Two days from now—that is, next Thurday, July 10th, Sony will host a new State of Play event, where it has confirmed a deep dive on Ghost of Yōtei, Sucker Punch Studios next outing and spiritual sequel to 2020’s Ghost of Tsushima.
According to Sony, the live stream will be hosted by the game’s creative directors, Jason Connel and Nate Fox, and they’re expected to shed some light on a handful of the game’s still elusive aspects.
“Beyond sharing more about Atsu’s quest for vengeance, we’re excited to show off her new weapons, new ways to personalize your journey at the edge of Japan, new special modes, and much more,” the announcement reads.
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What “new ways” are those, you might ask? Well…we don’t really know, but we can certainly take a few guesses…
Table of Contents
- What do we know about Ghost of Yōtei so far
- What we expect to see on the game’s State of Play
- Final thoughts: to Yōtei or not to Yōtei?
What do we know about Ghost of Yōtei so far
Announced in 2024, Ghost of Yōtei is set centuries ahead of its predecessor—300 years after it, to be precise— and it moves us to a new, real-life setting in Japan: the region of Ezo (modern day Hokkaido). According to several sources, it’s a pretty mountainous region with dense forests circling around major rock formations and home to Mount Yōtei, from which the game borrows its name.
This time, we’ll take control of lead character Atsu (Erika Ishii), a mercenary on a quest of vengeance against a group known as “The Yōtei Six”, who murdered her family and left her to die a handful of years back.
The game promises several gameplay improvements and new features. One thing that brought major attention since its very first trailer was the presence of firearms: given that this is three centuries after a very gun-free Ghost of Tsushima, it makes sense that new tools of destruction came to be.
Furthermore, other tidbits mention better stealth play, more freedom to explore, deeper side content and every other feature that comes with a project this size.
What we expect to see on the game’s State of Play
According to several Reddit threads, there is a lot of expectation regarding Ghost of Yōtei’s new stuff. One thing that Sucker Punch has briefly mentioned (albeit without detail) was “better stealth”, which resonates to some gamers’ requests: the first game lacked, for instance, the ability to hide bodies—lead character Jin Sakai killed and fled the scene, leaving enemies to be on full alert after finding their fallen comrade.
While we’re talking about it, we’d certainly welcome more stealth takedown animations and improved detection capacity for enemies (come on, now, some of Tsushima’s mongol invaders were just…that stupid).
This is a very reasonable expectation, given the fact that Ezo is much, much bigger than Tsushima (Google tells us the previous game’s island has “only” 260 square miles, while Ezo/Hokkaido brings a whooping 32,222 square miles), and the further-in-time setting gives Ghost of Yōtei a lot more freedom to explore new forms of hiding, killing and disposing of enemies.
Another topic that got very popular on most forums—and we agree on— is combat gameplay: while Ghost of Tsushima had a simple, yet sleek and elegant system, it is to be expected that Ghost of Yōtei brings more “seasoning”, if you catch our drift: many users mention a larger variety of weapons (both main and side arms) and a more distributed fight capacity filtered by each of them.
Another promise made by Sucker Punch is a more robust volume of side content (yo, SP people: Bilawal wants more hot springs!). Hopefully, this would mean less repetitive stuff—we can only chase so much red foxes and golden birds, let’s be honest—and more of the story-based side quests: whenever Jin Sakai entered a new area, the musician(s?) within the region presented a fun-looking Mythic Tale that would run for a good chunk of time and, usually, would net very cool rewards. Atsu could stand to gain from those.
Finally, story-wise, we hope to see how exactly the two games are related, if at all. And we’re curious to see the dichotomy of morality between the two titles: Jin Sakai was a samurai struggling to embrace the “Ghost” and let go of his honorbound way of life, while Atsu is a mercenary, unrestrained by cultural conducts, Although very different than previous Sucker Punch projects (like the inFamous games), morality in this franchise is more of a straightforward path that is told, not taken. Still, when it comes to narrative, it makes for fun entertainment and context.
Final thoughts: to Yōtei or not to Yōtei?
All in all, Ghost of Yōtei has a lot of room to improve on points where its predecessor, as excellent as it was, fell short. We honestly don’t believe Sucker Punch will tell us everything on Thurday’s State of Play—why spill the beans so soon, right?— but we expect a good chunk of info will come out and shed some light on the game’s finer detail.
After all, we still don’t know exactly what the new stuff’s gonna be, and the game is scheduled to come out in October—same month as The Outer Worlds 2, Double Dragon Revive, Ninja Gaiden 4 and Pokémon Legends: Z-A, to name a few.
We kinda need to know what more to expect, here.
Chop, chop, Sucker Punch: it’s your move now…
How about you? Did you miss anything from our article? Think there’s more to expect of Ghost of Yōtei? What are *your* most wanted aspects of the game? Let us know in the comments!
