Ghost of Yotei will have a hefty day one patch, with the patch notes from developer Sucker Punch clocking in at 883 words according to an early post from IGN.
The game launches on PS5 on Thursday, October 2, and Sony's advised all players to ensure they're on version 1.006 before they jump into Atsu's adventure. Ghost of Yotei should automatically update on install or startup, but it's worth double-checking, because the day one patch seems important.
Across performance, stability, gameplay, animation, environment, and UI/UX, Sucker Punch has made dozens of fixes and improvements. Bugs have been squashed, features and behaviors have been improved, and miscellaneous gameplay elements have been sharpened like katanas along a whetstone.
You can check out the full patch notes if you want to scan all 900-odd words, and for details on the game itself, have a gander at our Ghost of Yotei review. I've combed through them in search of the more forward-facing stuff, and a few lines stand out in the sea of corner cases.
Sucker Punch has made targeted changes and bug fixes for Lethal difficulty, for instance, which famously made Ghost of Tsushima a brutal, near one-hit action game. Weapons and charms, "especially related to late game content," also got a pass.
Here's the gameplay headliner in my book: "Limit puzzle clues in some difficulty levels." The exact effects are unclear, but this at least suggests that you'll receive fewer puzzle hints on higher difficulty settings, which is music to my ears.
PlayStation Studios releases, most notoriously God of War and its sequel Ragnarok, are historically terrible about outright handing you the answer to a puzzle if you spend so much as 11 seconds considering and savoring the problem, so terrified is Sony that gamers will get distracted, lose interest, open TikTok, and throw their PS5s in a woodchipper in one smooth motion. I rather like the idea of puzzle hint levels which reflect your choice of how much friction the game should provide.
Other targeted changes include "Improved onsen environmental assets, layout, set dressing and world interaction to provide more unique experiences for each onsen," embellishing some of the open world's very literal hotspots. Similarly, yet more options have been added to photo mode.
Let's not overlook this line, either, which channels the spirit of Roach from The Witcher 3: "Prevent the horse from interrupting certain missions objectives or cutscenes."
Ghost of Yotei studio head says the series likely won't ever head to "feudal Europe" or outside of Japan: "We believe the core of Ghost is someone wielding a katana."
