With Ghost of Yōtei being just a week away, art director at Sucker Punch Productions Joanna Wang has provided some new insights into how the studio was able to make the jump from PS4 to PS5, and how the new, more powerful hardware has helped it with its ambitions for the game. In an interview with Automaton Media, Wang spoke about being able to tap into more horsepower to, for example, expand the draw distance, as well as make use of smaller-scale features like the DualSense’s haptics.
“For Yōtei, we realized very quickly that we needed to improve draw distance,” explained Wang. “To portray the vastness of the Hokkaido map, we needed to be able to render distant views with high fidelity and accurate depth of space. We can now load millions of assets, with tens of thousands visible on-screen at once. Real-time particles like leaves, snow, ash and fog number in the hundreds of thousands across both near and far distances.”
“The PS5 also lets us use haptics and the controller speaker, so combat clashes or even the sound of a shamisen can be felt and heard directly in the player’s hands.”
The hardware of the PS5 also helped Sucker Punch in making the skies in Ghost of Yōtei look better, with things like transitions between different times of the day, and even densely-starry skies. Other features that help make the world feel more alive were also now possible, like snow falling off trees in a realistic way.
“Then, we were able to improve the look of starry skies, auroras, time-of-day transitions, grass rendering, and terrain deformation – like realistically kicking snow off trees,” she explained. “Altogether, these make the world feel more alive and interactive. I think that’s the power of the PS5.”
As for some of the more technical aspects of designing the world in Ghost of Yōtei, Wang explained that the studio put quite a bit of focus on noise reduction, alongside its usual development pipeline and rendering systems. The process, dubbed denoising, is typically present in real photos. However, because of the “painterly” art style that Sucker Punch is going for with Ghost of Yōtei, it was important for the developers to remove as much noise as possible.
“We also focused on noise reduction, using a process called denoising,” she explained. “In real photos, random noise patterns appear, but since we aim for a “painterly look,” we remove that noise, both from individual material textures and entire scenes. For example, in a grass field, we might add only white flowers for horses to gallop through, but avoid mixing too many colours. This is related to the minimalism I mentioned earlier, as it draws attention to what matters – the white foreground (flowers) against the green background (grass).”
“From the smallest textures to the overall landscape, everything follows this kind of philosophy. Combined with our rendering team’s lighting, skies and clouds, I think the result is a cohesive world that feels beautiful and harmonious.”
Ghost of Yōtei is coming to PS5 on October 2. For more details on its art direction, check out Wang explaining the importance of the colour yellow to the game’s themes. Also check out the latest trailer that showcases how it uses PS5 features.