Ghost of Yōtei has seen plenty of praise since its October release for all of its aspects, from the story to open-world gameplay. According to co-directors Nate Fox and Jason Connell during a panel at GDC this week, as caught by GamesRadar, there were initial plans to also include rock climbing mechanics in the vein of The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild. During the panel, they noted that a small group of developers had prototyped the system as part of the process of creating key gameplay pillars for the sequel.
However, rock climbing didn’t ultimately make the cut in the full release of Ghost of Yōtei, with Connell noting that it didn’t really fit the idea of the wandering ronin that Sucker Punch Productions was going for. He said that, “If something is not going well, we can be like ‘does that make you feel like a wandering ronin?’ And if the answer is no and it’s a sucky feature, then why are you working on it? Just move on.”
Discussing the rock climbing system, Fox revealed that he wanted “every game” to allow players to scale any surface. “We got right in there and started prototyping,” he said. However, some of the limitations of Ghost of Yōtei’s open-world design caught up with the developers, since the game was going to have “walls that you weren’t supposed to climb up.” Fox went on to note that “if we gave you a tool that said you can climb anywhere, and you started using it and you found bupkiss, it pretty much trains you to stop climbing, because exploration wasn’t worth it.”
When it comes to adding more systems and mechanics to Ghost of Yōtei, Connell had previously spoken about having more complex plans for the game’s flashback mechanics. In a discussion with Breaking Bad and Better Call Saul creator Vince Gilligan from back in November, Connell spoke about how the system could have helped storytelling by giving players more ways to tune into protagonist Atsu’s emotions.
“[Atsu is] on this lone wolf quest and then you press a button and suddenly she’s kind of feeling the warmth of her past, like what she’s fighting for,” said Connell, describing the more complex mechanic. “To me, that is like, what a great narrative tool, if with a single button [it can] make you feel something that’s on their own volition.”
However, the studio ultimately decided against it, since it would have essentially resulted in “doubling your art” thanks to the fact that players could press the button just about anywhere in the open world.
“You are doubling your art – [it’s] twice as long a game, everywhere you go,” he explained. “And so while it’s this amazing feature, it saddened me the day that I had to kill that, to say ‘OK, it can’t be that.’”
Ghost of Yōtei is available exclusively on PS5, and recent reports indicate that there were plans to bring it to PC that have since been walked back. More recently, the title saw the release of its co-op multiplayer mode, Legends.