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Ghost of Yotei Devs Explain Lessons Learned From Tsushima, Cinematic Influences & More - Beyond 915
In this episode of Beyond 915, the creative minds behind Ghost of Yotei, Jason Connell and Joanna Wang from Sucker Punch Productions, share insights into the development of the game, exploring its dar...
Ghost of Yotei Devs Explain Lessons Learned From Tsushima, Cinematic Influences & More - Beyond 915
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Speaker A
Beyond. And hello and welcome once again to IGN's weekly PlayStation show. Today we are continuing our coverage of Ghost of Yotei, chatting with some of the devs from Sucker Punch Productions who help bring it to life. This is hosts of Yote. Hello, everybody. It's Max and Brian here from Beyond. We are joined by creative director Jason Connell and art director Joanna Wang from Sucker Punch Productions. We're here to talk about Ghost of Yote, which is finally almost out. And you two made it. Well, you and a lot of other people made it, but we want to hear about some of how it came together.
Speaker B
Awesome. We're here to chat about it. Excited.
Speaker A
For starters, I think it'd be good to just get some context. Again, it takes a lot of people to make a video game. What exactly do your role specifically entail in this project?
Speaker B
Yeah, so creative director of the project, Nate Fox, co creative director on it with me, and we work together to just shape the vision of the game from the kind of original early conception of what it could be, might be, if we're lucky, turns out to be, and then carry that vision all the way through. And that ranges from gameplay mechanics to the story, the original drawings of Atsu as a character, and, you know, including kickstarting, some of the art direction that Joanna has graciously done such a great job carrying forward on the rest of the game.
Speaker A
Now, let's talk a little bit about Atsu, because she's, you know, she's. She's the new. She's the new Jin. She's also very different from Jin. Yote is very different from Tsushima. When did you know you were making a sequel and how did you sort of. Where do you start with that? I guess. Do you pick the location, the time period, you pick the character? Does it all sort of come together simultaneously? How does. How does that work?
Speaker B
Yeah, it's. It's, you know, we're one project team for the most part, right? Like, we. We don't have 900 people where we can juggle a couple different projects. It's just not our style. A lot of other teams do a great job with that, but we really focus on one at a time. So as soon as Tsushima was done, that's when we finally could take a breathing moment and be like, okay, you know, where are we gonna. What are we gonna do next? Where are we gonna go next? And Nate and I had the fortunate sort of opportunity for a good, you know, couple months just to really kind of dream up what's next. And we have to deconstruct some Tsushima, this thing that we just made about what we want to carry forward, like film inspiration and you know, having culture, advisors and a beautiful world and lethal precision in combat. Like all these things got to carry forward. But I think Nate and I may be a little bit different here. Like for me I was, I'm very like a world first person, so I was like, well, where are we going to go next? And you know, and I think he was like, what kind of story are we going to tell? And I felt really excited about going to Hokkaido and then sort of like found this particular time frame. Saw the movie Unforgiven again, the one in 2013 in Japan. I was like, oh, what an interesting sort of dangerous version of Hokkaido. You know, Ezo, at the time period I got really excited about then he was talking about, you know, a vengeance tale. I was like, what a cool idea of telling a vengeance tale that you're hunting someone inside a vast landscape in the northern edge of Japan. That's like a match made in heaven feels like. And this sort of began the journey from there.
Speaker C
Yeah, that's awesome. I, I think that was sort of my biggest takeaway from all of this was this, this feels darker, it feels edgier, grittier tonally. But also this is, this is one of the most beautiful open world games ever made. And you're like you said you're, you're, you're not making this with 900 people. Right? This is, this is a smaller scale team. So what did, what did you both know that you had to sort of nail down early on? Like you, you had the, you know, the wind mechanics and you had the scope and the scale from Tsushima. But Yote adds all of these other layers and effects that I just found myself completely wrapped up in, spending hours and hours just staring off in the vistas, taking pictures in photo modes. How did, how did all of that start to layer and come together for both of you?
Speaker D
Yeah, so we always want to going to make that living painting and we want to be have that bold color, dramatic lighting and then the nature in motion. This is always the goal even from very early on, even the ghost of Tsushima. And it's less about the realism, is more about the captured emotion and the beauty in the scene which is unfolding with the story. And then so we are really looking into the land of a Hokkaido which is a vast vibrant and then it's always changing and then the space we are feeling while we are travel to The Hokkaido it feel. It just feel like endless field and then roll into the endless forest and then roll into the very like a G flooding snow mountain in the distance. It's just jaw dropping. And we really want to capture that feeling and we develop from there. And of course we want to double down. The vibrant, the color we've been achieved in the ghost of Tsushima. We want to do that too. And then. Then go into the world who. How is it like feels alive. Feels like a big character was walking alongside with you when your story is unfold. That. That big character was almost like a whispering your ear, the wind was a blow. It's almost like a terror, you know, go this way. The flower leading you to those contents. Almost like a secret guiding you that way. So this is always our goal. We just want to double down on those. We want to pushing more on that.
Speaker C
I wanted to ask you both about that specifically because I mentioned this a little bit. Talking last week about how it took me a minute to realize that I was kind of playing this game wrong at the beginning. I think I was just chasing map markers. And then after a while I was like, I. I should be exploring. I should be going off into the corners. And I found that every time I did that, there was something that off in the distance that would sort of catch my attention. I would see, you know, like there was something glimmering in the.
Speaker B
On.
Speaker C
On top of a mountain. Or there'd be like, oh, there's a. There's a. There might be a thing. I can climb there. So how do you sort of create that language to teach players to, you know, not just go from node to node like they do on every open world game, but instead go exploring, go peek around in the corners, in the margins and find treasures and adventures.
Speaker B
Yeah, it's about, you know, it's hard, right, because there's even in Tsushima, we've made some changes in the way that we do this sushi. Like question marks. We had a journal that was like a large compendium of like everything you. You've done, could do, have done, might do. You know, like this massive list, the journal. And so you kind of take away some of those elements so that the hope is, is that curiosity can, Can. Can have room to thrive. Right. So and that's like if somebody stops doing maybe what you were suggesting and like move over towards, oh, I wonder what's over there and they find something, then maybe they'll ask themselves that again and maybe they'll ask themselves again. So I think as open world designers we did take away some of these elements so that people could spend a little bit more time in the world having that curiosity of where to go. But then it's also a ton of work has gone into adding a variety of interesting things that can happen when you do find these places. Places, whether it's a combat verb type thing or a non combat verb. Just kind of sitting in the moment doing a sumi a painting, enjoying the atmosphere and enjoying the vibe of the. The landscape. Shamisen, learning songs. You know, some people will love this stuff. Some people will do it once and they'll go, go back to the combat and that's okay. It's really about trying to be okay with the fact that we are trying to make a very complicated game. Open world with a lot of freedom and a structured story. These things, you pick two things that make a video game hard to make. We decided to do it. Yeah, us, but. But you know, it's really about trying to embrace that freedom and being, you know, a bit Zen or being okay. If the fact that they. They don't play it that way and they just decide to do the story, that's great too.
Speaker A
What are some. What are some ways that Yotei improves on Tsushima that you're like especially proud of? Like what are some. I guess little specific mechanics would be cool or visual flourishes. But like what are some things that you're like. That's what we were trying to do. That's what we nailed. We really did it. Pulled it off.
Speaker B
Yeah. I can talk about a couple of mechanic things and Joanna, you might have a few art things you want to mention. I'm very proud that we did spend a lot of time asking ourselves how we can be improve as like open world game designers. Like how do we make Hokkaido and Ezo live up to, you know, in the game, live up to sort of the feeling of being in such a vast place. You know, how can we use nature more? And so having fields of flowers that if you get in these lanes of flowers, they not only make you a little faster to go through this vast space, but they actually kind of lead you to things sometimes. So it's about following them too. So it's another way that nature can just kind of lend a helping hand. The wolf I'm super excited about and I'm really proud that we, that we took that on. It's not an easy thing to do and. And it fits so well to her character. She's a lone wolf looking for her Wolf pack. This lone wolf lost its wolf pack. It's kind of a spirit animal in a lot of ways. There's a lot of sort of connection to her and growing that relationship. And having a wolf do like a standoff with you is shockingly exciting. Way more exciting than if it was just a regular, you know, AI character. Buddy. It's so much cooler that it's this wolf and it's get all bloody afterwards and it's just this, it's just this. I don't know, it's kind of a. Oh, by the way, the wolf is like, is in a direct part of nature of Ezo. It's a, it's a, an ezowolf. It's an extinct wolf.
Speaker A
It sounds like a lot of research goes into this game and obviously you had, I imagine, like a pretty, pretty good primer doing Tsushima. But you know, Ezo is an entirely different part of the country. This is a different time period and you're adding new elements. You know, you're learning about extinct wolves. You've got like mushroom foraging. Was there anything you learned about or came across while researching for Yotei specifically that really jumped out at you as being particularly fascinating or maybe, you know, not what you expected in terms of, you know, preconceptions about, about history and culture?
Speaker B
You know, I'm sure there's a lot, but there's. I was learning about the Ainu culture was fascinating. It's just not something we dabbled in very much with the making tsushima and having great advisors there and foraging with them and learning about which plants we can eat when we visited them. That is truly, truly, truly going to go down in my personal sort of memories of making video games ever like, it's, it's really, really great, great experience. But one that kind of individually, this very small thing blew my mind because we looked at so many plants to make Ghost of Sushima. Joanna was in charge of that team and I was the art director on that. I cannot tell you how many plants we looked at that were from Japan, Greater Japan, Tsushima, etc. I learned on the making of this project and it had such a profound impact that it's in the literal game logo. I learned that the ginkgo is one of them is such a resilient tree. I didn't know this about the ginkgo and I did all this, you know, reading about it. I think Joanna too, but the ginkgo is so powerfully resilient. You can like chop it down, you can like Burn it. Like, you can really hurt that plant. And it will come back. It will bloom the next year and begin its life cycle of trying to thrive and survive. And that is in the logo, the ginkgo that is the color of her outfit. People. A lot of times people ask, like, is that a Kill Bill reference? I'm like, well, yeah, Kill Bill is awesome. And I love yellow. Yellow is great. But ginkgo, because she's resilient, and that's the story that we put forward, that she is a direct sort of connection to the learnings of that one particular plant that I thought I knew so much about. And then suddenly, this one thing. We have a ginkgo tree here. I didn't know that. And so I found that to be incredibly fascinating as a piece of lore.
Speaker C
That's. That's really awesome symbolism. I like. I like that. And, And. And the wolf stuff about sort of, you know, kind of the resilience and also being apprehensive of, like, you know, trusting your environment. Like, we. I wanted to pull in the wolf thing real quick because I loved the way you handled this sidekick in this game, because I thought, looking at marketing material, you would just have this wolf that went with you everywhere. And instead it was just kind of like, I don't know if I should trust this person. I don't trust people because they're. They have not been great to me and my buddies. And you came off with this instead. This. This thing that isn't necessarily a sidekick but is a partner that tags in every now and then. It shows up sometimes when you least expect it and sometimes when you call for it. And what. I guess what was the sort of deciding factor on that balance? Was there ever a. Like a time where you said, oh, the wolf's always going to be there the entire time or from the jump. Was it kind of like we want this wolf to be used sparingly and in. In special ways?
Speaker B
It's a. It's super interesting topic because we've. We kind of went back and forth on it, right? Like, there's a lot of people on the team were like, oh, like, it's like a fox. You got to pet the fox, and it's the new thing. Like, and that's. That would be great, you know, except for it's a wild animal. Like, you know, it's. It's. It's ferocious and it's killing, and it's like you kind of want it to be a direct parallel to her. Right? Like, not trusting and at a distance and gone through maybe its own set of trauma. People killing its wolf pack, you know, hunters killing its wolf pack. So how it played in sort of the role of the game sort of shape shifted over time. But it was. One thing was for sure is that once we started talking about it wolf, every single person on the team was excited about some version of it getting in. And that can be very exciting and intoxicating because everybody's excited about it. But then you also have like 150 different versions of what they think is. Is cool. And so you have to sort of start narrowing in on what the right one is that supports the story. It's a nice narrative parallel. It is also, you know, fun and exciting and adds to the experience too. And getting that right took. Took some. Took some time.
Speaker A
Did you do any real life wolf research?
Speaker B
No. But you can ask Billy Harper, our cinematics director, about playing as a wolf because we couldn't mocap a wolf. So he played as a wolf in one of the scenes. So I won't spoil what scene that is. But he. We have the, we have the images to prove it.
Speaker C
It's the one where he stands up on two legs and walks around and talks.
Speaker B
Yeah, it's that one.
Speaker C
Yeah. No, I'm kidding. It's definitely not the game. On a much more subtle note, we have been on various DualSense controllers now for a very long time. We have been swiping and all these other things on this what has been effectively a giant touch screen. But the sumi e stuff in this game is, I think, some of my favorite usage I've ever seen of the DualSense touchpad and the idea of creating these little swipes in different directions. I would pass the controller to my 7 year old and she's really into painting and let her do those parts for me. And she was super into them. How did those come together? Did an artist on staff paint them in house and then scan them in and recreate them so they're animated? Like how, how does that work? Because it was. I was watching that and playing that and being like, how does this happen? It's so cool.
Speaker D
Well, I want to share a little bit of that experience. We actually working with a Japanese Sumei artist and on that, and she is a traditional artist who is actually painting on the paper and then she will send us a video of how she was making those beautiful arts and then the layer by layer how the brush stroke she was using different brush and then different paper and then even sometimes the paper will be. Have different ink effect on them. So then we were going to take all those finished piece and then also the video how the process should be doing and then bring it back and then to start almost like a reassemble in the game in our digital world. And then the art is built on a collaboration. And when I think of the interesting thing is when this classic traditional art is made with the digital gameplay and then bring to the life and give the player of opportunity to recreating their art through docents. Haptic is pretty amazing to us. And yeah. So yeah, and this has been really great at work. We're able to see how the traditional those are being done is really amazing.
Speaker C
That's awesome.
Speaker A
So Joanna, I'm curious. Obviously there's. There's research material in many forms. Like you can, you know, you can watch old samurai movies. You can look at, you know, carefully restored relics and antiquities in museums. And there's also, you know, woodblock prints which are the closest things you have to, you know, any kind of photographic evidence. What did you. What were you looking at primarily? And I guess was there, was there anything that you aesthetically stylistically wanted to put in the game but learned just didn't quite fit because of actual history.
Speaker D
Yeah, I'm glad you're bringing that up. But the traditional art, because a lot of those are being existed for centuries. Right. It's so deeply and already stuck in the people's mind. And we can visually see this for a very long time. And using the ink painting and woodblock as example, Japan have the long history of those art. And then they also oftentimes representing a lot of those art have a deeper meaning and not just only the pretty and then also mean a lot of the stuff. So when we looking at how they painted a tree with one single flower on the top, it's representing a little bit of somber, but the beauty of the life. And then they are sometimes even painting the grass with a certain shape, the curved a certain way feels almost like a motion frozen in the moment. And we really want to capture that in the real life. And that's something we've been looking into a lot of. And then another thing I do want to going to bring is the Japan art also sometimes creating things called minimalism. And it's like less is more kind of approach. And Jason know we've been looking at this for a very long time is how we able to reduce noise and let the central focus to be presented very well. And then sometimes we even repeat that there's the central elements over and over and over to creating that view is really simple but detailed enough and then give you that emotional feeling. And for example, you know, like we usually were picking one flower and then like using the spider lily as example. And we will make a field of a spider lily and then grow inside the forest, adding that mysterious haze. And then the little bit of like the foggy feeling in the. In the woods and the vibrant red with green leaves and then also the fog mysterious feeling and creating that mood when you travel through it, you will have a little bit of the shocking feeling of because you know, those are striking color and elements were so presented in there. So again, to me, it's interesting about the lots of those Japanese art. It's not about to keep adding. It is also doing the subtract to make you feel you're able to look at what you really want to look.
Speaker C
That's awesome. I feel like one of the things that I really loved was the balance between these sort of big, large vistas where you sort of felt isolated and lonely, but like you had this entire world in front of you to go to explore. And then the combat, which put you into these very tight, very, you know, very constricted areas where you were basically, you know, bloody knuckling up against a group of people. And I was thinking a lot about why I love the combat so much. And I think it was because all of the weapons felt really special to me. And one of the things I think that the game does really well is hiding these like rare sort of sword designs all over the map. And when you find one, it. Each one has its own sort of unique look to it. And then you can take some of those, you know, some of your weapons to die merchants. And you know, the. The armor usually is like, is earned through a big side story or, you know, a major moment. And it does none of it really just felt like it was just like stuff that was just out there thrown around and being able to customize all that felt really special. So how did that side of it come together? Because I know it's very easy to just pack a game with cosmetics and just go, here you go. But so much of it in Yotei feels very personal and customizable and special and there's so many cool sword designs. So, yeah, tell us a little bit about that side of things because I loved it.
Speaker B
Yeah, I will say that the thing that I love about the way it's come out in the end is, is that there isn't. There is a. A true intention to add Contextual meaning to the sword kits when you find them. You know, when you come across one of these, these pillars and you find one of these swords, it's not always true, but we try our best to make it sort of representative of the environment of where it's sitting. And you know, that takes time. It takes somebody to write it with context. It takes artists to think about the context. It takes somebody on the design team placing it in a place that is like evocative and has a distinct flavor and feel. You know, you might find one that's like submerged with seaweed or moss all over it, that's been sitting in water for a long time. Like that's. It's not just, oh, create a bunch of cool things and sprinkle them around the world. Like we could totally do that. And if we ran out of time, maybe that's what we would have done. But we didn't and we were able to actually add some context. In fact, actually when we were working with Takashi Miike on the Miike mode stuff, which if you guys want to talk about, we can talk about. But like he explicitly asked, he's like, can I name one of the sword. The sword kits. Like he wanted to pick one. So we gave him like a whole host of ones to pick from and we let him write the description and write the name. And it's a fun sort of connection to the movie 13 Assassins. I'll let her. I'll let people figure out which one it is. But I. People like those because I do think that we add some context. And the Spider Lily armor is not just like a cool armor, it's Spider Lily armor. It's like, it's armor that's like connected to that storyline and it just makes you wearing it maybe remember that story a little bit, maybe remember the struggle that that guy went through. And I don't know to us that there are sure to be some cool, just cool swords for cool sword's sake and cool outfits for co outfit's sake. But we try very hard to add context when possible.
Speaker A
Okay, so Takashi Miike was going to be my next question. You know, in Tsushima you had. You worked with the, the Kurosawa estate to get Kurosawa Mode, which I feel like was very much like samurai cinema front and center. And in this case I think it's interesting because the Miike mode is very much like, it's accentuating and highlighting the combat, which kicks ass. It's great. It makes it really brutal and gruesome and up close. And then you've got Watanabe mode, which is the exact opposite. It's all about kind of chilling out in the. In the world. And you know, obviously it plays over all aspects of the game, but it feels like you're kind of, you're. You're embellishing two very disparate corners of the experience in ways that really do kind of elevate both of those.
Speaker D
Them.
Speaker A
Can you tell us about, I guess working with. Working with both the creators and getting them involved.
Speaker B
Yeah, it's funny. I didn't think about this way, but they definitely. You're right, they do have very different vibes. And that's like kind of the game as a whole is like we have to make this open world game that's all about freedom and like, like really lets people take their time. And then there's the vengeance Golden Path. And so both those have to coexist and that's really, really challenging and difficult. And this is another version of that where it's like one of these modes is really celebrating someone. Takashi Miike and his film 13 Assassins, which has been an inspiration point for Ghost of Sushima's combat Mud Blood Steel, really getting in there intimate. It's not overly gory, but there's some moments where it gets a little intense. You know, I think it's like one beheading in that entire film. It's not like 30 of them, you know, it's. It's. There's like a. There's a classiness to it. There's a human relatability in terms of like you care about some of their struggles as they're going to feel it on their faces. So go in closer. You know, we go in closer in our combat, something we wanted to do for a long time. But it's really hard to have that combat brawler style element where you know, enemies are coming off screen. If you go in a lot closer, it's really hard to see some of those enemies. Enemies off screen. It's not easy to just punch in the camera. Believe me. I've been annoying the combat team about it for years. And so this gave us a reason to do it. And we pitched Takashi Miike on it and he got pretty excited about it, Liked sort of the reasonings behind it, gave some feedback, talked about the sword. We had some really fun anecdotes to bring forward and then brought it, brought it to the actual game. Combat team did have to tweak and tune some stuff. We put a disclaimer up There, because it does. You can get hit off screen sometimes because you're so close. But people that love to watch to make streams of games or make videos of the game, we saw that some people would punch in to show off the combat and stuff. So now they have a mode. If they want to have a more cinematic view, they can. And then the Shinichiro Watanabe is really plain and simple. Just trying to celebrate a man's amazing work in taking two crazy flavors. Cool. Samurai adjacent Anime. Anime, you know, show and Lo Fi, you know, beats and mashed it together in what I think may have been the first, at least in terms of how popular it was, set off a generations of people who are just accepting that that's a great mix. You know, people would take Ghosts of Sushimo videos and throw lo Fi music over the top of it. And we made a glitch mob did a remix of our Ghost of Tsushima soundtrack. Like, these are like, why is this such a perfect fit? I think it's due to him. And so that just. We felt like this would be such a great thing to celebrate the beauty of our world and this, you know, choice that he made. And he was excited about it and almost immediately got to work. I think in the first two weeks he was already. Their team was already making music for us. So really, really excited that they were. I got to meet with them both and just honored that they're a part of it.
Speaker C
Yeah, that's amazing. I. I played the entire game with the Miike mode on. I just. I loved it so much. It was just grime. Grimy as hell and so much fun. I love the closer camera shots. And yeah, the whole time I was just thinking like those people that upload Those, you know, 10 out of 10 perfect combat montages where you're like, I didn't even know you can do that. Like, this is going to be such a treat for them because there's just. There's so much variety here. And so I guess in. In terms of the combat stuff, you know, you're obviously working with a whole team who is designing those things, but they're also having to add your own visual elements, flair to it, right? There are. There are so many things that are just outside of the mechanics of, you know, swords and weapons hitting against each other that you had to add here. Sparks and blood flying out and, you know, hitting the sticks together and all of a sudden things go into black and white and people get scared. Like, how did. How did all of that come together? Because it, it adds so much to what is already a fantastic combat system and, and makes it even cooler.
Speaker B
Okay. Yeah, I think the, the, the. The combat dance is such a huge part of the game, right? Like, it's the tension between a bunch of warriors facing off with each other. And we have the combat team who works on it. And then you have all of these sparkle teams that get to go in there and make magic out of it. Sparks and blood accumulation. And, like, they get real intense about like, oh, is it 30% per hit, blood accumulation? Is it on this side? Or is it. Can we line it up with where the hit happened? I mean, it is kind of amazing watching the teams that, you know, have to go through the production side of it, figure out ways to just accentuate what the animators in the combat team have already pulled off. Slipping around in the mud. If we know there's a fight somewhere, the art team is so good, saying, hey, there's a mud. There's. There's a fight here, let's fill it with mud. Or in, in. In the northern area where there's snow, like, there's nothing cooler than taking, you know, a brawl of fighting in sort of low pack snow. And then suddenly somebody went and put in deeper snow. And like every sword swipe, you know, you see the snow fly up. Blood, you know, is going all over the snow. It's like there's trails and tracks all over the place. Looks like carnage happened. And that is not what it looks like when you're prototyping and you're building it first. This is all the production teams going in and adding all that extra layer of finesse, polish.
Speaker A
I don't know if there's a better segue into Lady Snowblood, but something I do appreciate is you've been very open, very transparent about cinematic influences. Stuff that informed this game that you did a whole collab with Alamo Drafthouse doing basically a samurai film festival. Were there any movies or pieces of media that you want to just call out that you didn't get a chance to screen as part of that, or just that you feel a really good supplementary research material for anybody who wants to get the most out of the game?
Speaker B
Joanna, do you have any? I'll have two at the end here, but you have some. Go ahead.
Speaker D
Yeah, I have one. Unforgiven is one of my big inspiration because it's actually shot in Hokkaido. And then the way how they show the landscape, how like the image of, like, middle of nowhere, right? Wide open field and then that little lonely house Is poor little house in up the Hill. That image is like. Is my screensaver for a very long time. Because I feel like that really captured that feeling. We want to go into build for Atu's home or, you know, for the vibe of. We try to have the. For the Hokkaido.
Speaker B
I think that screenshot you're talking about was like a lot of our screenshots for the first year of making this game because it's such a different vibe. And so I know exactly what you're talking about. Princess Mononoke is an interesting one. Like, what a legendary film, you know, another legendary filmmaker. It's. It's. It's not a samurai film or classic samurai film by any stretch of imagination in terms of classic, you know, films. But it's. It's a wonderful film. It takes place in like indirect references to Ainu and the. In the. In the Hokkaido and. And the north. There's a lot of nature, themes of nature. There's a wolf. Like there are. There's a lot even it's not a full reference, but like, it's one of the. One of the five, along with Unforgiven and Yojimbo. Wandering ronin, like, throws a stick in the air and then lands on the ground and aligns himself with the direction the stick faces. Like, that's fate. Like, what a. What a. What a cool character moment. So that's another. Lady Snowblood's another one too. So those are some of the early ones that I believe we referenced in making Yote.
Speaker C
How did you sort of decide how to sort of build the flora and fauna of this world, kind of speaking on that? Because the more I played, the more I was like, wait, is that a frog? Like, there's so many animals in this game. There are like beautiful moments where there's just like a, you know, just a pack of wild horses will run by you, or there's a bear and he, you know, he kicks your ass. And there's a lot of that. And so I just like, I loved how all of that came together. It made it feel like a living, breathing place. What was it like putting all those elements in?
Speaker D
I can talk a little bit about, like for the technical production side, I oftentimes thinking about we are basically creating an ecosystem. So we have this land. We try to figure out the map and where the mountain, where the region, each area we're going to go. And that provides some of information basically for the. Another layer on the top, we try to go into view so we can able to see where the forest Is where the river and then where the elevation is a little bit low. Then the puddle will be builded up. Where the elevation is high, which is a cliff would show up at the dirt getting a little bit dry. And then so all the assets on the top we have certain rule. And then the tools help us to populate them. And then you know, with a very large scope and then that information feed it to the next level of living animals. And then particle the wind. And because they provide enough of information for the next level of stuff to interact with. So they almost like speaking between two each other. When the wind blow the grass know what the direction was going. And then they're creating that ocean wave. And then towards to all the way, you know, as far as visible you can go into sea. The bird will be like responding nearby the edge of a forest. So when you run by the bird flies out and yeah frog in the river. And then we also depends on the season. Some of the chunk of a map is more like summerly more warm look. So the frog will be only existed there. The deer will be appearing in the open field. So look like they're eating the grass. And then they can run away. And when you are nearby. So all those is almost like speaking the language to each other. And we set up the certain rule so they will appear in the place and maybe surprise you or maybe draw your attention towards to them.
Speaker C
I like that. And there's sort of a. There's a delicate way that the player kind of interacts with these. These creatures. I mean it's not. It's not like a lot of games where you know they're like kill 80 deers and you can get an upgraded wallet or whatever. Right.
Speaker A
There's.
Speaker C
There's. There's some animals that will confront you. But for the most part there's kind of a respect there.
Speaker B
Right. Yeah, I. I think we try really hard. We actually got a lot of feedback on the first game on this. Right. Like hey you. You're thinking about hunting as a very western thing. These are deer and we see them as this way. It's not a. As part of big common part of our culture. And honestly I've even forgot about that. It's not even such a big part of our experience because we learned so much about that. We didn't even. I mean you can you go and take your bow and do all kinds of things if you want. But like we don't. We don't try to incentivize it too much.
Speaker C
Right.
Speaker B
Right.
Speaker C
Yeah, I appreciated that. It was, it was, you know, I play a million games that do that, and it was cool playing one that doesn't.
Speaker A
So I got kind of a tricky question here because, you know, you guys have just made a big, huge, beautiful new game, and I played it, and now I'm asking about what's next. But, you know, it's like someone gives you a Christmas present, you're like, yeah, but what's for my birthday? Ghost is now a franchise. You know, you've got Sushima, you've got Yote. Do you see it as a feudal Japanese thing exclusively, or is it a larger open world thing? Like, is there ever a possibility we see a, you know, another historical setting, another, you know, another part of the world?
Speaker B
It's hard to say the future, you know, without getting too much into that. But I will say that to make this game, Nate and I had to take a time, take the time before we dreamt up Atsu or went to Hokkaido. We had to take the time to sort of unpack what it could mean now that we were expanding into game two. You know, like you, we had so many sort of things that we worked on for five or six years on that game. We were going to unpack it and say, okay, what do we want to carry forward as like, pillars of the franchise? And that list, though all of those things are acutely, you know, front and center inside of Yotei advisors surrounded by, you know, being surrounded by advisors, the lethal precision in combat, the cinematic flair, the open world. And honestly, we. Feudal Japan, like, being inside of Japan, being inside the landscape of Japanese is Japanese history. And Japanese geography is like a, the love letter that we would like to give back to our community. It's how we, of what we have consumed and what we have, like, loved. And so to us, that was a really important part. It was in that initial pillar sheet. Now we were like, this is part of it. Not just any open world. Not just any beautiful place, like a beautiful open world Japan. And to us, that was a, who knows about the future, but like, for, for certain, for the way that we think about it with Yotei, Sushiman and their relationship, those two are so powerful and, or those pillars are so powerfully forward in both experiences.
Speaker A
Nice. Yeah, I mean, I, I, I'm, that's, that's totally fine. I'm, I'm happy with it being feudal in Japanese, though. It would be weird if you did like, Ghost of Fresno 2099 or something.
Speaker C
And Max really wants you guys to do like 90s Connecticut, where he grew.
Speaker A
Up Ghost of hear me out.
Speaker B
You can be our advisor on that.
Speaker C
One there you talked about a little bit before. There's so many cool little details in this game that I know you both worked on and probably a bunch that you haven't gotten to talk about yet. Like what are some of your sort of personal favorite little details or Easter eggs that you can't wait for people to see here.
Speaker D
Wow. I will share one of the mine. I think the I may not anytime soon to climbing the real Hokkaido Mount Yotei. But I did it in my digital version of the Yotei and I have climbing that mountain. And then in the halfway there I realized, you know, all the greenery is like right under my feet. And then what I look it up is the dark storm is coming and then the snow is started and I'm walking on that little skinny line and I'm just like so scared to fall. And then, and then I keep going right and then like barely made it and to the top. Top of that shrine. And then I did a bow and everything cleared it out and the blue sky appeared right in front of me. And there is like miles and miles of the landscape. It was stretching all directions because the yote is literally in the center of the map. And then seeing all the. The cloud was drifting between the mountain and then see the ocean is in the distance and then see all the little tiny locations is almost like I want to going to explore the next. And every inch of the land is created by, you know, every single member of the team who is like suddenly reviewing right front of me and just make me speechless. And then I love that feeling. And then I still remember it making my heart feel warm and yeah, hopefully everybody go explore there.
Speaker C
That's awesome.
Speaker B
Yeah, you did a good job on that. Johnny, your team. I think for me there's a whole host of like little things that we improved upon. Like spreadable fire that kind of pushes you out of like stealth grass or you know, like raindrops. Somebody mentioned that raindrops on the map, you know, which is like that very diegetic thing which is something we were going for in this game. Or like the topic cards. Each one is hand drawn by a somebody on our team as an expression of her hand drawing it or you know, you knocking off snow off of the trees. You know. Like I love this stuff but I think my. My favorite. My, my. My. Some of my favorite bigger elements are like things like the wolf and honestly I love the score. I love the. The. The. The music Watanabe mode also included in that and sort of my excitement there. But the score is Toma Otola made it and he is incredible. He did such a good job bringing to life a little bit of of Western folk flare inside of Japanese instrumentation. I think it's so special and I'm very happy they were able to pull that off.
Speaker A
That's incredible. Do you have any tips for first time players or just like I guess, you know, advice for people who are about to set foot into Yotei to really just, you know, get the most out of the experience?
Speaker B
I think that my advice would be that if you have the time, it's hard. I got kids, I know like life happens. It's hard to sit down in front of a big game. It's very daunting. But if in people's playthrough and they play Ghost of Yota, they can just take their time a little bit and have a little bit of curiosity about what's around the corner. Seek out some of those senseis and some of those side quests. They're not only I think good stories and they prop up the land of Ezo and the lore, but they're, some of them are deeply emotional and some of them give you cool gear and items that will help make your vengeance quest a lot more enjoyable. So I hope people can take their time and just embrace their curiosity.
Speaker D
Yeah, for me I will say the, the beauty about the game is everybody play their own way and you know we making this world and hopefully everybody who like combat, who like story, who who like exploring, who is just even wandering around riding a horse if you like, you know, just go looking, check out all the views. So go visit your home and then just hopefully in the end you have your unique own personal journey and take away from there.
Speaker A
Amazing. I love it. Jason, Joanna, thank you so much for hanging out and talking about Ghost of Yote and also you know, for making it. No big deal, just a big huge sprawling world to get lost in. Ghost of Yote is out on PS5 October 2nd. We'll be talking about it. Plenty more here on beyond, so stick around. This episode of beyond was produced, directed and edited by Nick Maye, technical production by Marian Franzen and Amir Raqib with graphic design by Amanda Flagg. Beyond is an IGN production and part of the Geek Media Network. If you also love your Xbox and your switch like you love your PlayStation, check out our other weekly IGN and Geek Media Media podcasts, Unlocked and NBC. Thanks for joining us. This week we'll be back next week. Beyond.