Ghost of Yotei's creative director reveals the "philosophical challenge" of open world RPGs and the joy of letting fans play how they like: "As long as you're having fun, we don't care too much"

Ghost of Yotei screenshot featuring Atsu on a hill with flowers.

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?