth mentioning how much fun the multiplayer mode in "The Last of Us" was. Meanwhile, the Xbox brand built itself off the stability and popularity of its Xbox Live service, and games like "Halo" and "Gears of War."
The PlayStation brand was never any slouch, at least in the early aughts. Sony's first console was a huge hit with offerings like the long-missed car combat series "Twisted Metal." The air combat shooter "Warhawk" was cheesy but kept launch players busy. Sony even broke ground in online tactical multiplayer shooters on console with "SOCOM" for the PlayStation 2.
And on PlayStation 3, Sony and Zipper Interactive were ahead of the massive online shooter craze with "MAG," a now-defunct game that featured 256 players at the same time. The servers were shut down only four years after release, one year after the release of "The Last of Us," which kickstarted Sony's "prestige game" phase.
With the PlayStation 5 incoming, one can only hope that Sony would bring back some of these old favorites. A new "Twisted Metal" would be an excellent showcase of technology, while appealing to a Venn diagram of racing and shooter enthusiasts. "SOCOM" could fill a gap in the slower-paced tactical shooting space that Ubisoft's "Rainbow Six" series appears to be inching away from. "Warhawk" was last seen on PlayStation 3 as well. It could be a worthy competitor or sidepiece to the upcoming "Star Wars: Squadrons" game from EA.
Shawn Layden, the former chairman of Sony Worldwide Studios, told Bloomberg in 2019 the company was interested in bringing its multiplayer experiences to the PC platform. That hasn't happened yet, but Sony's become more open to launching its titles on Steam with the release of "Horizon: Zero Dawn" and "Death Stranding."
With this generous helping from Sucker Punch, "Ghost of Tsushima" will likely see a second life in engagement and sales this fall. After all, the game has become a darling to audiences.
But here's hoping Sony will reach back into its rich history of multiplayer games for the future. PlayStation players will especially have a sweet tooth welcoming back old favourites.
The Washington Post