Many players recently stepped back into the shoes of the Ghost for Ghost of Tsushima Director's Cut's additions, alongside an upgraded PlayStation 5 version of the 2020 PS4 exclusive. The expansion builds upon the base game in a variety of ways, but the framework of the Iki Island story would have worked better as a sequel.
In the expansion, protagonist Jin Sakai travels southeast to Iki Island after hearing word of another Mongol invasion. This force is being led by the enigmatic Eagle, who uses her proprietary poison to indoctrinate those with a particularly strong constitution to her cause. Shortly after arriving on Iki, the Eagle captures Jin and poisons him, which instigates a powerfully personal confrontation with some past guilt relating to Jin's father; years before Ghost of Tsushima takes place, Jin's father attempted to pacify the raiders of Iki, leaving the island's residents resentful of any samurai.
Because of Jin's relation to his father - dubbed the Butcher of Iki by the locals - he must hide his identity when he first arrives, opting for the moniker "Jin of Yurikawa." In gameplay, this translates to almost nothing, only making it so armor bearing the Sakai clan symbol is unavailable. This would have, however, been a decent narrative justification for partially resetting the player's abilities, as sequels often do. Dedicating an entire game to the Iki Island setting would also have allowed for a greater focus on its side characters, who aren't given much depth in its relatively short run time.
Ghost Of Tsushima's Iki Island Is Too Short For Its Story To Excel
[Warning: The following contains major SPOILERS for Ghost of Tsushima's Iki Island expansion.]
The Iki Island expansion introduces two major side characters, Tenzo and Fune, whose stories could have greatly benefitted from a more lengthy narrative. Tenzo is an aging Iki raider who was personally involved in the Sakai invasion Jin participated in as a child. He is apprehensive to work with a samurai at first, and it is later revealed that he was the one who killed Kazumasa Sakai, Jin's father. A full-fledged sequel could have provided more time with Tenzo, properly setting him up as a foil to the base game's Ryuzo. Ryuzo was a dear friend turned rival at the hands of the Mongols, and Tenzo has the opposite arc. The path from introduction, to Tenzo realizing Jin is a Sakai, to the revelation that Tenzo killed Kazumasa moves so quickly in the Iki Island expansion's one act that the emotional beats don't land as well as similar moments from Ghost of Tsushima's main story.
Fune is presented as the leader of the largest raider band on Iki - commander of the most formidable opposition to the Eagle's tribe - but for most of the expansion, she is a rather flat character. It's not until the main Iki story has concluded that Fune has any sort of significant character arc. After defeating the Eagle, Jin can travel to Fune's Refuge, her hideout and staging ground, for the Ghost of Tsushima expansion's epilogue. Once the epilogue is complete, a side quest becomes available that sees Fune reconnecting with her estranged daughter, who previously became addicted to drugs and caused some of Fune's raiders to be killed. This arc, much like Tenzo's, could have greatly benefitted from more length. Instead of Jin being informed about Fune's daughter and immediately remedying the situation, it could have had its own questline.
The issues with Tenzo and Fune's characters are detrimental to the core theme of the expansion: Jin's guilt over his father's death. If a Ghost of Tsushima sequel is actually on the way, something as instrumental as confronting his father's killer shouldn't have been relegated to a DLC expansion. Similarly, Jin spends a lot of the base game and the expansion worrying about the expectations of others, specifically Kazumasa and Lord Shimura. The story of Fune's daughter could have been expanded to help Jin deal with his own issues of self worth. Ghost of Tsushima's Iki Island expansion tells a compelling story that builds on the themes of the base game, but it isn't long enough to properly explore its characters or ideas.
