There is a lot of game in Ghost of Yotei, the new PS5 title from Sucker Punch and the followup to 2020's Ghost of Tsushima. I've spent nearly 80 hours at this point wandering around Ezo on Atsu's quest for revenge, and there's been so much to do that entire time. Speaking with Ghost of Yotei creative director Jason Connell immediately prior to the game's release, I just had to know how the developers actually balanced such a huge open-world game filled with collectibles and events with, well, everything else.
According to Connell, one of the top goals Sucker Punch had going into Ghost of Yotei was "to really challenge ourselves as a studio that's been making open-world games for a while at this point." Ghost of Tsushima had "elevated that experience quite significantly," and so it became a question of: what next? Where do you go from there?
Balancing act
Even more freedom was apparently the answer, and that became a defining goal for Ghost of Yotei. "Can we give you more sort of ownership over the experience and not be too bogged down in worrying about things like question marks on the map or reading a pretty extensive journal of everything you've done and could do and might be able to do?" explains Connell. "Try to bring it in a more forward, experiential way. And I do think I'm very proud of what we were able to accomplish there. It's really hard to take standards of either the industry or standards that you put in your last game and sort of shake that up, right? And we have a number of ways that we've shaken it up, and I'm proud of the team for trying these new ways to connect to people."
Connell specifically points to Ghost of Yotei's clue system and camping – the latter being "totally new to us" – in addition to the Wolf Pack menu, which functionally gathers all of the important NPCs into a single screen for ease of access with everyone from Atsu herself to Taro the Scavenger and even the Golden Bird. "You get to see her go from being alone to having more people in her life, but it's also just a way to catalog all the stuff that you've done in a very visual way," says Connell.
That's on top of the standard "see something interesting on the horizon, ride to it in an interesting way," continues Connell, "whether you're riding through the flowers or streams or what have you, and just enjoying the moment."
All of this together works in tandem to create what's easily one of my favorite open worlds, but that discovery and exploration aspect is also mechanically at war with narrative pacing. It's a constant push and pull, and Connell admits it isn't an easy one to balance. "This is almost impossible sometimes," he says, "like it is so complex to get this right, and we actually spend a ton of time trying to address this in all kinds of ways."
"I think it really talks to a game design philosophical challenge that exists when you try to make this kind of game where you are both trying to create a narratively led, strong character-focused experience and provide agency in how they approach the game and do what they want to do," says Connell. "So while we try to make the main experience, if you just like to go out in the open world and enjoy the world, it's hard to control that person's pacing at a sort of structural fundamental level as it pertains to the narrative."
Tuning this meant a combination of approaches, but Connell points to watching heat maps, seeing where people went, and generally trying to meet players where they already were.
"If a lot of people are going in this direction and that's a common path in the open world – not even doing Golden Path, just in the open world, just doing side content – can we make sure we're sprinkling in a nice mix of combat verbs and noncombat verbs and cool wolf things," says Connell, "and, oh, let's put a sumi-e painting in there, so that we're breaking things up, because this is a common path."
As long as you're having fun, we don't care too much
That's one way of looking at pacing, and potentially solves a lot of issues, but that doesn't actually do anything for narrative pacing. "It's hard to get them back on sometimes, if they're a really big, wide open player," admits Connell. "But we do know that if people play the Golden Path missions, or they go and get some of those weapons, when meeting the senseis and getting weapons, that their experience, at least from our own testing and our own sort of understanding of our game, that there's more enjoyment."
With that in mind, it just becomes a matter of discovery once again. "So how do we clue people in – our clue system is one way – clue people in to remind them of that story," he adds, "remind them of a cool weapon that might be somewhat nearby as a way to get them back on a track that we think is a better pacing experience on average."
At the end of the day, this is all more gentle suggestion than edict, however. Connell doesn't seem to be particularly concerned about whether people do or don't play a bunch of side content before story or story before side. "If they don't want to do it, we're just like, 'OK, that's your choice,'" he says. "As long as you're having fun, we don't care too much, but we do have a bunch of hooks in there to try to keep you in the spirit of the main story, getting an appropriate amount of weapons at a decent rate."
"Our philosophical sort of thing about this game was to let you have more freedom than any game we've ever had, so – I could talk about this for quite a long time," continues Connell. "It's very complex and the pacing is sort of a slightly different model for each one. Narrative pacing is a bit easier to understand, and so that one's a bit more straightforward, but that open-world pacing one is quite challenging. We do all these little tricks to make it kind of work out for us."
Ghost of Yotei is now available on the PS5. Be sure to also check out our ranking of the best open world games.
