Jason Connell – creative director of Ghost of Yōtei – has revealed that developer Sucker Punch Productions had more complex plans for the game’s flashback mechanics than what it ended up getting. In a discussion with Breaking Bad and Better Call Saul creator Vince Gilligan in a recent episode of Creator to Creator, Connell, spoke about the mechanic, and how it could have helped Ghost of Yōtei’s storytelling by allowing players to understand protagonist Atsu’s emotions.
The mechanic would have essentially allowed players to understand what Atsu is feeling at any given moment at the press of a button. Connell explains how this could have further helped in establishing her main storyline about getting revenge on those who have wronged her in the past. This system would have also allowed players to further explore Atsu’s memories.
“[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. “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.”
The downside to this mechanic, however, would have been the fact that there would have to be a lot more work done on the game. Connell described it as essentially “doubling your art”, since players could potentially press the button just about anywhere in the open world. This meant that Sucker Punch would have had to make sure that every part of the map was covered in some way by this flashback mechanic.
“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.'”
Ultimately, the studio decided to go with the middle ground we see in Ghost of Yōtei, which features a few scenes where players can experience Atsu’s memories. While this may not have been the more ambitious idea that Connell originally wanted, he is still happy with how the game eventually shipped.
“It was the right choice because it is a very powerful narrative tool,” he said. “So you can really use it at [Atsu’s] home where the events happened, and it’s not like a mission start, where you go and it does it for you. You can press it anytime, you can put it back and forth.”
Ghost of Yōtei was released exclusively on PS5 last month. Since then, the title has proven to be quite successful, with Sony confirming during its recent earnings call that it had sold 3.3 million copies as of November 2. For the sake of comparison, Ghost of Tsushima had sold 2.4 million copies in its first three days of release, before eventually hitting the 5 million mark in November 2020.
For more details about Ghost of Yōtei, check out our review. Also check out details about the upcoming Ghost of Yōtei: Legends multiplayer mode that will be part of a free update.
