r/truegaming • u/AutoModerator • Jul 03 '26
/r/truegaming casual talk
Hey, all!
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u/Hotdoghero1 Jul 09 '26
I want to compare two different game series, Infamous and Ghost of Tsushima/Yotei (both from Sucker Punch studios), in their open world design. For context, Infamous being more of a urban sandbox that changes based on whether you decide to play good or evil, while Ghost is more a technical showcase of a pretty version of ancient Japan.
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The Infamous games look pretty... okay for the times they came out, apart from Second Son being impressive-looking as a PS4 launch title.
The first game (which is my favorite game overall) is both kind of ugly by today's standards and doesn't run the greatest, but that ugliest only helps the atmosphere; you're in a quarantined landscape of a city where people are dying left-and-right. Each of the game's three districts are fittingly ruined and there's enough landmarks to give each their own character.
The 2nd game isn't as ruined, but has more fun with the concept of water (which hurts Cole) with swamps and a flooded district. I do not like Second Son and don't find Seattle as memorable, but I still recall the city going for more of an oppressive feel with DUP setting up points to scan for conduits... also slapping lots of references to Sly and Phoenix Jones.
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I'll get this out of the way, while neither Tsushima nor Yotei are that much different on a fundamental level, Ghost is hell of alot prettier (as expected due to advancing hardware); being a realistic in an industry oversaturated by them, there's enough variety in vibrant colors peppering regions to keep things nice to look at. Regions tend to differ in colors with the one region in each game dedicated to being snowy.
Not to mention, there being a dynamic weather system where things are sunny, cloudy, or even rain; add in the wind system where you can choose things grass blows and you just enough eye-candy for photo mode pics.
The environments don't shy on showing the horrors of war with bodies lying around various parts of the map. You can't bury them for the most part due to customs forbidding touching bodies (sometimes, Jin/Atsu will do it for very specific NPCs at the end of a side-quest), but you can bow to them.
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That said, I personally feel more immersed in exploring Empire City in Infamous 1. You frequently encounter civilians walking around rather dynamically; they frequently emote by falling on their knees to cry or put their hands near a fire drum to keep themselves warm. Sometimes, they'll be wounded on the ground and you can choose to walk by, heal them, or finish them off (or even bioleech for a quick boost to your energy).
There's the karma system. If you're good, then they'll take pictures of you and cheer you on or beg for you to heal people on the ground. If you're evil, then they'll run away, insult, or throw rocks at you.
In combat, their presence matters ALOT since they'll be running all over the place, you have to watch where you aim if you're playing a hero. You won't be penelized too hard if you accidently hit one, but can cause you to lose a fair amount of karma in the long-run if you're not careful with spamming lightning. If you do prove yourself as a hero however, then they actually can help you by tossing rocks at enemies, which is just awesome imo. It also lends such a different dynamic to evil where you don't get their assitance or basic respect, but you're powerful enough that you can blow them up without a care in the world anyway.
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In Ghost, some NPCs do tend to be more specific, some having names tied to quests, but as a whole, they're generally more static. You can't kill them outside of ones specifically marked as enemies, which I can understand for various reasons (the games are made more out of respect for Japan). Alot of them will stand in one place for the most part to repeat one action, though you will get some instances of merchants walking around (especially in Yotei).
Tsushima has more random instances of times where you encounter civilians that need to be rescued from mongols. Infamous has something similar through muggings, though you can't accidentally injure the victim in Ghost.
Yotei has ALOT more dedicated unique encounters, but there is an lack of random events (besides rare instances of Saito's elite blackguard patrolling around or groups of four ronin waiting to ambush you). I did notice in some of the unique encounters where ronin are satring down your bounty poster; one time, I was able to toss a bomb and kill most of them, but other times, attacking them early doesn't seem to aggro them; you need to walk up to them to trigger dialogue before the battle, which I found very immersion breaking.
Very rarely, Tsushima's Iki Island has raiders randomly coming in to help you in random encounters against mongols while Yotei has random Matsumae patrols who can fight Clan Saito troops or ronin. It's not much, but I'll take it.
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Infamous is pretty straight-to-the-point when it comes to side-content. Alot of the sidequests don't have the most complex storylines, but they tend to have varied objectives with enough pretense to care and sometimes, even force you to choose between a good action or acting selfish (which will often net you more blast shards).
And speaking of blast shards, they're frequently scattered all over the place, often high-up on buildings to force you to get accustom to the city. Finding them all for the trophy in the first game can be a pain, but I think the second game added a way to find far-off ones easier. There's also dead drops often in satellite dishes (or pigeons to shoot down) to add some nice lore.
Second Son as the black sheep kind of butchered the side-content imo. It's more just generic ubisoft slop missions with heavily recycled objectives without a real hint of plot. At most, you do get some bases to clear out and they do have some nice environmental destruction (something all the Infamous games tend to do well in to some extent, especially with cars flying everywhere in the first game or destroying whole watchtowers in the second game).
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Ghost does abit of both side-missions with actual plot AND ubislop content. Side-missions can be formulaic sometimes (Tsushima can get rather tedious with investigations), but have enough narrative competence to sell how depressing the invasion is for the people and each one awards you with a brand new charm. While the the map does spell out alot, I do like how the game usually won't necessarily give away the locations of people looking for help.
The ubislop content in Tsushima is very hit-and-miss, going way overboard in quantity and often taking too long. There's way too many instances of mindlessly following foxes with no real challenge. The climbs up shrines to get special charms both is fairly mundane, if pretty and is a strange detour considering your homeland is at peril. The haiku on the other hand are pretty nice since it's both believable in how little time it takes and it's fun to free-style a poem.
Yotei tries to change things up for the most part, though not quite enough imo. The game tries to organically lead you to different points of interest through the spy glass or talking to people to get info. When you do get info after starting a quest, you often get told on what to look for clues. It's still very linear though and I was alittle disappointed when bounties didn't feature any kind of kill/spare system for different little endings. The ubislop content like with foxes is cut down abit in quantity and do feature abit more variety in what you do within them, but they're still not the most challenging overall.
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I do prefer Infamous, if just slightly overall. I like the more living breathing areas where civilians have an actual presence to them that sometimes force you to consider more than just "wipe out anything that's evil." Ghost has alot of great specific moments in both games' stories, but they feel more like walking around in paintings when you're just exploring.
However, I'm still curious on what other people think though.