Ghost of Yōtei is "a very different animal", as beloved mechanic gets a complete overhaul

We had the chance to chat with Nate Fox and Jason Connell, creative directors on Ghost of Yōtei at Sucker Punch Productions, finding out more about their motivations for not only a whole new protagonist, but an entirely new time period.

"We really love Jin Sakai and his story of transforming himself from a samurai who has to give up his sense of honour in order to become the Ghost," Fox begins. "It was the story we really wanted to tell, and we felt like we had shown that transformation.

"And so we thought, 'Well, what's next?' At Sucker Punch, we love, love origin stories, and so the thought of jumping forward in time to 1603 to this really interesting point in history in Ezo, modern-day Hokkaido, really appealed to us, as well as getting to know a new hero.

"Atsu is very much her own character that players will get to know and get to see change as she becomes infamous as this Onyrō, this vengeance ghost."

As characters, Jin and Atsu are vastly different. While Jin represented a spirit of rebellion among the people, Atsu's quest is far more singularly-minded, driven by revenge.

"Atsu is thought of by the people of Ezo as this vengeance spirit," Fox explains. "That legend only grows as she hunts down the Yōtei Six, who have legions of soldier at their bidding, and she survives against all odds and her story spreads like wildfire.

"It's different than Ghost of Tsushima. This is a tale where we start understanding how people view her as this scary entity, and it's this transformation into something else that really is kind of the emotional heart of the story.

"It's a different Ghost story, but it has that same kind of backbone of you being a walking legend."

Character changes are far from the only major overhaul coming to the game – combat, too, is set for a change, with the stance system being updated with a rock, paper, scissors-like weapon wheel.

"With Ghost of Tsushima, we were very proud of the stance system and how the combat at large made you feel like a samurai," Fox notes. "We wanted to keep those skills that you hard won through play and that feeling, but we wanted to add on top of it a fresh experience."

The four stances are replaced with five weapons, each of which has its pros and cons, and each of which is useful against different enemy types.

"It's about improvisation," Fox continues. Yōtei's combat system is flexible, with a heavier focus on the moment-to-moment gameplay.

"Ghost of Yōtei is a very different animal than what we saw in Ghost of Tsushima."

Exploration, another of Tsushima's most notable successes, has been expanded upon to an even greater degree, offering a level of freedom that even most open world games fail to achieve.

"Nate and I, and the studio at large, feel this deep, deep desire to push further and expand upon our exploration gameplay," says Connell.

"We wanted to push hard on it for this game, especially when you match that with the landscape that we're going to, which is Hokkaido, or Ezo, with the time period, this vast, beautiful, epic landscape."

To this end, Yōtei features a few simple, but effective, changes. A spyglass to make finding points of interest easy. Flower streams that lead to unique content. Songs to learn on the shamisen that guide you to hidden secrets.

Yōtei doesn't rely on big quest markers and obvious, in-your-face storytelling. Instead, it provides you with clues about new missions, items, secrets and more, and leaves it up to you to choose what you engage with.

At its core, Yōtei, like Tsushima, is a game that encourages exploration, even when it doesn't lead anywhere.

"A lot of players played Tsushima that way, where they just like going off into the edge of the map and trying to find something, and maybe they find a cool minigame or cool mission. Who knows? But the exploration is the beautiful part there," explains Connell.

"We expanded on it quite a bit more and really tried to create a landscape that is begging for you to explore. A game design system that, under the hood, is not telling you only to go do one thing, and enough tools to make that exploration even more enjoyable than what we've created in our last game."

Given Tsushima's samurai stylings, it was unsurprising how influential the art of samurai cinema was on the game. Kurosawa Mode, a reference to the legendary director, allowed players to play in black and white, with strong winds blowing all the time.

In Yōtei, Sucker Punch pays tribute to two more legends of the genre. Takashi Miike, the man behind 13 Assassins, and Shinichirō Watanabe, of Samurai Champloo and Cowboy Bebop fame, both receive their own homages. I ask Fox and Connell what makes these two so special.

"In Ghost of Tsushima, [we used] 13 Assassins for the early combat, looking at it for reference and inspiration," Connell recalls. "The way people move, and animations, and cool things that people do. That movie is, like, a decade now of us using it, as it has so many great references and character moments and combat moments inside of that, so that one speaks to us very deeply."

While not as impactful as a reference piece, Watanabe Mode was a must for Connell as a means of representing another side of samurai cinema, and in particular the lo-fi hip-hop that has become its trademark.

"A lot of it is just celebrating directors that... even though that's not classic samurai cinema, Samurai Champloo is an amazing anime. It's very exciting, and there's a sort of evolutionary sort of point where that type of music was used in that context, and that's exciting."

In an interview where Fox and Connell's passion for the game has been evident, it's only when I ask them what their own samurai cinema recommendations are that their eyes truly light up.

"Yojimbo by Akira Kurosawa," Fox answers immediately.

Connell, who briefly drops off the call, returns some seconds later to agree wholeheartedly, before adding a few of his own choices.

"13 Assassins, as we mentioned. Also, I think we quite like Lady Snowblood and Zatoichi, [they] are also two really great films."

Fox chimes back in with: "Seven Samurai. Come on. Stone-cold classic."

With just over two months to go until Ghost of Yōtei releases, I feel like all three of us will be going heavy on the samurai flicks while we wait.

Ghost of Yōtei releases on PlayStation 5 on 2nd October 2025.

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