Sucker Punch’s Ghost of Yōtei will receive a deep dive next month, but in the meantime, the developer continues to share pictures and details from its research trip to Hokkaido, Japan. The latest PlayStation Blog post sees co-creative director Nate Fox discussing a crucial element for the team was “to represent Ainu culture in a respectful way.”
To that end, it met with an Ainu cultural adviser and their family before traveling up a mountain and foraging for vegetables. As a result of that positive experience, fans can expect the same activity to appear in-game (which should feed into the option to camp anywhere in the open world).
“It was great, all of us from Sucker Punch stopped taking pictures and got our hands dirty. We started really looking at the plants beneath our feet. It was a lovely way to make new friends and start our journey of learning about Ainu culture. That night, we resolved to put foraging into our new game. We wanted players to be able to share the experience we were lucky enough to have experienced.”
Other notable locations that the team visited include Oshima Peninsula, the Nikko Toshogu Shrine, and the Nibutani Ainu Museum (which “helped us get a sense for sorts of objects we’d see in the game and how they were used”). Though Ghost of Yōtei’s Hokkaido is fictional, “the feeling of authenticity we strive to create has roots in those real-world experiences,” said Fox.
Ghost of Yōtei launches on October 2nd for PS5. Set over 300 years after the events of Ghost of Tsushima, it features Atsu on a mission of revenge. She sets out to slay the Yōtei Six for destroying her family, with playable flashbacks providing more context. Stay tuned for more details and gameplay during next month’s deep dive.
