Ghost of Tsushima developer Sucker Punch and The Last of Us studio Naughty Dog "were the masters of making games feel great," even when their projects were in the early stages, according to former PlayStation boss Shuhei Yoshida.
Yoshida was part of PlayStation for over 31 years before he left Sony earlier this year. He previously spent several years as president of Sony Interactive Entertainment Worldwide Studios, before his more recent role as head of indies. Even before that though, he did account management, and then became a producer, and as his role developed, he gave out plenty of feedback to devs after playing their games early.
In an interview with Game File, Yoshida is asked if he ever got his hands on any games that he knew were going to be good even after playing them in their early stages. Noting that he began as a "producer of action platform games" for Naughty Dog and Sucker Punch, he says: "Especially in my mind, Naughty Dog and Sucker Punch were the masters of making games feel great. It's in the responsiveness, it's the character animation. Every rev, from the very beginning, they make games feel great. So that's how I love working with these teams."
Elaborating further, Yoshida continues: "The most recent example, before I moved on to indies at PlayStation, was Sucker Punch's Ghost of Tsushima (2020). From a very early stage, they always had a playable [version] and they always updated it. And it's strangely bug-free! Not free, but you don't encounter crashes. And they make changes to combat or all these things, but it always felt great."
Feeling "great," as far as Yoshida is concerned, means that "in the best state, you forget you are holding a controller," and are so immersed – "especially in third-person action games" – that "you feel like you are that character doing all these non-human things." It's interesting to hear that games like Ghost of Tsushima were able to achieve this so early on in their development – I wonder if Ghost of Yotei did, too? The sequel is set to release later this year, and it's certainly got big shoes to fill.
Be sure to check out our roundup of upcoming PS5 games to see what's on the way to Sony's current-gen console.
