Sucker Punch Production's critically acclaimed samurai adventure Ghost of Tsushima is over a year old now. As the last true PS4 exclusive before the PS5 was released, that's a pretty big milestone. Ghost of Tsushima has been updated a few times, most notably with its Legends multiplayer expansion, but now the game is finally getting a narrative DLC and a true next-gen upgrade with the Ghost of Tsushima: Director's Cut. The upgrade includes a whole new chapter of Jin's story with the Iki Island expansion and many more exciting features.

As an open-world game, Ghost of Tsushima gives fans plenty of ways to occupy their time and take a much-needed breather from fighting Mongols. Jin can compose haikus, reflect on life, follow golden birds to secrets hidden throughout the island, or find foxes at Inari Shrines. Iki Island is staying true to that tradition but adding in some new things that are specific to the new location. Much to players' delight, Sucker Punch has doubled down on one of Ghost of Tsushima's most popular features: cute animals to pet.

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Ghost of Tsushima has a lot of things to do and a large, beautiful map to explore, but one of players' favorite things to do quickly proved to be honoring the Inari Shrines. A fox would show up and lead Jin to the shrine, where he would then have an opportunity to pet the fox after honoring it. Everyone loves to pet cute animals, even virtually, so players spent countless hours seeking out fox dens just to interact with them.

On July 16, Sucker Punch released some player statistics for Ghost of Tsushima to celebrate its one-year anniversary. Some of the stats were insane to think about, such as the fact that collectively, Ghost of Tsushima fans have spent over 4,000 years on horseback. But one of the other stats was equally impressive; fans have pet over 55 million foxes in the game collectively. It's hard to imagine, but definitely solidified the notion that players liked petting the foxes. Later, Sucker Punch added the ability to pet dogs to the original game, but now we know they didn't stop there. Adding more animals to the Iki Island expansion is a must.

It doesn't look like Iki Island will have the Inari Shrines like the Ghost of Tsushima main story does, but it seems like it will more than make up for the missing foxes. Located all over Iki Island, players can visit animal sanctuaries populated by many more furry friends. The three that have been confirmed are monkeys, deer, and wild cats.

The process of earning the right to pet a given animal is a little different from Tsushima as well. Jin could pet the foxes at the Inari Shrines, but it would be an overstatement to say that he tamed them. The same is not true of the Iki Island expansion. Jin can use his flute to calm animals after discovering their sanctuary, and from there he will be able to pet them.

Unlike the foxes, the animals on Iki Island do seem to be tamed by the interaction and the player has a lot more control over how that interaction goes. In Ghost of Tsushima, the foxes would disappear and never be seen again until a new shrine was discovered. There are only 49 foxes total in the game, and each of them can only be pet once. To be fair, that's quite a bit, but it would be nice to see animals more than once especially in more well-traveled areas of the map.

Iki Island also does away with that part. Once Jin has tamed the animals, they remain in their sanctuary and can be visited at any time. That means endless photo ops, and endless chances to pet the deer, cats, and monkeys.

Ghost of Tsushima: Director's Cut will release on PS4 and PS5 on August 20.

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