The Ghost of Tsushima PC version already has several dozen mods to its name. Although tinkerers wasted no time in getting around to modifying the game, Ghost of Tsushima's overall PC modding potential may not be as high as this early mod momentum suggests.

Ghost of Tsushima reached Steam on May 16, two months shy of its fourth anniversary. This version of Sucker Punch Productions' hit samurai adventure was developed by Nixxes Software, Sony's Dutch subsidiary that previously handled five other PlayStation PC ports.

Modders are already having a field day with the latest Nixxes release, having managed to put out no fewer than 31 Ghost of Tsushima mods via Nexus Mods as of May 18, just over 48 hours since the game's debut. As is to be expected for such quickly-developed projects, this early wave of mods solely comprises smaller modifications, ranging from graphical tweaks to de facto cheats. The latter group mostly includes modified save files, which allow players to immediately jump into the Ghost of Tsushima New Game Plus mode. These were presumably straightforward to create, as some players had previously discovered that the game's decrypted PlayStation save files work with its PC port without issues.

PC players also already have a handful of community-made reshading presets to choose from. A few of them are geared toward offering a more natural look, which they largely seek to achieve by subduing many of the game's vivid colors. Meanwhile, others attempt to deliver an even more stylized experience. Ghost of Tsushima's art direction has been widely praised as one of its most notable qualities, so experiencing the vanilla version of the game before delving into modifying its visuals is something that many players will likely want to do.

The modding community has also already put out several functional tools, including an advanced launcher configurator and some performance-optimization utilities. One particularly useful such mod made by Nexus Mods user instanity allows players to uninstall whichever Ghost of Tsushima language pack they don't want to use, Japanese or English, thus saving some hard drive space in the process.

Complex Ghost of Tsushima PC Mods May Not Be Feasible
While this early mod influx might suggest otherwise, expecting the game's modding scene to grow beyond simple community projects of this sort may not be realistic. That's largely because Ghost of Tsushima uses a proprietary Sucker Punch Productions engine with no official modding support, thus inherently being nowhere near as modding-friendly as a PC title could be. All of its existing mods have hence been made using rudimentary techniques like hex editors, which limit the level of complexity that is feasible for modders to achieve.

Posted: May 23, 2024 9:32 pm
Related Forum: PC Gaming Forum

Source: https://gamerant.com/ghost-of-tsushima-pc-mods-influx-modding-potential/