SIE and Sucker Punch Productions released Ghost of Yotei’s gameplay deep dive on July 11. Following up on the reveal, Automaton Japan sat down with creative co-directors Jason Connell and Nate Fox to hear more about Ghost of Tsushima’s long-awaited sequel. The developers shared insights into what players can expect in terms of game volume, as well as their pursuit of map density as opposed to a “bigger is better” approach.
Commenting on Ghost of Yotei’s overall volume, Fox notes, “I’d say it’s roughly on par with Ghost of Tsushima. The map is about the same size too, but Ghost of Yotei has more density.”
Connel follows up by commenting, “When it comes to both map size and game volume, we don’t believe that ‘bigger’ or ‘more’ is inherently better.” The developers say they took the lessons they learned from developing Ghost of Tsushima and focused on improving the quality of individual experiences the game offers, rather than upscaling the open world. In order to keep Ghost of Yotei engaging from start to finish, they employed two strategies.
The first, Connel explains, has to do with creating a subjective feeling of monumentality. “Even though the map is roughly the same size, Hokkaido is obviously much larger than Tsushima in real life, so we concentrated our efforts on making the world appear larger than it actually is. You’ll see vast plains and massive mountain ranges towering in the background. This is all scenery that wasn’t as present in Tsushima, and it’s designed to help players feel the scale of things.”
The second strategy lies in encouraging players to explore. “Ghost of Yotei includes various systems and details aimed at making exploration feel free and rewarding. For example, running through flowers increases your movement speed, and if you follow these flower trails, you might discover hidden secrets. We’ve also added new items like telescopes and binoculars to allow players to enjoy the scenery. All these details work together to ensure that players won’t get bored even on a large map.
While Sucker Punch could have opted to “double the map size and use that as a selling point,” they decided against doing so fairly early in development. “If we did that, we’d have to fill the map with twice the content, and that content would need to be meaningful so as to not tire the player. Ghost of Tsushima was already a big enough game, so rather than upscaling just for the sake of it, we chose to focus on delivering more variety and higher quality while maintaining a similar scale.”
Ghost of Yotei releases on October 2, 2025 for PS5.
