While open-world games are known for allowing players quite a bit of freedom when it comes to how they tackle any obstacles, Sucker Punch Productions has said that it doesn’t really care how fans choose to play the recently-released Ghost of Yōtei. In an interview with GamesRadar, creative director Jason Connel spoke about the freedom players are given in the game, and the choices they can make
“If they don’t want to do it, we’re just like, ‘OK, that’s your choice,’” said Connel. “As long as you’re having fun, we don’t care too much.”
This largely comes down to the philosophy of game design that was used in the development of Ghost of Yōtei. Connel explained that players haave quite a few hooks to define their own play style in the game. This, he noted, was done to “try to keep you in the spirit of the main story, getting an appropriate amount of weapons at a decent rate.”
“Our philosophical sort of thing about this game was to let you have more freedom than any game we’ve ever had,” he said, going on to explain that it was a “very complex” feat for the studio to have accomplished.
“It’s very complex, and the pacing is sort of a slightly different model for each one,” Connel continued. “Narrative pacing is a bit easier to understand, and so that one’s a bit more straightforward, but that open-world pacing one is quite challenging. We do all these little tricks to make it kind of work out for us.”
While Ghost of Yōtei might give players plenty of different options when it comes to weapons and abilities, the core identity of the series, according to studio head Brian Fleming, revolves around a protagonist wielding a katana. Just last week, Fleming spoke about this, and how he also can’t imagine a game in the franchise that isn’t set in Japan.
“We believe the core of Ghost is someone wielding a katana, that’s part of the essence,” explained Fleming. “We can’t imagine a Ghost game set in, say, feudal Europe. That doesn’t make sense. There are plenty of games set there, but that’s not what a Ghost game is.”
The Japanese setting and the natural beauty it offers has also been quite important for the studio in both Ghost of Tsushima as well as Ghost of Yōtei. This, Fleming noted, also helped both of the titles garner a Japanese fandom as well despite the studio being a Western one.
“For us, the natural beauty of Japan is part of the essence of a Ghost game,” he said. “I gave this answer on stage [at Tokyo Game Show], and I think the fans in Japan, really appreciated that. That’s the way we see it. It will always have that core, open-world katana adventure of some kind.”
“Now, we may change time periods, we may explore different settings, but I think there are some boundaries we probably won’t cross.”
Ghost of Yōtei was released exclusively on PS5 earlier this month. For more details, check out our review.
