Ghost of Yotei developer Sucker Punch wasn't trying to make a longer game than Ghost of Tsushima - they just wanted to improve the original game's "sense of grandness and scale."
Regardless of the developer's intention, Sucker Punch co-founder Brian Fleming told Game File (paywalled) it should take you "a little bit longer" to beat Ghost of Yotei than Ghost of Tsushima, but adding length to the sequel's main quest wasn't the main intention.
"You are able to level up by working on sequels," Fleming said. "It can be performance, it can be rendering, it can be functionality and polish and transitions in animations and the way sound works. All of these things get to be leveled up," adding, it's a "joyous experience" to "take something good and aim at great."
Instead of trying to bulk out the sequel with a longer playtime, Fleming said, "If you talk to Nate [Fox} and Jason [Connell], the creative directors, they would say our goal was to not grow the duration of the game," but instead to add polish and variety, and to improve the "sense of grandness and scale."
I'm of the opinion that a 25-30 hour main story, which is about how long it takes to beat Ghost of Tsushima, is plenty of meat to chew on for a single-player, open-world game, especially with so many seemingly must-play games coming out every year. It's for that reason that I'm encouraged to hear Sucker Punch emphasize that Ghost of Yotei wasn't designed to be any longer than Tsushima, even if the aim toward a bigger, more robust experience means a slightly longer game.
At roughly $60 million, Ghost of Yotei has dodged the spiralling sequel costs that rocked Marvel's Spider-Man 2 and Horizon Forbidden West
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