Ghost of Yotei, just like its predecessor, is a truly enormous game. If you’re dedicated to completing every bounty, finishing every side story, and acquiring every piece of vanity gear and armor set, you’ll really have your work cut out for you. There are some truly stiff challenges here, such as the battle against Takezo the Unrivalled.
Naturally, on the long road to development, there will be ideas that Sucker Punch Productions decided not to implement, for all kinds of reasons. There’s probably a lot of content left on the cutting room floor, which we may well see in future versions of the game. For now, one thing we do know the team cut out is a lot of the flashback content to Atsu’s past.
In an installment of Sony’s Creator to Creator series, Ghost of Yotei director Jason Connell had a fascinating conversation with Vince Gillgan of Breaking Bad fame about the pair’s respective creative processes. Connell expanded on the flashback feature in Ghost of Yotei, which allows players to experience brief episodes from Atsu’s past. He called this “a very powerful narrative tool,” but it’s one that isn’t used nearly as much as was originally envisioned.
According to Connell, the appeal of the ability to hold down that button and play through a snapshot of Atsu’s life growing up with her family was immediately obvious. He said:
“She’s on this lone wolf quest and then you press a button and she’s, like, kind of feeling the warmth of her past, like, what she’s fighting for … what a great narrative tool.”
In a lot of ways, Ghost of Yotei is quite conventional as a revenge quest, and to keep the player engaged, I think it’s important that they come to empathize and sympathize with Atsu and her plight. The game’s explosive opening did a great job of achieving that, for me, but those tutorial moments of learning to use her father’s forge, shamisen lessons with her mother, and sword practice with her brother brought all of that to the forefront.
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How Much Bigger Could It Have Been?
Further into the game, these moments are largely optional little extras that take place in Atsu’s former family home and other specific locations. They were intended, however, to be available all around the world. Connell explained, “it started off as, let’s do that as many places as we can, maybe everywhere.” The idea, then, was originally something almost akin to The Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time’s time travel mechanic (though switching between both states anywhere a la A Link to the Past).
Just as in some of Link’s famous adventures, though, this would have meant two different versions of the entire game world the player could switch between anywhere (or almost anywhere), and making both significantly different to be worth the journey in the first place.
Ultimately, Connell said, the team took “like, a year of working on it and testing it and trying to understand how it can be a game mechanic and … a worthwhile feature,” before concluding that effectively “doubling your art” was far too daunting a prospect to be worthwhile. For a world as painstakingly and beautifully crafted as this one, it wasn’t a practical option. Instead, the time-switching mechanic was limited to specific locations in the finished game. “It saddened me the day I had to … narrow it,” the director confessed, but I think these glimpses of the past are all the more poignant as a result in this Sucker Punch masterpiece.
Ghost Of Yotei Review
The highly anticipated sequel to Tsushima finishes strong, albeit with some bumps along the way.
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- Released
- October 2, 2025
- ESRB
- Mature 17+ / Blood and Gore, Drug Reference, Intense Violence, Language, Partial Nudity, Use of Alcohol
Discover a bold, new story of a warrior in Japan who is on a mission of vengeance all her own.
Set 300 years after the critically acclaimed Ghost of Tsushima, Ghost of Yōtei is standalone experience set in 1600s rural Japan. The story follows a haunted, lone mercenary named Atsu. Thirsty for revenge, she travels through the beautiful, rugged landscapes of northern Japan, hunting those who killed her family many years earlier.
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- Multiplayer
- Online Co-Op
- Number of Players
- Single-player
- PS5 Release Date
- October 2, 2025
- OpenCritic Rating
- Mighty
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Author: 360 Technology Group
