Just around the time expansive open-world games had decidedly started showing signs of fatigue, Ghost of Tsushima arrived like a summer breeze. Sucker Punch's Japan-set action-adventure game didn't reinvent the wheel by any means, but it reshaped player interaction with familiar open-world tropes in inventive ways to deliver a memorable samurai story. Ghost of Tsushima and its resounding success on PlayStation consoles showed that the open-world playbook — largely written by Ubisoft's Assassin's Creed and Far Cry series of games — had gotten so stale that small but clever new ideas were enough to engender a meaningful experience.