Ghost of Tsushima: Legends (2020)
Legends
Legends is a 2 to 4 player cooperative loot-based multiplayer mode for Ghost of Tsushima. Gyozen, a blind storyteller, tells folktales of heroic deeds that occurred on Tsushima. But since Gyozen is blind and maybe a bit crazy, his version of each story is filled with demons, gods, legendary beasts, and all manner of traditional Japanese folklore.
Legends was designed and built by a small team of 4 developers. I was responsible for design, scripting, and level design on the 2-player story missions, the training mission, various player and enemy mechanics, story dialogue writing, and replayability mechanics.
Watch Legends Gameplay here - Legends Gameplay Youtube Link
Co-op Story Missions
I owned all 9 story missions, and designed and built 5 of them from the ground up. Each mission follows a 3 act structure as Gyozen narrates the story and the player’s actions. Each story mission focuses on a specific Legends mechanic, enemy type, or character.
The lowest difficulty version of each mission includes training and tutorials on how the Legends mechanics work and effective strategies to combat them. On higher difficulties the story missions are randomized to include new objectives and enemy types for maximum replayability. Since Legends is a loot-based mode, we aimed to make the missions fresh and interesting across all 4 difficulties even after many hours of replay and progression.
Legends Mechanics
Some of the mechanics I designed and scripted -
Spirit Bow - A ghostly bow that has unique mechanics when 2 players fire it at the same time. Players must coordinate a “Sync-Shot” to dispel enemy shields, and do bonus damage.
Tengu - A legendary creature from Japanese folklore. The Tengu is a glass cannon enemy who sends swarms of crows to attack players.
Spirit Lanterns - Hanging lanterns that players can activate to trigger a burst of Kami energy, revealing all hidden spirit enemies nearby for a short time.
Fire Spirits - The Legends version of the Mongol hwacha arrow turret.
Oni Hound - A demonic version of the Mongol hound, which can explode when in melee range.
Replayability
I designed a variety of mechanics to maximize replayability for our story missions -
Mission Branching - Story missions have 3 branching randomization points where new objectives and enemy types are dynamically swapped in. This gave us over 100 unique permutations for each mission.
Gyozen’s Curse - Gyozen offers to curse players in return for higher rewards upon beating the mission. The deadly curses require 2 player coordination to survive, for example taking damage when too far apart from your partner.
Cursed Chest - A treasure chest that bursts forth an Oni ambush when opened. Requires the coordination of 2 players to open. High risk, high reward.
Lost Scroll - Each mission contains a randomly placed hidden scroll pickup to promote exploration and map memorization.
Fan Favorite
Legends mode has been universally acclaimed among players with thousands of hours of Youtube videos and live streams showcasing gameplay, discussing strategy, and celebrating exceptional leaderboard times.
There is also an active dedicated subreddit at - r/gotlegends
Legends was nominated for the following awards -
BAFTA 2021 Best Multiplayer
D.I.C.E Awards 24th Annual Online Game of the Year
