Ghost of Yōtei, a sequel to 2020 Sucker Punch samurai game Ghost of Tsushima, was announced with a trailer (embedded above) during today's Sony State of Play livestream.
Ghost of Tsushima came to PC earlier this year, and we gave it an 81% in our review, calling it "a thrilling and engaging samurai epic." Given that it took a few years to find its way to our platform, don't expect to be playing Ghost of Yōtei on PC in 2025, when its PS5 launch is due. As usual for big PlayStation announcements, the console version is the focus right now.
"When we set out to make a new Ghost game, 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," said Sucker Punch Productions communications manager Andrew Goldfarb on the PlayStation Blog.
"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."
Fans of Tsushima will probably also clock that this mysterious new hero wields a second katana in the trailer, which is 100% more katanas than Jin Sakai kept on hand. Yōtei creative director Jason Connell told The New York Times that players will be able to master both melee weapons and firearms.
"One challenge that comes with making an open-world game is the repetitive nature of doing the same thing over again," Connell told the paper. "We wanted to balance against that and find unique experiences."
Yōtei's setting encompasses an area surrounding Mount Yōtei in northern Japan, and the story—which Sucker Punch isn't saying much about yet—takes place in 1603, "more than 300 years after the events of Ghost of Tsushima."
"In 1603, this area was outside the rule of Japan, and filled with sprawling grasslands, snowy tundras, and unexpected dangers," said Sucker Punch. "It's a far cry from the organized samurai clans who lived in Tsushima, and it's the setting for an original story we can't wait to tell."
If recent tradition holds, Ghost of Yōtei should be on PC before 2030, although the optimist in me thinks it could happen faster than it did for Ghost of Tsushima, which before being ported to PC also had to make the jump from PS4 to PS5.
