Fundamental to any creative endeavour is killing your darling. It doesn't matter how good an idea is, if it doesn't fit, it needs to go. Ghost of Yotei studio Sucker Punch Productions is all about cutting out fluff, to the point the team celebrates getting out the samurai sword on their work.
"We try to make it a pretty positive thing at the studio," Jason Connell, co-creative director on Ghost of Yotei, says during a talk at GDC 2026 attended by GamesRadar+. "It's hard - you make an idea and you're like, 'I don't want to shed my idea, I really want to see it through'. But we try really hard to make cutting things from the game an incredibly positive thing, because it can be."
