Ghost of Tsushima Iki Island expansion adds cat, deer, and monkey petting

The Ghost of Tsushima Iki Island expansion launching alongside the game's upcoming Director's Cut will let protagonist Jin Sakai pet even more animals than the base game.

Ghost of Tsushima's enthusiasm for animal petting is well documented. As of July 2020, players had collectively petted over 10 million foxes. Earlier this month, developer Sucker Punch confirmed that number has since topped 55 million. But Iki Island is upping the ante with a veritable buffet of good boys and girls to pet. 

We'll start with this wild cat, seemingly modeled after the Japanese Iriomote cat, because its interaction with Jin is the cutest thing I've ever seen. I never would've thought that a cat nibbling on a famously lethal samurai's arm would pierce my heart this way, but here we are.

You can tame these cats using a flute, like we're in friggin' New Pokemon Snap, and once you do, you can pet them to your heart's content. Sucker Punch's wording around this feature was flagrantly designed to appeal to animal lovers as much as possible, and I'm here for it.

It's not just cats, though. The same flute technique will entice deer at "various deer sanctuaries across Iki" and monkeys found near hot springs. I've been a big fan of the sacred spotted deer in Ghost of Tsushima ever since I first saw one prancing through the game's sun-dappled rice fields, but they're so skittish that it's hard to get a good look at them. I genuinely cannot wait to see and feed one up close. Oh, and the monkeys are cool too, I guess. 

Those are the only animals Sucker Punch has confirmed so far, but even if it's just those and the foxes, Ghost of Tsushima will still walk away as one of the finest animal petting sims available. Forget the samurai shinobi honor stuff; HD animal petting is the back-of-the-box promo that Ghost of Tsushima deserves.

For reasons I cannot fathom, Sucker Punch didn't lead with "you can pet the deer" in the new trailer for the Ghost of Tsushima Director's Cut, but it's a pretty good trailer anyway, setting up the expanded story and big bad of Iki Island. 

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