How do you finish a State of Play show? Will in the case of today’s September 24 broadcast from Playstation, the answer is by revealing Ghost of Yotei, a follow-up to Sucker Punch’s Ghost of Tsushima.
It’s set to arrive in 2025, and got an initial cinematic trailer for the game, featuring a female ronin protagonist for the first time in the series’ short history. One who’s seemingly got a thing for wolves in the same kinda way Jin Sakai couldn’t stop messing about with foxes.
The trailer’s blurb offers some info on the plot, reading as follows: “In 1603, a new Ghost named Atsu sets out on a journey in the lands surrounding Mount Yōtei, an area filled with sprawling grasslands, snowy tundras, and unexpected dangers. Ghost of Yōtei comes to PS5 in 2025.”
“When we set out to make a new Ghost game,” Sucker Punch communications manager Andrew Goldfarb wrote in the PS blog about the announcement, “we wanted to maintain the core pillars established in Ghost of Tsushima: playing as a wandering warrior in Feudal Japan, offering freedom to explore at your own pace, and highlighting the beauty of the world.
“We also wanted to continue to innovate. To create something fresh but familiar, we looked beyond Jin Sakai’s story and the island of Tsushima, and shifted our focus to the idea of the Ghost instead. At Sucker Punch we love origin stories, and we wanted to explore what it could mean to have a new hero wearing a Ghost mask, and uncovering a new legend. This led us to Ghost of Yōtei: a new protagonist, a new story to unfold, and a new region of Japan to explore.”
Goldfarb also added that this is “Sucker Punch’s first game built from the ground up for PlayStation 5”. “We have massive sightlines that let you look far across the environment, whole new skies featuring twinkling stars and auroras, even more believable movement from wind on grass and vegetation, and more improvements we’ll share in the future,” he wrote, “Our new setting also gives us the opportunity to introduce new mechanics, gameplay improvements, and even new weapons.”
Notably, Mount Yōtei is in real world Hokkaido, the northern island of Japan known for its, well, snow. Odds are you won’t be doing any snowboarding in this game, but to be fair, you never know. Expect Sucker Punch to reveal more details about Ghost of Yotei “in the months ahead”.