Exploration in 'Ghost of Tsushima': Letting the Island Guide You

[Music] thank you thank you for coming to my talk on exploration in kosa sushma letting the island guide you my name is Parker Hamilton I'm the lead system designer at Sucker Punch I've worked at soccer Pines for about the last 10 years learning and helping to build strong player fantasies through the infamous titles and now through ghost of sushima making ghosts of sushima required an incredible team effort and the notes I'm presenting today would just not be possible without all these amazing people so thanks everybody for your help when we set out to build Ghost we knew the core experience we wanted to deliver was that of being a Wandering Samurai that's the absolute heart of the fantasy and the IP everything stems from there and of course you can't wander without a world to explore we wanted to create a game where players could get lost exploring feudal Japan part of that is

delivering the freedom for players to decide if they want to climb a mountain to reach a temple emerging from the Treetops or ride through a forest to chase down a rogue Ronin another part was the art team's goal from day one to create an absolutely stunning world with lots of Rich biomes dripping with color and movement for inspiration on building a fulfilling Samurai fantasy we look to Samurai Cinema there are many lessons here but for this talk a key part of the Samurai Cinema that inspired us is movement if you look at the films of curacaoa there's always motion movement and wind you'll likely see clouds of dust whipping around stoic Warriors or leaves blowing through towards tragic characters as a result wind became a very early visual art Target for our game's identity it was until much later that the wind evolved to become much more of a mechanical element of the game so it was a serious technical investment

and we knew we needed to invest early I remember seeing the first version of the wind blowing the grass it was simply stunning a couple years later everything was windy the trees the grass that covered the Landscapes capes on the hero's back particles everything the stunning environment and the incredible wind were one aspect of transporting players to feudal Japan but we wanted to go further we wanted to be as authentic as possible we wanted to honor the time period and the culture we were targeting as much as possible we went to Great Lengths to do this in fact our creative director Jason Connell is speaking about the various steps we took to educate our team and bring ghosts of sushima to life for gameplay this meant we didn't want any UI we didn't absolutely need we wanted players looking at the world to retain immersion and we didn't want any anachronistic elements like a mini-map

that could compromise the tone we were targeting so the challenge became how to solve all the normal game problems without using the standard UI based Solutions we thought would be immersion breaking for example discovering opportunities how do I know if there's something interesting nearby or wayfinding how do I know how to get to a location I'm interested in reaching or guiding players to content how do I know where to go to progress my current mission our solution was to answer these questions as much as possible through an organic and diegetic presentation of game mechanics we wanted to keep players immersed so we asked ourselves how do we keep players presence in the world whatever breaks the fourth wall and makes you realize you're playing the game is undesirable we felt if you were looking at UI it reduced the incentive to look at the world for context includes we didn't want players missing subtle details that were transported to the

world we were built we also asked how can the world provide the information the player needs ah what does Samurai traveling on Horseback naturally gain information about potential threats how can the world provide clues if there's something interesting nearby and how can the world help lead me to the location I'm interested in reaching this talk recounts our experience developing the exploration tools we use to drive immersion and site curiosity and motivate a continual sense of Discovery and reward specifically tools we use for building a world that invites exploration the tools we use to make exploration feel natural when building a world that invites exploration players need to be curious about the world and what opportunities exist for ghosts lots of factors ranging from environmental design to content Discovery and player reward work together to accomplish this

for environmental design Retreat the world like a living character and like a character the world must have personality and should speak for itself when this is true environmental elements can create a call to Adventure driving a player to discover what is over a hill through a forest or hidden along the coast goes to sushima is by far the biggest game we've ever made it's almost 30 times bigger than Infamous Second Son and the map is divided into three regions filled with more than 40 diverse biomes there are hundreds of locations in sushima to explore and lots of ridden rewards to find so traveling across tsushima yield journey through Lush forests across boggy swamp lands and enter a frozen mountainous landscape as you do you'll notice nature plays an important role in the world of sushima unique foliage weather Wildlife come together to make each prefecture visually distinct this creates Rich vibrant color palettes that drive the art style and the

identity of our game by eliminating the types of foliage and biomes we were better able to bring a sense of freshness to each area and create a world filled with lots of memorable locations this diversity makes players curious and drives them to explore into new areas of the world discovery of the location is one of the most rewarding things you can do in Gosa sushima each location is Rich with personality and is fluids heavily based on the region it is found for example the healing town of akashima is located in the low Wetlands of toitama Moss hangs and grows on every surface and Mist lingers above the ground incense Burns near the great Bell you might even hear frogs croaking around you it's mysterious and it's beautiful we approached the design of a town or a location like building a character for a story what happened here in the past what state is it in now and what happens after the player comes

to the location we want players to be interested in a location's history and to be curious to learn more about it for example the golden temple is where Japanese peasants are gathering to take refuge from the Mongols umugi is a hidden town of Ronan and thieves where players must watch their back and yarakawa is home to a warring Clan of the hero besieged by Mongols our goal when building an open world game is always if you can see it you can reach it with this few exceptions as possible of course so we create lots of Epic Vistas to allow players to take in the beauty of the world and to be drawn to new locations to help with this we use visual landmarks to incite curiosity another name for a visual Landmark is a weenie and a weenie if you're not familiar is a term we picked up from Disney imagineers use this term when building theme parks to get guests to go to certain places and directions weenies are large identifiable ailments

guests can see from lots of different locations and from even very far away you're probably familiar with a couple of them the Magic Kingdom has Cinderella castle Epcot has spaceship earth and Animal Kingdom has the Tree of Life in ghost we use two main types of weenies Flags and breadcrumbs flags are tall visual elements that extend upward from the content they're meant to attract you to for example this black smoke signal could be a rogue building with its head peeking up over the forest could be a red maple tree a steam nearby or the motion and movement of this flock of birds hanging over at to Tommy bat might draw your attention bread clums like this Tori gate might lead you towards an actual location up above towards this Shinto shrine breadcrumbs are great because you can discover them even if it's a dense

forest and be pulled with anticipation eagerly towards consent a new area particles are a great tool to use when creating a visual landmark they're visible from great distance you like these black and white smoke clouds you can see all the way across the island they can also be visible in day or night like these fireflies they're also dynamic they can change State as you approach them this flock of birds Circle to draw your attention and Scatter as you approach to not get in your way as you compose your haiku particles are also stateful they can be easily changed or disabled based on content completion this way the player

knows whether they've engaged the content or not sound effects is obviously also another good method for drawing a player's attention Ambience from a location like diegetic music or chanting is another good way to draw the player forward in this example the player knows that there's a roadblock nearby when they start to hear the sounds of Mongols chanting down below the cliff near the fire ah a oh [Music] sure Flags like the White Flag next to this bamboo stand can only be seen when you're very nearby as a result they are not as effective as other weenies for example can you see

the White Flag in this picture there it is if the Winnie doesn't pass the squint test and you have to play hidden pictures to find it we might need to reconsider it we found that the density of points of interest is a balance between building a believable world and a functional World players must be drawn by something of interest every 30 seconds or less while traveling the world this can be a building in the distance a peasant held a hostage for actual content this doesn't mean the player must bump into something every 30 seconds but instead can see something calling to them this was the learn time limit from people's patients with the world feeling empty and a lot of environment and VFX work goes into this to ensure the players can see weenies from a distance in an attempt to provide Clear Sight lines and more obvious traversal routes as players explore the world the environment team carried out a comprehensive weed whacking initiative that thinned out and eliminated large

swaths of foliage and simplified Terrain the net effect was it became much easier to maintain situational awareness while traversing the open world and see visual landmarks in the distance here's some examples the first one here is clearing out a patch of trees that help make the town of Komatsu more visible and build anticipation as the player approached and here clearing sight lines to this Mongol War Camp helped create an increased chance of Discovery and also a better scouting opportunity for players planning their assault here the Smoke Stack hidden behind the trees is barely visible however after clearing out the trees both the burning house and the Smoke Stack are much more visible so riding down the road you're more likely to notice the location and be compelled to investigate tall mountains that block the player's path can be frustrating if the player has to detour for too long to find a path around if the path that allows the player to send quickly is hidden the geography can

be even more frustrating clearing out the view to let the player see the path from further out creates a micro navigational goal for ascending the mountain so with the world prepared for exploration it needs to be filled with stories and secrets to discover while the hero's journey pulls him through the world we want the world to be as rich with content opportunities as possible to support the fantasy of the wandering Samurai and a Wandering Samurai wanders which means the player needs to encounter surprises often when exploring the world so what is stumble upon content well it's content you find in route to something else it's a minor diversion from your current goal and players grow over their journey to seek this content out but initially players aren't aware of it and typically stumble into it we describe the target player experience for stumble content as a Funny Thing Happened on the Way to izamo to achieve this Dynamic we try to fill the world with both bespoke and dynamically spawned content

bespoke content like this Onsen is meant to make the player feel like they've encountered a hidden secret Dynamic content like a hostage rescue helps make the world feel alive and incite more of a reactive response from the player we're looking for a mix we want to create a mix of content experiences that add role-playing opportunities like a bamboo cut mini game or treasure hunting opportunities like these collectibles and finally World building opportunities like this buddy Mission with Sensei Ishikawa or this Mythic Mission about a legendary Hero's devastating attack each piece builds to the fantasy of the wandering Samurai content length is also a means to encourage exploration it's a tough balance but you want your stumble on content to be fairly quick and engaging then move on to the next thing for many games this is pretty straightforward however stumbling into a long quest line and getting lost can actually discourage exploration

we try to never end a quest near another Quest start this is to push people back out to the world to engage with stumble content as much as possible in fact we will also often end quests with an ally and then have you meet them somewhere else for the next objective for Quest start again to push you out into the world to stumble content we also try not to put too many Quest starts in a town or a hub we tried this but it causes players to stay in one area for too long and reduces expiration stuff might seem obvious but it definitely works so now that the world is filled with content a Wandering Samurai can discover we need to make sure the player is rewarded for their time players have a range of motivations some are driven by cosmetic role-playing others are more driven by stats gears and power level rewards can always vary but make sure to always reward Tech player exploration we had a rule if there's a building or structure in the world there must be

some reward for visiting it it could be Quest loot chest vanity item anything something has to be the point to visiting the building players are going to be drawn to them and go to them anyway if players aren't rewarded they're going to stop visiting and they're going to stop exploring and stop Scavenging so we employed a range of rewards to scratch the itch of as many player types as we could starting with content anything that builds directly to the fantasy we're creating or do the player's mental model of the world it's just gold this includes missions that offer story progression character relationships or World building revealing new content locations is also great information is a form of reward and can encourage players to explore a new area of the world they haven't visited yet and World lore this adds just more narrative and World building depth for the most archaeologists of player types gameplay Advantage super important the world of sushima is lethal you need to

invest a player growth to scale and match the difficulty of the island this includes simple things like hero stat boosts to bumps and health resolve or stance progress crafting resources to upgrade weapons or purchase Cosmetics or New Gear items like armor that can provide gameplay perks and highlight a particular combat Style it's worth noting crafting resources are an awesome way to motivate Scavenging and exploring at a micro level crafting resources and ghosts exist in common uncommon and rare forms common items are easily found riding your horse or exploring buildings throughout the world an uncommon or rare items are rewards that can only be found at certain locations or for completing certain types of content and player customization is important for both role-playing and mechanical gameplay preferences ghost offers a wealth of cosmetic options to customize Jen's look an array of charms that offer

unique gameplay perks players can make the ghost experience their own by personalizing jyn's appearance and their combat build finally reward players for their exploration with fast travel this will keep them excited to explore more and not fatigued by re-traveling areas they have explored already another term we use at Sucker Punch is player Safari we use this term to refer to intentional exploration we believe this occurs when player has developed enough information to know how to look for something desirable but doesn't have perfect knowledge of where to go so the canonical example is finding an apple in an orchard players know if they want to find an Apple that they can't if they can't make it to the grocery store that apples grow on trees and apple trees are always found together with other apple trees in an orchard so if you're looking for an apple you should start by looking for an orchard when an identifiable weeding is always

associated with a specific reward it fulfills the apple and the orchard metaphor all of ghosts open world content follows this model for example those black smoke signals they lead to Mongol occupied territory or Liberation content and if you complete those content you'll often earn stance progress or rare craft materials for upgrading your sword those Tory Gates we talked about earlier they lead to Shinto shrines and Shinto shrines end with an omamori charm for gameplay customization and also another rare resource reward steam Rising around the red maple leaf tree is an Onsen and those onsens are great opportunities for Jen to reflect on content experiences and get a little stat boost to his health we discussed how ghost of sushma creates a world that invites the player to explore and rewards them for their curiosity goes to sushma Builds on this Foundation

to keep players immersed in the world with a unique spin on several familiar common open world experiences to achieve a more natural exploration every open world game needs to help players find their way to the next mission objective or to a player targeted location having content that self-advertises in world is great First Step at drawing players of content but it isn't sufficient for helping players navigate through a missions progression for that we needed something much more Dynamic which could point the player in the right direction from any spot in the world finding our way to lead the player and keep them present in the world was a lot like Jen's Journey we weren't successful out of the gate we had to experiment and evolve our strategies before we found success it may surprise you but when we started out building ghost we actually started with the compass we were tackling a lot of new challenges and a familiar way finding tool helped produce some of the initial questions and uncertainty of building content in a

brand new IP our Compass provided a One-Stop shop for all wayfinding needs for a player specifically the compass provide pointed the player in the direction of mission objectives including multiple at one time it advertised discovered and undiscovered locations like that Outpost or question marks for Content that I passed nearby and it pointed in direction of player tagged locations the compass succeeded in helping players navigate the island and so we initially piled on and added more UI to communicate other information to the player as seen in this video we tried using the compass to communicate Ai and counter state yellow meant the monkels that detected a threat [Music] and red meant you were detected

[Music] as we made progress building the world and content of tsushima we started to notice some problems with the compass though during missions players were constantly looking at the compass for direction and information instead of looking at the world it's an example in this video a player is using ends up with too much information about the mission and it ended up ruining the exploration and their presence exploring the war camp specifically they were able to look up at the compass and see exactly where the mission objectives were they could know where they needed to go to find the Falcons or know where they needed to go to find the black powder caches they just need to look at the compass and walk forward in the direction of the mission objectives the compass provided too much information and could ruin presence

during missions narratively focused as well this ride along with norio this conversation the compass could distract players because they were looking to see where they wanted to be going and they could also end up seeing information about nearby content like the roadblock many players became distracted and weren't interested in following norio because they wanted to follow off to the other information or concept that they found nearby during exploration players would see visual landmarks and be drawn to them but would have no way of intentionally tagging those locations to pursue them worse those locations would become completely lost when descending from a Vista and navigating through a forest so we implemented a breath of the wild like navigation system in addition to being a response to helping players keep track of distant landmarks it also was meant to give players players more intentionality in

Exploration players can enter or entering mode by pressing the touchpad they could then aim their camera around the world and drop a pin they could later reference via the compass orientary mode also allowed players to discover and log new destinations aiming at a landmark in the distance will allow the player to log that location as a place to explore now or archive for later this was demented explore encourage players to reach Vistas and Survey the world it was also an insurance policy against losing track of a location once the player descended into the thick forest or drop down the other side of the mountain orientary mode also offered a really fast way to fast travel to a previously visited location if the player had already visited kenji's Watchtower all they needed to do was aim their camera at the Watchtower and press triangle and they could quickly travel to that location

orienteering represented our first step towards providing the player with tools to find their way in the wrong in the world and discover content in a more intentional and immersive Banner unfortunately players still relied heavily on the compass to navigate the world and didn't engage with orienteering as much as we'd hoped in order to further lean into a sense of exploration and Discovery we tried another orienteering mode to completely remove the persistent compass and required players to look at the world our goal was to simulate the experience of actual wayfinding with a map and Compass when you don't have GPS we added a minimap yikes with unique icons positioned at Key geographic landmarks in the world these were the mountain peaks and when in your entered orienteering mode those icons would render in the world if you had line a site to them a compass was added to the map to imply what direction the player was looking but there was no indication on the map that showed the player where they were

players had to triangulate their location using the minimap with the world icons in the world for where they were and where they wanted to go here's an example of a player looking around using the minimap and some icons in the world to try and figure out where they are as you might imagine engagement was low this was possibly exacerbated by a lack of training but more likely by confusing controls players a hard time understanding the value of the functionality orienteering provided at about this time one of our creative directors made the comment he really wished there was something that could

just point the player in the direction of content like the sword and shot of the Colossus all you had to do is press a button and you'd pull out your sort and then you could look around to where the light actually focused in the world the concept team went to work and came up with several ideas with Adventure as the goal in mind one example was ghostly animal apparitions meant to represent Kami they'd appear and lead the player in the direction of content before Vanishing another was God rays that could Point through the forest and and point out content opportunities and then there was this suggestion for the wind which we had made such a significant part of our visual identity the idea for the wind was inspired by a sequence in kurosawa's Yojimbo where a Wandering Samurai is unsure where to go Samurai approaches over Crossroads bends down and picks up a stick and throws it in the air

when it lands the samurai uses this as a sign of faith and walks down the path in the sticks Direction we were very moved by this idea and It ultimately led to this opening shot from our E3 debut our initial tests came after our E3 debut and used a date debug menu to set the wind to blow towards the closest location of your choosing could be an Onsen it could be a mission start a roadblock a collectible anything when the target was set wind gusts would blow particles in the direction of the Target and the foliage and grass in the world would bend and bow the direction the wind was blowing it looked like this we asked members of our team to see if they could follow the wind towards

various locations and while there were hiccups it worked well enough out of the box to consider making the wind an actual player tool the initial wind test coupled with the warm reception at E3 to our reduced HUD led us to set a new goal for exploration reduced Reliance on UI and Double Down On Our Hope of encouraging exploration through looking at the world to do this we introduced the windicator so what is the windicator well besides being our internal development name for the guiding wind it was a full-blown Compass replacement at this point we completely Sunset our compass and never returned to replace the compass the wind blows in the direction of the player's current tracked Target the TARC the tracked Target could be a mission or a tagged location like a player pin or a previously visited destination the question our team wanted to know was how do I set the win's target the answer was there are two ways and

they could use existing interfaces the player interact with it already all the time the first was the world map where players would look around and explore for undiscovered content nearby and locations that they wanted to go the second was our Journal which listed all of the different missions the playery discovered so far once the player had chosen a target a HUD indicator let the player know the target had changed and what the wind was now targeting what did the indicator mean for Missions well first the wind can either track a mission or something else it can't do both at the same time second if you were following a mission the current Mission objective became the target tracked by the wind and finally as the mission progresses the wind would auto update to Target the current objective our initial attempt replacing the compass wasn't the media success

some players were excited about the new change the possibility for the future but other players complained they had a hard time following the wind they were getting lost in missions and just wanted the comfort of the compass we realized there were three areas we needed to address first visibility you needed to make the win legible in all situations second navigation needed to make it easier to follow the win through and around obstacles in the world and three Mission integration we had to ensure all missions followed the new single Target wind model and all mission objectives were supported with appropriate wind feedback so related to visibility we probed for more information and we found that there were a few situations that notably stood out first one riding your horse fast through the forest it was hard to make out the wind particles from the biome particles of the area especially running at fast speeds second

bad weather or inclement States like heavy rain snow or fog same sort of problem the windicators particle effects were hard to distinguish from the rain and other effects that were associated with the biome so we made some changes to address the feedback in a few ways the first was we amped up the strength of the Wind on the world so that when the wind blew the foliage and the trees would all Bend IN more significant ways to help point in the direction the player was to go the second we increase the particle visibility and we increase the identity of the wind particles we added streamers to distinguish the wind from other ambient particles on the world and third we added a gus button this way the player could trigger a gust of wind whenever they want it to help clear the way here's what it looked like

foreign generally wants the player to travel in a straight line towards their target and while it's fun do a little navigation around an obstacle it's frustrating when you can't follow the win the direction is blowing it could be a river you can't cross with your horse or a mountain you can't climb but if the player hits a cliff for a wall it has to go more than 10 seconds in either direction to find a point to a cylinder cross the world begins to feel very closed off so what did we do well at first the particles needed to become terrain aware they needed to be funneled through Pass and up and over Cliffs to give players a better sense of micro navigation that player needed to do and make so we also needed to add claimiopaths in the open world this was a response to not being able to follow the win in the direction that it

was pointing Mission integration with the windicator was a big challenge we had built several missions with the Assumption of a compass that were just not congruent with the new model the windicator demanded we had to review every Mission and every objective kind to determine how to improve the user experience first up multiple objectives we didn't have an interface to select an objective and the wind can only have one location tracked at a time so we made the decision only one objective at a time for a mission and those missions with multiple objectives had to be reworked Mission starts we actually had some missions that would auto start by entering a volume when you are nearby with the windicator this meant that a new location would be Auto tracked and that was confusing when players hadn't chosen the location for the wind to blow so we made a new decision that no Mission can start by entering a volume all missions needed to have an interact

to start lots of our missions had objectives for talking to an NPC and as part of tracking this location the wind would continue to blow up the NPC until you interacted with them or her this started to feel very disruptive and unnecessary so we made a decision that the wind needed to deactivate when you were close to the NPC and reactivate when walking away we had several mission objectives like this about entering and leaving areas nearby some sort of volume tracking footsteps or entering a search area or combating counter nearby we had many of these and many more similar issues to talk to NPC objectives and so we made the decision that the wind needed to deactivate when entering one of these areas and reactivate when exiting one of these areas as we sanded off rough edges the windicator helps strip away more and

more UI and grew to celebrate the beauty of our world it was becoming a Soulful part of our game and we decided to re-record several golden path cut scenes to better integrate the feature into the story it turns out the actual Mongol invasion of Japan in 1274 is where the term Kamikaze or Divine win originated the belief is that the wind storms that occurred during The Invasion were what pushed the Mongols back and made them retreat to honor this important moment we thought it would be a great lyrical opportunity for the Divine winds that helped save Japan to also help Jin on his journey so we rebranded the wind decator as The Guiding lens through a close personal connection to Jin how do I save [Music]

The Guiding win helped players to naturally pass through their target by observing the world around them no UI element pulled their attention away preventing them from missing cues at the world unfortunately the question marks that appeared on the compass for undiscovered content were gone we need to do ways to help players discover the content they were now missing we broke down undiscovered locations into two categories the first was big locations locations defined by volumes like this roadblock or this war camp they had visual elements that were large

enough to draw players from afar and allowed players to discover their content relatively easily these types of content notably ended up all being Mongol themed we also had small locations like a haiku or bamboo game or on Center Mission starts and these had recognizable visual elements too as we discussed but it could be hard to see if you were in a forest or on the other side of a cliff and we decided that players needed some extra help finding these locations we didn't want though to make the smaller locations too much easier to find because we wanted the player to retain the feeling of finding a secret so we asked ourselves what in world method can we use to help players find these smaller hidden locations the island helping jyn fight back the Mongols was a strong developing theme the people of the island were helping Jen make his gear stronger the wind helped jyn find his way what else could exist in the world that could help Jen discover content

at this time we were spawning deer systemically in the world near lots of our content our cultural research informed us that deer were regarded as a sacred animal in Japan their presence was helping us build an immersive world but we didn't want to reward the player for killing them following NPCs was something we were doing all across the game with Jen's allies and missions so we decided to try turning hunting on its head and see if animals could lead the player to content and so our first Lassie was actually a deer we learned pretty quickly though that deer can't kill him Cliffs and so their ability to successfully lead players to content was limited luckily we were also working on AI for another animal NPC that could navigate Cliffs because it could fly it turned out we were also working on bird AI for the Mongol Eagle that could help villains detect you faster and we decided to see if we could repurpose that behavior to be an aid for the player rather than something to be avoided pretty quickly we discovered that

following a bird worked across Cliffs rivers and lakes actually not only did it work but it was fun to try to chase the bird through a forest and across obstacles like the lakes that the deer couldn't so how does it work the Golden Bird will explode within you within 150 meters of the piece of content that you haven't discovered the Golden Bird will spawn systemically off-screen the bird calls out to grab your player's attention and then flies up screen and tries to fly continue on towards the dislocation this turns a piece of content that could otherwise be a needle in a haystack for example being blocked by the blanket of a forest and makes the content radiate out like a magnet pointing toward it this is a map of sushima and all of the content that the guidebird will actually lead you to you can see how the dots actually represent the diameter in which the bird will draw your attention and

bring you closer towards content it really helped us make a lot of our content much much more discoverable the guy bird was success success because it was a slot machine it could lead you to missions it could lead you to many content and it could lead you to Cosmetics you never knew what you were going to find but you could be sure it would not lead you to a death trap and because it was systemic the guy bird could pretty much be added anywhere there were pitfalls though um unfortunately there were seven when building the guidebird content needed to be marked up with metadata that indicated where the bird would lead you some content was initially missed and this required an extensive audit working with the consent and QA team to ensure everything was covered we also had to make it so the bird didn't show up during missions and cut scenes it was distracting to have the bird appear during a talk and walk and talk with noria or mosico it was

negatively impacting the player's focus on the mission we added reject volumes to these missions these became so pervasive that the bird never appeared and this required another audit to make sure that these were scoped and correctly the right size another guide animal we use to help players find hidden secrets was a fox this animal started out just as an ambient NPC base but based on the learnings from the Golden Bird we decided to invest further in the theme of animals helping the player [Music] when you find a fox you follow it via short Chase to an Inari shrine unlike the Golden Bird all Fox follows are bespoke an authored to lead the player to a hidden location this is part of why they're always found at specific starting points the goal is to give the player the feeling of finding a hidden secret Fox follows are optional though as the player can find the Inari Shrine without

following the fox it's perfectly acceptable because in the end we are most interested in the player getting the Endorphin hit for finding a secret [Music] following a fox offered a range of extrinsic rewards to keep players invested over the course of the game praying at The Shrine unlocks new Charm slots for gin you'll get your first for free but afterwards the Cadence for unlocking additional charms requires an increasing number of shrines honored after all four slots are unlocked Fox photos continued to reward new charms that increased in power the more shrines you honored and of course following a fox also had a chance ending in the much beloved moment of getting to Pat the fox and take your picture since these were hand authored we tried to make them as charming and engaging as we could whether it was animations from

the fox to beckon you forward or leading you down a path that required platforming we wanted these sequences to be short and not too difficult however they were more enjoyable when there were moments where you thought you'd lost the fox and then had to find him again we didn't want you to lose him too often so we added AI Behavior so the fox would double back on the path and recover the player if he got too far behind there were pitfalls unfortunately we had too many of these and they were too frequent and didn't have enough content variety we had around 50 of them turned out players engage with these just enough to earn their four Charm slots and that didn't always continue much after our lost Animal Aid was found not by The Virtuous stumbling upon it in the world but instead by wearing the Traveler's armor attire the Traveler's attire is one of many armors and ghosts and its perks are all targeted at helping with exploration

the really fun and interesting perk that this armor provides is it is effectively a metal detector and will spawn a helpful Firefly when you are near certain collectibles the Firefly leads the player gently by pulsing its light in concert with a slight fuzzing sound and a rumble on the controller the Firefly always stays near the player but tries to position itself between the player and the collectible once the player gets closer to the collectible the pulse into the Firefly becomes more frequent we tried simpler models before this with just the controller vibrating and no in-game Aid it worked okay however it didn't do a good job of providing directionality to the collectible or supporting the theme of the world or the island helping guide you when we added the Firefly stumbling on Collectibles became much easier and much more fun to do with the guiding wins as a means to find your way through the world and a set of guide animals to help you discover content nearby we are left with one

final natural exploration technique in Costa tsushima seeding new opportunities as a Wandering Samurai and a Mongol occupied world how else can the player learn about new opportunities as the player travels across tsushima Jin encounters many peasants and refugees attempting to survive the Mongol invasion we want the player to feel these NPCs have their own stories and knowledge of the world around them to help enrich the hostility of the world these are stories the player could help address and knowledge that can help aid the player on his journey we call these NPCs criers experientially these NPCs deepen the relationship of Jen with the people of sushima we want the player to feel the peasants of sushima help you because you are helping them mechanically we use these NPCs to give Player information we call a rumor about content at a new location the player hasn't explored yet

are you hunting for shigenori's Heavenly strike as well my Lord that technique is only one of myth the musician Yamato insists the myth is real I'm not surprised people often speak of his stories with excitement I heard the tale near Komatsu Forge if it's as powerful as the story claims let's hope you never face the technique in battle these NPCs are found across sushima dynamically when traveling in the open world at small points of interest like this house or at hostage encounter rescue situations ambiently they're found when visiting a hub like a town or refugee camp or a liberated bunco location each MPC provides information related to the context that they are encountered specifically for example a hostage

rescued on the side of the road will provide info about a Mongol occupied location nearby a refugee or a traveler will provide access to the anthology of stories all across sushima in addition to rumoring a specific content location criers also provide helpful hints for Content opportunities and visual cues to look for a monk or a priestess will help the player find information about Shinto shrines or Inari shrines and similarly The Traveler will tell players information to look out for that will lead them to Bamboo Haiku or even tell you initially to follow the Golden Bird various factors ensure a player is neither constantly bombarded by criers or constantly running into the same NPC offering to tell you about his lost brother here's a look at a couple of the budgets we use to control this content distance generally we don't want to rumor a Content that is far away from the choir we want to prioritize things

that are closest to you for example a crier outside of azamo should tell you about a war camp in azamo not up in kashine next is content limits we control the amount of a particular type of content that can be rumored at any time in this way the player doesn't end up with a map full of icons that lead to analysis paralysis for example we have region we limit in Northern izahara the player to only be able to have two rumors for Tales of sushum at one time and this way you don't get too many tails of sushima to pursue without uh before you be um are told about another one we also use crier zones these help us control how criers appear in ambient spaces how many NPCs in an area can be a crier or how far away one crier must be from another and we have cooldowns and these help us control frequency like how long it's been since the player has encountered any crier and how long it's been since a specific

NPC has been a crier in a town which helps with variation when turning to towns things we learned criers were initially all one voice anyone could talk about anything we developed roles to help players provide more context crier's made it so moving around content or Mission starts was also more flexible for player discovery so we discussed how in ghosts we approached building a world to invite exploration through environmental design stumble upon content and rewarding exploration and we reviewed how ghosts sought to create a more immersive and natural exploration experience via in-world aids to help with wayfinding discovering content and seating New Opportunities I hope you found some nugget of inspiration to talk to apply to your games if you enjoyed the talk and are interested to learn more about the development of ghost I recommend these two talks from my mem from members of my team last if any of these challenges and approaches sound like something you'd be interested in come check out our website

we're hiring across a number of areas and would love to hear from you thanks again to everyone for attending and have a great GDC [Music]