Games

Why Ghost of Yotei is a Brilliant Lateral Move

Published

4 weeks ago

November 30, 2024

How Ghost of Tsushima ends leaves Jin Sakai’s story on a fairly open-ended path depending on which ending is considered canon. It would’ve been fascinating to see what an evolved Jin could look like after sparing Lord Shimura and fully indulging the Ghost persona with the shogunate on his tail, for example, and yet Sucker Punch has evidently elected to leap ahead 300-or-so years to now feature a new Ghost named Atsu. Atsu’s surname is currently unknown, maybe as a way to obscure her identity as someone related to a character from Tsushima, but nonetheless it will be exciting to see what her reasons for being a Ghost are in Ghost of Yotei.

Transitioning from Tsushima to Yotei, Sucker Punch is giving itself a rare opportunity to address story and gameplay and perhaps mold the Ghost IP in a much different perspective. There may not be combat stances anymore, nor a suite of stealth-oriented Ghost weapons. Otherwise, Ghost of Yotei basically lets Sucker Punch run back the clock on Ghost of Tsushima and give its Ghost origin story another interpretation with new characters and a new setting while also hopefully reinventing the wheel when it comes to gameplay mechanics in a saturated genre.

Ghost of Yotei Is Clever for Reprising One of Tsushima’s Greatest Gimmicks

Sucker Punch’s Ghost of Yotei seems to be taking a cue from its predecessor when it comes to one of the franchise’s best and most adorable gimmicks.

Ghost of Yotei is a New Lease on Life for a Standard Action-Adventure Game

Ghost of Tsushima is by no means a bad game. That said, it’s also remarkably tame and safe as an action-adventure game. Its primary allure is how gorgeous vistas are and how players can roam the island of Tsushima on horseback with nothing guiding them to points of interest besides wind gusts and billowing smoke.

Meanwhile, aside from fun mechanics like standoffs, combat and stealth are more or less the common fare one might find in an Assassin’s Creed game. Tsushima never needed to be as wildly emergent as Death Stranding, especially seeing how rote some of Marvel’s Spider-Man’s own gameplay can be, but it needed to do more in order to not blend into the ambiguous genre it describes itself as.

Perhaps a morality system condemning or condoning Jin’s actions as a Ghost could’ve been what delineated it in a crowd—not to mention how ubiquitous feudal Japan has become as a video game setting—but at face value it lacks a lot of gameplay features that aren’t chiefly familiar to other action-adventure titles.

It would be absurd to believe that Ghost of Yotei will discard everything about Tsushima and start from scratch in its gameplay design, and yet an approach like that could be a superb choice if it means Sucker Punch can turn heads and deliver on a game nobody will suspect. Yotei may share Tsushima’s premise and aesthetic, but gameplay is where it could afford to take bold risks and revitalize the action-adventure genre.

Sucker Punch’s Ghost Series Being an Anthology Means It Can Endlessly Iterative

Unless Ghost of Yotei is intended to be a direct sequel to Ghost of Tsushima taking place centuries later, Sucker Punch has a gold mine on its hands. A new protagonist could be introduced with each entry, and whatever their play style may be can dictate what the game’s combat and/or stealth will look like.

Jin Sakai only balanced combat with stealth because he had a background as a trained samurai before implementing dishonorable assassin techniques into his arsenal, while Atsu’s backstory is still unknown. Atsu may not have ever been an honorable warrior and may instead front-load stealth, though her dual katanas and kusarigama suggest she’ll have many more weapons at her disposal.

Ghost of Tsushima’s Legends multiplayer teased the idea of multiple Ghost archetypes and it’s quite possible that Atsu will purposefully be designed to exhibit a particular strength rather than adopt Jin’s well-rounded nature. Tsushima and its multiplayer laid a fine foundation for gameplay in future Ghost games, and now it’s Yotei’s responsibility to push the envelope and never lose creativity lest Sucker Punch sacrifice the great potential it has with the Ghost franchise.