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Ghost Of Yōtei Directors Share Philosophy On Balancing Freedom With Story
Ghost Of Yōtei Directors Share Philosophy On Balancing Freedom With Story Following Sony and Sucker Punch’s recent State of Play presentation diving deep into Ghost of Yōtei, we had a chance to speak with that game’s co-creative directors Nate Fox and Jason Connell. We dive deeper into some of the new features, like the game’s structure, camps, and navigation, made sure the fast-travel load times are as shockingly fast as they were in the first game, and tried to learn a little more about protagonist Atsu’s Ezo wolf companion. Game Informer: Why set the sequel so far after Tsushima? It takes place about 300 years later, right? Nate Fox, creative director Nate Fox: A little bit less. The game takes place in 1603, which is a pretty interesting time in Japanese history. The warring States period just ended. Peace has broken out across the land, and all of these warriors suddenly don't have jobs anymore. And a number of them went to Ezo, modern day Hokkaido, which is in the far north, which is the edge of Japan. And this place is a lawless wilderness, right? Very, very dangerous, packed with people. With weapons. And some of them have chips on their shoulders. You take that kind of powder keg and you put it alongside this unbelievably beautiful landscape of Hokkaido. It's just gorgeous. This is the kind of spot you want to put your open world video game right? It's exciting. So hence the game takes place in 1603 where we get to know this new hero, Atsu, in an origin story that we're really excited to tell. Will there be ties to Tsushima beyond the mechanics and Japanese setting? Are there going to be narrative ties to Jin Sakai’s story? This game is very much its own story. It is a spiritual sequel. You don't need to have played Ghost of Tsushima to jump right into Ghost of Yōtei. It is a game where the player is considered something of a ghost. Atsu is considered an Onryō, an avenging spirit, by the people of Ezo because she keeps living through all of these attempts to get revenge, and she becomes a walking legend in the land that she explores. Her reputation precedes her. In this way, it's similar, but it's very much its own story. A lot of research went into both of these games. Can you tell me a little bit about what that was and what that entailed? Jason Connell, creative director Jason Connell: The research is, as you suggest…, it's not only a lot of enjoyable work. We get to have a lot of fun watching great movies, building relationships with new advisors that kind of help us understand the thoughtful and tasteful ways to make decisions on the game. But it's also just necessary, right? Like, if we're going to make a game as… you know, our studio is a West Coast Studio in the United States and we’re depicting this culture. It feels like you have to be this tall to ride. You have to do it and then there's doing it really well. We’re so lucky that we've found so many great advisors to help us in this game. In particular, a number of folks have helped us; [...]Nate and I got to go on a research trip again for this one. It was really kind of focused on Hokkaido at large and we spent a number of days, like nine or 10 days or something like that, just all over Hokkaido. And we actually got to meet some members of the Ainu community and one of them is actually one of our advisors. The family helps advise on the game in a number of ways. There are scripts that they were involved in, or even the patterns. If you ever look at the Ainu they have these beautiful, elegant, awesome patterns and they helped us understand the reasoning behind the art choices of those patterns. It is something we just have no idea about and so they totally help us. They understand that we're making a piece of entertainment for a global audience, and understanding how to depict their culture in a thoughtful and respectful way? That's really important to us. It's a lot of work upfront, but it all pays off in the end. Was there anything in that research that surprised you? Maybe something players might be surprised to learn is accurate? Here’s a couple. I don't know how people will experience it, but here are some things that were just shocking to me in different ways. Like, for example, the name of the game. We visited this lake that overlooked Mount Yōtei off in the distance. Nate and I had a similar, beautifully reflective moment. The same type of moment. Tsushima – remember the river? And then here, it felt like it was Yōtei. It was just this gorgeous kind of mountain we saw midway through our trip, so we've seen a lot of beauty. But that moment, I felt like, “Wow, Yōtei means something.” And it was starting to shape up at that point in the art of our game and the story of our game and where everything takes place to be sort of a centralizing point and all these kinds of things point together and then eventually, it all goes to Yōtei. It was a really flagpole sort of moment for us and sort of how the world kind of came together even to the point where it is the name of the story. And the other one is the wolf is actually a real wolf. It’s an Ezo wolf that is extinct. So it's awesome to be able to show this ferociously awesome animal. Nate Fox: They’re big! Jason Connell: Yeah. But they're not around. So, to celebrate that and to sort of have that in our game and people might not know that. It's just fun that they get to experience that even though they're not real anymore. They don't exist anymore. The quest structure is open in Ghost of Yōtei. Is it structured as wholly open where there are six people you must kill and you can go after them in any order or direction you want? So to be clear – it's not that. It’s not that you can pick any order of the six. And I'll tell you why. Nate and I and the studio – and you've played a lot of our games – we really believe in the structure of story. It's really important to us that we develop great characters with good arcs with beginning, middles, and ends. You got to have that, right? That is true. There is an arc with a structure in place. But at the same time, one of the aspects from Ghost of Tsushima that we wanted to not only carry forward but just do an even better job of, was that sense of curiosity and freedom of exploration that the game delivers upon. And so you have this delicate impasse of, if the story's just perfectly linear and you are just forced on the gold path all the time, you might lose that opportunity for people who just want to explore the landscape. But if you go too far on the other side, you might lose the structure of the story. So, the balance, without giving away all the details, is there is a structure there. A very important structure. But the way it's presented in the first few hours of the game, especially that first section, is it is really about us delivering to you which aspects of the Yōtei Six you want to go after first. There are some options that might lead you in some interesting areas. I kind of mentioned it a little bit in the State of Play: if you're into sort of ninjas and snow stuff, then this story over here might be more interesting for you. If you're into these castles and these fire weapons, then this area might be for you. But you can bop back and forth between the two of those major areas. There's a bit more choice in there, but there's still a linear story structure that we really believe in to make sure that Atsu’s vengeance quest tears at the heartstrings. That's the ultimate goal. Speaking of heart strings, you’re able to instantly switch to the past to learn about Atsu and her family when she was a child. Where and how often can you do that? Nate Fox: There are few places in the world that have a lot of memories for Atsu. When you go to these locations, you can hit a button and instantly be transported to the past. You control young Atsu in these locations. You can go back and forth as much as you want in the moment to see maybe how this location has changed, what it looks like right now as an adult, and what it looked like back in your youth. And we want to give players the freedom to kind of go back and forth and to experience some gameplay as a kid so they can recall what it is – so they can feel what it is that Atsu feels. What she lost when her parents were taken from her. I'm also curious, in a much less emotional way, how it works technically. Tsushima had incredibly impressive load times, even on PlayStation 4. Is this one of the ways that you're taking advantage of PlayStation 5? Swapping to the past? You're absolutely right. It is because of the PlayStation 5 that we can do this flipping back and forth. It's very powerful business to have both of them on at one time. And it's allowing us to give you that experience of spending time with your brother and your parents and getting to know them, because, of course, your whole family got wiped out, right? I'm glad that we have that opportunity to give players exposure to that in this layered fashion. Jason Connell: It absolutely helps in the memory feature to be able to just mash the button back and forth and see all the cool things change very quickly in a really cool, poetic way. But honestly, there's a whole host of things that we also got to improve upon. There's much, much further sight lines making the mountains feel so far away. The team did just such a great job making them feel epic and large and big. The terrain tessellation, we've done some work on there, higher-fidelity rendering for far terrain. In general it just looks much higher quality than some of our far away distance stuff in the past. There is a bunch of localized volumetric fog. We love the fog and we had more of just standard fog in the last game and it was beautiful and really well done. But now there's actually localized volumetric work. We did some work on low lying clouds and we improved skin and hair rendering. At some point we're going to do a, “Here's all the cool base and Pro sort of features,” and we'll outline it all. But one of the great parts of working on the second installment of something is that you get to take all those features and iterate on them in a way that is not just, “Ah! Photorealism button. Who cares about that?” It's about the artistic expression that we're going for. The art. There's a style to Ghost that is really important. And it's not just pure photoreal, though photorealism has an aspect to it. It's really taking that style, bringing it a little bit more forward and developing features that help achieve our visual and aesthetic and emotional and tonal goals. Like creating the aurora borealis. We didn't have that in the last game. Being able to create effects that go into the skybox. These were the things we didn't have. And they're not just buttons of photorealism and rendering. They're directed by the experience that we would like to have. Fast travel – still super quick? Ghost of Tsushima has some of the fastest fast-travel loading of any game. Yep. Super fast. It's a convenience thing, right? That's not going anywhere because people like it so much. But yeah, it's pretty quick. I know you told me all these wonderful technical things and I'm just like, “But when I want to go somewhere else, I can go there really fast, right?” Yeah. People love it. Nate Fox: You can! The wind navigation system is crucial to Tsushima. It's one of the most memorable aspects of that game. We saw a little bit of it in the State of Play, but I was curious how it has been iterated on for Yōtei. Jason Connell: The wind system – there has been some iteration on it. Ezo is such a vast place that we have developed some features for the wind to sort of guide around big objects. The last game it was just linear. It was just like, “Point to the place and you go there!” Doesn't matter if there's a giant cliff there or not. And now we have actually a little bit of a system to help guide around some of the major obstacles, to make it a little bit more of an improved experience for such a vast world. Traversal is super helped with the experience versus it being linear. But on top of that we just did a whole bunch of other exploration-forward features, because wind is birthed out of the feeling that we want to create a diegetic experience where we want you to be in the game world so you can keep looking at the game world as much as you can. We’ve augmented that with a couple of other features like the shamisen Atsu carries on her back. You learn certain songs and those certain songs will guide you to certain things. There's lots of things that we've created like that, like the wind, that are just nice additions to that diegetic exploration experience. How did the new Miike and Watanabe director modes come to exist? Did you meet Miike and Watanabe? What were those meetings like? Yeah, we did meet with them. First, I should say that these modes, especially for the first one, the Akira Kurosawa mode in the last game, was birthed out of our just love and joy. We were like, “We should have a black and white mode,” because there's so much of these films that we've watched over and over again to sort of learn the nuances of how to bring those moments to life. And that birthed into, “Oh, I wonder if we could partner with the Kurosawa estate and see if we can get his namesake in it.” That ended up working really well for us and we felt that was a great fanfare for people that care about this stuff as much as we do. And then moving forward – well, we have that again. And we were very excited that they would like to partner again. So we did. And we thought who else? We started looking around and we had two and they're both very different. We wanted something that was maybe a bit more combat-driven and one that was more audible. The combat one was like… look at 13 Assassins. That was our number one reference point, or at least one of the top reference points for Ghost in general. Ghost of Tsushima? 13 Assassins. Ghost of Yōtei? There's some 13 Assassins stuff in that, too. Improvisational sort of fighting, grabbing weapons. That style of combat is a massive reference point. We reached out to Miike. He was super stoked. We had a really great conversation. He's such a cool, creative individual. He’s even got a sword kit in the game players can find. It has a special name. He named it, and so it's very, very exciting. Watanabe is the same thing. His show Lazarus had just come out, or I had just recently watched it. He had heard about our game, so it was a really nice touchstone and it felt like there was a nice overlap of what we were trying to show off, and I was so excited about it. It's really cool. It's really fun as fans of the genre in general, to be able to take the thing that we've created and inject some fanfare collaborations for all the people that do care about that kind of stuff. Some people won't turn these modes on and won't even know they exist, but the people that will hopefully love them as much as we have been inspired by them. Not sure if it is the right term in-game, but can you befriend more than wolves? In the State of Play while showing off the photo mode, we Atsu standing with a bear. Nate Fox: The wolf shadows you throughout your adventure. It's a wild animal. It's definitely not a dog that comes when called. It is an ally that is a representation of the wilderness. Now, Atsu is kind of attuned to the natural world and so there are a great variety of different animals in Ezo that she can kind of get close to and interact with, like a big herd of wild horses you can ride inside of and kind of speed up as you're amongst them all. It's a great thing for the player to discover as they're out exploring Ezo itself. But as far as allies go, the wolf is your prime animal ally. The Internet is speculating that the wolf is Jin Sakai reincarnated. Do you have any comment on that? Jason Connell: I love our fans [laughs]. They’re so creative. I love it. How do the camps work specifically? Can you request certain vendors come right to you? Effectively. I'll say this – it is another way where we're trying to create a feature that tonally fits within the landscape. Big. Wild. North, under the wilderness. Great camping. That's great. Taking something that tonally fits into the game and seeing if we can wrap up the mechanics around it and respecting the player's time and where they are. Right? Fast traveling is fine and fun and it's super quick, as we pointed out. But if I'm exploring in an area and I go, “I know I have enough to get the bow upgrade,” because we tell you all that information like we did in the last game too, “but I have to like leave this place, go over here to this town, and now it's in the snow, and then I'm going to come back over here” – it's really sort of discordant. It really kind of breaks your immersion of exploring this cool place that I'm in right here, right now. Or you can just go to that wolf pack menu and call the camp here and that character will come and appear at your camp. And they will show up and be like, “Hey, here's your bow upgrade.” That is a way for people to stay in that moment and get their upgrade, maybe cook some food and get a nice boon, and then they're on their way without having to – even though our fast travel is quick – it's about staying in that location. They can still fast travel if they like that, too. It's quite nice in that way. If you don't call somebody, somebody might just appear that you had not known. There's sort of unknowns or people and surprise visitors that might show up, as well. Infamous Second Son (2014) Would you be opening to revisiting Infamous maybe for a trilogy rerelease or something like that? Nate Fox: I would love to work on more Infamous. I would love to see a trilogy rerelease, but Sucker Punch is a one game at a time shop, and right now we are very focused on finishing Ghost of Yōtei. Assassin's Creed Shadows (2025) What did you think of Assassin's Creed Shadows? Comparisons are going to be inevitable. Jason Connell: As creators, you get to look at this stuff in two ways. You either see anything that comes near you and you kind of freeze up, or you just get excited at the fact that the medium that you're working in is being expanded upon, and people are liking that flavor enough to where they're going to invest time to make a new game. Nate and I solely sit on that latter one. We were very, very excited about anything, film overlap, game stuff – these things are just inevitable as creators and you learn to embrace it. And Ubisoft makes awesome games. I've been making games for a really long time. I think it's just fun to see so many other cool games in this space. It's exciting for us. Ghost of Yōtei releases on October 2 exclusively on PlayStation 5. To learn everything shared from the recent Ghost Of Yōtei State of Play, head here .
Game Informer PreviewsJul 17
Ghost Of Yōtei Directors Share Philosophy On Balancing Freedom With Story
Ghost Of Yōtei Directors Share Philosophy On Balancing Freedom With Story Following Sony and Sucker Punch’s recent State of Play presentation diving deep into Ghost of Yōtei, we had a chance to speak with that game’s co-creative directors Nate Fox and Jason Connell. We dive deeper into some of the new features, like the game’s structure, camps, and navigation, made sure the fast-travel load times are as shockingly fast as they were in the first game, and tried to learn a little more about protagonist Atsu’s Ezo wolf companion. Game Informer: Why set the sequel so far after Tsushima? It takes place about 300 years later, right? Nate Fox, creative director Nate Fox: A little bit less. The game takes place in 1603, which is a pretty interesting time in Japanese history. The warring States period just ended. Peace has broken out across the land, and all of these warriors suddenly don't have jobs anymore. And a number of them went to Ezo, modern day Hokkaido, which is in the far north, which is the edge of Japan. And this place is a lawless wilderness, right? Very, very dangerous, packed with people. With weapons. And some of them have chips on their shoulders. You take that kind of powder keg and you put it alongside this unbelievably beautiful landscape of Hokkaido. It's just gorgeous. This is the kind of spot you want to put your open world video game right? It's exciting. So hence the game takes place in 1603 where we get to know this new hero, Atsu, in an origin story that we're really excited to tell. Will there be ties to Tsushima beyond the mechanics and Japanese setting? Are there going to be narrative ties to Jin Sakai’s story? This game is very much its own story. It is a spiritual sequel. You don't need to have played Ghost of Tsushima to jump right into Ghost of Yōtei. It is a game where the player is considered something of a ghost. Atsu is considered an Onryō, an avenging spirit, by the people of Ezo because she keeps living through all of these attempts to get revenge, and she becomes a walking legend in the land that she explores. Her reputation precedes her. In this way, it's similar, but it's very much its own story. A lot of research went into both of these games. Can you tell me a little bit about what that was and what that entailed? Jason Connell, creative director Jason Connell: The research is, as you suggest…, it's not only a lot of enjoyable work. We get to have a lot of fun watching great movies, building relationships with new advisors that kind of help us understand the thoughtful and tasteful ways to make decisions on the game. But it's also just necessary, right? Like, if we're going to make a game as… you know, our studio is a West Coast Studio in the United States and we’re depicting this culture. It feels like you have to be this tall to ride. You have to do it and then there's doing it really well. We’re so lucky that we've found so many great advisors to help us in this game. In particular, a number of folks have helped us; [...]Nate and I got to go on a research trip again for this one. It was really kind of focused on Hokkaido at large and we spent a number of days, like nine or 10 days or something like that, just all over Hokkaido. And we actually got to meet some members of the Ainu community and one of them is actually one of our advisors. The family helps advise on the game in a number of ways. There are scripts that they were involved in, or even the patterns. If you ever look at the Ainu they have these beautiful, elegant, awesome patterns and they helped us understand the reasoning behind the art choices of those patterns. It is something we just have no idea about and so they totally help us. They understand that we're making a piece of entertainment for a global audience, and understanding how to depict their culture in a thoughtful and respectful way? That's really important to us. It's a lot of work upfront, but it all pays off in the end. Was there anything in that research that surprised you? Maybe something players might be surprised to learn is accurate? Here’s a couple. I don't know how people will experience it, but here are some things that were just shocking to me in different ways. Like, for example, the name of the game. We visited this lake that overlooked Mount Yōtei off in the distance. Nate and I had a similar, beautifully reflective moment. The same type of moment. Tsushima – remember the river? And then here, it felt like it was Yōtei. It was just this gorgeous kind of mountain we saw midway through our trip, so we've seen a lot of beauty. But that moment, I felt like, “Wow, Yōtei means something.” And it was starting to shape up at that point in the art of our game and the story of our game and where everything takes place to be sort of a centralizing point and all these kinds of things point together and then eventually, it all goes to Yōtei. It was a really flagpole sort of moment for us and sort of how the world kind of came together even to the point where it is the name of the story. And the other one is the wolf is actually a real wolf. It’s an Ezo wolf that is extinct. So it's awesome to be able to show this ferociously awesome animal. Nate Fox: They’re big! Jason Connell: Yeah. But they're not around. So, to celebrate that and to sort of have that in our game and people might not know that. It's just fun that they get to experience that even though they're not real anymore. They don't exist anymore. The quest structure is open in Ghost of Yōtei. Is it structured as wholly open where there are six people you must kill and you can go after them in any order or direction you want? So to be clear – it's not that. It’s not that you can pick any order of the six. And I'll tell you why. Nate and I and the studio – and you've played a lot of our games – we really believe in the structure of story. It's really important to us that we develop great characters with good arcs with beginning, middles, and ends. You got to have that, right? That is true. There is an arc with a structure in place. But at the same time, one of the aspects from Ghost of Tsushima that we wanted to not only carry forward but just do an even better job of, was that sense of curiosity and freedom of exploration that the game delivers upon. And so you have this delicate impasse of, if the story's just perfectly linear and you are just forced on the gold path all the time, you might lose that opportunity for people who just want to explore the landscape. But if you go too far on the other side, you might lose the structure of the story. So, the balance, without giving away all the details, is there is a structure there. A very important structure. But the way it's presented in the first few hours of the game, especially that first section, is it is really about us delivering to you which aspects of the Yōtei Six you want to go after first. There are some options that might lead you in some interesting areas. I kind of mentioned it a little bit in the State of Play: if you're into sort of ninjas and snow stuff, then this story over here might be more interesting for you. If you're into these castles and these fire weapons, then this area might be for you. But you can bop back and forth between the two of those major areas. There's a bit more choice in there, but there's still a linear story structure that we really believe in to make sure that Atsu’s vengeance quest tears at the heartstrings. That's the ultimate goal. Speaking of heart strings, you’re able to instantly switch to the past to learn about Atsu and her family when she was a child. Where and how often can you do that? Nate Fox: There are few places in the world that have a lot of memories for Atsu. When you go to these locations, you can hit a button and instantly be transported to the past. You control young Atsu in these locations. You can go back and forth as much as you want in the moment to see maybe how this location has changed, what it looks like right now as an adult, and what it looked like back in your youth. And we want to give players the freedom to kind of go back and forth and to experience some gameplay as a kid so they can recall what it is – so they can feel what it is that Atsu feels. What she lost when her parents were taken from her. I'm also curious, in a much less emotional way, how it works technically. Tsushima had incredibly impressive load times, even on PlayStation 4. Is this one of the ways that you're taking advantage of PlayStation 5? Swapping to the past? You're absolutely right. It is because of the PlayStation 5 that we can do this flipping back and forth. It's very powerful business to have both of them on at one time. And it's allowing us to give you that experience of spending time with your brother and your parents and getting to know them, because, of course, your whole family got wiped out, right? I'm glad that we have that opportunity to give players exposure to that in this layered fashion. Jason Connell: It absolutely helps in the memory feature to be able to just mash the button back and forth and see all the cool things change very quickly in a really cool, poetic way. But honestly, there's a whole host of things that we also got to improve upon. There's much, much further sight lines making the mountains feel so far away. The team did just such a great job making them feel epic and large and big. The terrain tessellation, we've done some work on there, higher-fidelity rendering for far terrain. In general it just looks much higher quality than some of our far away distance stuff in the past. There is a bunch of localized volumetric fog. We love the fog and we had more of just standard fog in the last game and it was beautiful and really well done. But now there's actually localized volumetric work. We did some work on low lying clouds and we improved skin and hair rendering. At some point we're going to do a, “Here's all the cool base and Pro sort of features,” and we'll outline it all. But one of the great parts of working on the second installment of something is that you get to take all those features and iterate on them in a way that is not just, “Ah! Photorealism button. Who cares about that?” It's about the artistic expression that we're going for. The art. There's a style to Ghost that is really important. And it's not just pure photoreal, though photorealism has an aspect to it. It's really taking that style, bringing it a little bit more forward and developing features that help achieve our visual and aesthetic and emotional and tonal goals. Like creating the aurora borealis. We didn't have that in the last game. Being able to create effects that go into the skybox. These were the things we didn't have. And they're not just buttons of photorealism and rendering. They're directed by the experience that we would like to have. Fast travel – still super quick? Ghost of Tsushima has some of the fastest fast-travel loading of any game. Yep. Super fast. It's a convenience thing, right? That's not going anywhere because people like it so much. But yeah, it's pretty quick. I know you told me all these wonderful technical things and I'm just like, “But when I want to go somewhere else, I can go there really fast, right?” Yeah. People love it. Nate Fox: You can! The wind navigation system is crucial to Tsushima. It's one of the most memorable aspects of that game. We saw a little bit of it in the State of Play, but I was curious how it has been iterated on for Yōtei. Jason Connell: The wind system – there has been some iteration on it. Ezo is such a vast place that we have developed some features for the wind to sort of guide around big objects. The last game it was just linear. It was just like, “Point to the place and you go there!” Doesn't matter if there's a giant cliff there or not. And now we have actually a little bit of a system to help guide around some of the major obstacles, to make it a little bit more of an improved experience for such a vast world. Traversal is super helped with the experience versus it being linear. But on top of that we just did a whole bunch of other exploration-forward features, because wind is birthed out of the feeling that we want to create a diegetic experience where we want you to be in the game world so you can keep looking at the game world as much as you can. We’ve augmented that with a couple of other features like the shamisen Atsu carries on her back. You learn certain songs and those certain songs will guide you to certain things. There's lots of things that we've created like that, like the wind, that are just nice additions to that diegetic exploration experience. How did the new Miike and Watanabe director modes come to exist? Did you meet Miike and Watanabe? What were those meetings like? Yeah, we did meet with them. First, I should say that these modes, especially for the first one, the Akira Kurosawa mode in the last game, was birthed out of our just love and joy. We were like, “We should have a black and white mode,” because there's so much of these films that we've watched over and over again to sort of learn the nuances of how to bring those moments to life. And that birthed into, “Oh, I wonder if we could partner with the Kurosawa estate and see if we can get his namesake in it.” That ended up working really well for us and we felt that was a great fanfare for people that care about this stuff as much as we do. And then moving forward – well, we have that again. And we were very excited that they would like to partner again. So we did. And we thought who else? We started looking around and we had two and they're both very different. We wanted something that was maybe a bit more combat-driven and one that was more audible. The combat one was like… look at 13 Assassins. That was our number one reference point, or at least one of the top reference points for Ghost in general. Ghost of Tsushima? 13 Assassins. Ghost of Yōtei? There's some 13 Assassins stuff in that, too. Improvisational sort of fighting, grabbing weapons. That style of combat is a massive reference point. We reached out to Miike. He was super stoked. We had a really great conversation. He's such a cool, creative individual. He’s even got a sword kit in the game players can find. It has a special name. He named it, and so it's very, very exciting. Watanabe is the same thing. His show Lazarus had just come out, or I had just recently watched it. He had heard about our game, so it was a really nice touchstone and it felt like there was a nice overlap of what we were trying to show off, and I was so excited about it. It's really cool. It's really fun as fans of the genre in general, to be able to take the thing that we've created and inject some fanfare collaborations for all the people that do care about that kind of stuff. Some people won't turn these modes on and won't even know they exist, but the people that will hopefully love them as much as we have been inspired by them. Not sure if it is the right term in-game, but can you befriend more than wolves? In the State of Play while showing off the photo mode, we Atsu standing with a bear. Nate Fox: The wolf shadows you throughout your adventure. It's a wild animal. It's definitely not a dog that comes when called. It is an ally that is a representation of the wilderness. Now, Atsu is kind of attuned to the natural world and so there are a great variety of different animals in Ezo that she can kind of get close to and interact with, like a big herd of wild horses you can ride inside of and kind of speed up as you're amongst them all. It's a great thing for the player to discover as they're out exploring Ezo itself. But as far as allies go, the wolf is your prime animal ally. The Internet is speculating that the wolf is Jin Sakai reincarnated. Do you have any comment on that? Jason Connell: I love our fans [laughs]. They’re so creative. I love it. How do the camps work specifically? Can you request certain vendors come right to you? Effectively. I'll say this – it is another way where we're trying to create a feature that tonally fits within the landscape. Big. Wild. North, under the wilderness. Great camping. That's great. Taking something that tonally fits into the game and seeing if we can wrap up the mechanics around it and respecting the player's time and where they are. Right? Fast traveling is fine and fun and it's super quick, as we pointed out. But if I'm exploring in an area and I go, “I know I have enough to get the bow upgrade,” because we tell you all that information like we did in the last game too, “but I have to like leave this place, go over here to this town, and now it's in the snow, and then I'm going to come back over here” – it's really sort of discordant. It really kind of breaks your immersion of exploring this cool place that I'm in right here, right now. Or you can just go to that wolf pack menu and call the camp here and that character will come and appear at your camp. And they will show up and be like, “Hey, here's your bow upgrade.” That is a way for people to stay in that moment and get their upgrade, maybe cook some food and get a nice boon, and then they're on their way without having to – even though our fast travel is quick – it's about staying in that location. They can still fast travel if they like that, too. It's quite nice in that way. If you don't call somebody, somebody might just appear that you had not known. There's sort of unknowns or people and surprise visitors that might show up, as well. Infamous Second Son (2014) Would you be opening to revisiting Infamous maybe for a trilogy rerelease or something like that? Nate Fox: I would love to work on more Infamous. I would love to see a trilogy rerelease, but Sucker Punch is a one game at a time shop, and right now we are very focused on finishing Ghost of Yōtei. Assassin's Creed Shadows (2025) What did you think of Assassin's Creed Shadows? Comparisons are going to be inevitable. Jason Connell: As creators, you get to look at this stuff in two ways. You either see anything that comes near you and you kind of freeze up, or you just get excited at the fact that the medium that you're working in is being expanded upon, and people are liking that flavor enough to where they're going to invest time to make a new game. Nate and I solely sit on that latter one. We were very, very excited about anything, film overlap, game stuff – these things are just inevitable as creators and you learn to embrace it. And Ubisoft makes awesome games. I've been making games for a really long time. I think it's just fun to see so many other cool games in this space. It's exciting for us. Ghost of Yōtei releases on October 2 exclusively on PlayStation 5. To learn everything shared from the recent Ghost Of Yōtei State of Play, head here .
Game Informer PreviewsJul 17
Hands On With The New Skate – Rolling Into A New Generation
Hands On With The New Skate – Rolling Into A New Generation The Skate video game series has been a cornerstone in the skateboarding community ever since its debut in 2007. It's been over 15 years since a new Skate game has been released, but despite that, the chokehold the franchise has on the culture is still as strong as ever, and EA is looking to recreate that magic with Skate, the next mainline entry in the series.    Why has a new Skate taken so long to come out? Full Circle head of technology John Lawlor explained that the primary reason was because of how high the team’s ambitions were for the game.  "We had to spread it across [various] platforms, we wanted to stretch it to 150 players in a given server, we also wanted to bring back and evolve Skate's core gameplay," Lawlor says. "We built the studio with [only a handful] of people when Skate was originally announced. Then COVID happened in the middle of production." Despite the game's long wait, the latest iteration of Skate feels like the original trilogy, and I mean that in the best way possible. Even though it's been almost 10 years since the last time I played Skate, I was able to pick it up and quickly recall the core mechanics because of how similar they play. Using the iconic Flick-It system worked exactly as I remembered, and the team explains that's by design. "We went back and got the original code [for the Flick-It system]," Lawlor said. "That was the original toy, and we ported it forward and brought it to Frostbite. That's what the team began with, and that's how it feels like Skate. Because it is Skate." I was surprised by the amount of freedom I was given in the demo. The game actively encourages you to explore and create unique parks. You can do this by either exploring San Vansterdam (the city in which this new Skate takes place) or simply by building it yourself.   The latter option proved extremely useful. I completed challenges by putting up rail bars or ramps in various locations to help me complete different tasks. After I completed a challenge, whatever I placed would stay there for other players to enjoy, and it became a common occurrence for me or another player to build a random park in the middle of a plaza – a true Strand game. When I wasn't building parks, I climbed skyscrapers with a parkour system that reminded me of Assassin's Creed. Once I got to the top, there would often be a hidden skatepark waiting to be used. Creative director Deran Chung explains that the team added climbing and swinging mechanics because they knew players would eventually get to these hard-to-reach places, so they wanted to make it easier. Even though the Skate franchise leans more towards realism, it's not afraid to get weird. For instance, before I sat down to play, I saw a trick where the user launched themselves off a ramp and immediately laid flat on their skateboard. I couldn't perform the trick myself, but the fact that I could do something as cool and silly as that was beautiful. The silliness didn't end there. Skaters can roll around like a ball when off the board. It is a shockingly effective way to get around. With the Tony Hawk games gaining popularity again, there might be a concern about that series as a worrisome competition, but Chung proudly said, "Absolutely not."  Chung believes that more skating games out there is an overall good thing, and each offers its "own flavor, and every flavor has its own validity." The last time I rode a skateboard in real life, it ended with me getting laughed at by a group of strangers because of how badly I fell. Despite that uncomfortable history, my time with Skate has inspired me to dust off my old board and give the hobby another go. The Skate team has put in a lot of work to ensure this installment feels as true to the franchise as all the others. And even if you're a newcomer to the series, this Skate seems like it will be a great jumping point for getting your feet wet.
Game Informer PreviewsJul 17
Hands On With The New Skate – Rolling Into A New Generation
Hands On With The New Skate – Rolling Into A New Generation The Skate video game series has been a cornerstone in the skateboarding community ever since its debut in 2007. It's been over 15 years since a new Skate game has been released, but despite that, the chokehold the franchise has on the culture is still as strong as ever, and EA is looking to recreate that magic with Skate, the next mainline entry in the series.    Why has a new Skate taken so long to come out? Full Circle head of technology John Lawlor explained that the primary reason was because of how high the team’s ambitions were for the game.  "We had to spread it across [various] platforms, we wanted to stretch it to 150 players in a given server, we also wanted to bring back and evolve Skate's core gameplay," Lawlor says. "We built the studio with [only a handful] of people when Skate was originally announced. Then COVID happened in the middle of production." Despite the game's long wait, the latest iteration of Skate feels like the original trilogy, and I mean that in the best way possible. Even though it's been almost 10 years since the last time I played Skate, I was able to pick it up and quickly recall the core mechanics because of how similar they play. Using the iconic Flick-It system worked exactly as I remembered, and the team explains that's by design. "We went back and got the original code [for the Flick-It system]," Lawlor said. "That was the original toy, and we ported it forward and brought it to Frostbite. That's what the team began with, and that's how it feels like Skate. Because it is Skate." I was surprised by the amount of freedom I was given in the demo. The game actively encourages you to explore and create unique parks. You can do this by either exploring San Vansterdam (the city in which this new Skate takes place) or simply by building it yourself.   The latter option proved extremely useful. I completed challenges by putting up rail bars or ramps in various locations to help me complete different tasks. After I completed a challenge, whatever I placed would stay there for other players to enjoy, and it became a common occurrence for me or another player to build a random park in the middle of a plaza – a true Strand game. When I wasn't building parks, I climbed skyscrapers with a parkour system that reminded me of Assassin's Creed. Once I got to the top, there would often be a hidden skatepark waiting to be used. Creative director Deran Chung explains that the team added climbing and swinging mechanics because they knew players would eventually get to these hard-to-reach places, so they wanted to make it easier. Even though the Skate franchise leans more towards realism, it's not afraid to get weird. For instance, before I sat down to play, I saw a trick where the user launched themselves off a ramp and immediately laid flat on their skateboard. I couldn't perform the trick myself, but the fact that I could do something as cool and silly as that was beautiful. The silliness didn't end there. Skaters can roll around like a ball when off the board. It is a shockingly effective way to get around. With the Tony Hawk games gaining popularity again, there might be a concern about that series as a worrisome competition, but Chung proudly said, "Absolutely not."  Chung believes that more skating games out there is an overall good thing, and each offers its "own flavor, and every flavor has its own validity." The last time I rode a skateboard in real life, it ended with me getting laughed at by a group of strangers because of how badly I fell. Despite that uncomfortable history, my time with Skate has inspired me to dust off my old board and give the hobby another go. The Skate team has put in a lot of work to ensure this installment feels as true to the franchise as all the others. And even if you're a newcomer to the series, this Skate seems like it will be a great jumping point for getting your feet wet.
Game Informer PreviewsJul 17
Everything We Know About Dominion, The Late-Game City Of Borderlands 4's Antagonist
Everything We Know About Dominion, The Late-Game City Of Borderlands 4's Antagonist Platform: PlayStation 5, Xbox Series X/S, Switch 2, PC Publisher: 2K Games Developer: Gearbox Software Release: September 12, 2025 ( PlayStation 5 , Xbox Series X/S , PC ), 2025 ( Switch 2 ) Borderlands 4 features a seamless open world , but your journey seems to culminate in an assault on the Timekeeper's stronghold city, Dominion. Though not much is known about the densest environment in Borderlands' history, Gearbox gave me a guided tour of the city. While I can't share everything I saw and heard, here is everything I can say about this late-game zone. In contrast to much of the rest of Borderlands 4's open world , you don't get access to Dominion until later in the game when you are on your march to confront the Timekeeper . Using an event that occurs on Pandora's moon, Elpis , which is now in the orbit of Kairos, the Vault Hunters can enter Dominion with the hopes of facing off against the Timekeeper. Once inside the walls of Dominion, things aren't as orderly as the Timekeeper's obsession would lead you to believe. The various Borderlands 4 factions are at each other's throats within the city limits, and, without spoiling anything, the city isn't quite what I expected coming in; the Timekeeper values order at any cost, but the city in which he bases his operations feels oddly chaotic. As I watch creative director Graeme Timmins give me a tour, the Timekeeper taunts his Vault Hunter in their ear.  And despite the Vault Hunters knocking on the door, he's keeping his composure. "Even though we're breaking in, really trying to get to the Timekeeper, he's still in his element," senior project producer Anthony Nicholson says. "He's still very calm and sure of his plan and what he has in store." But even if playing solo, the Vault Hunter storming Dominion won't be alone. "Obviously, you make a lot of friends along your way, and they're all going to help and contribute to your time here in the city," Timmins says.  Throughout the game, players can see Dominion in the distance, similar to how Hyrule Castle is always visible to players in The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild. It's intentionally placed so that players are aware of the goal, and it remains front-of-mind. "As you're starting your journey in Fadefields, you'll see that tower in the distance," global creative executive and former Game Informer editor-in-chief Andrew Reiner says. "That's actually there. That's not a skybox. It's not in the background. [You] can fly out of here, back to the starting point of the game. That content is always there." Dominion serves as the home of Borderlands 4's main antagonist, the Timekeeper The design of Dominion appropriately feels like the culmination of the game, as each zone you visited in the rest of the game has a dedicated biome within the city limits. Additionally, the city is extremely dense and vertically oriented, with numerous places to climb and explore. "As you move throughout the missions and go through each of these different districts, you get more of the story that's evolving and unfolding," Nicholson says. Timmins and Nicholson share additional details, both about Dominion and the Timekeeper, which I won't disclose in the interest of maintaining surprises. However, Timmins is excited for players to explore this area. "There are a lot of important story moments that happen here in the city," he says. "It is a whole 'nother zone's worth of content. It's also the most content-packed. Being the city, we prioritized really making it feel like an urban sprawl. We slammed together lots of locations that are stacked on top of each other."  The main story will give you a tour of the various districts within Dominion, which, like Borderlands 4's open world, can be explored seamlessly. But players can go off the beaten path to experience additional content. "There's tons more side-missions that are located here as well," Timmins says. "Actually, some of my personal favorite side-missions happen to be in the city. And they're pretty lengthy, too. Some of the side-missions in Dominion, in particular, have a lot of chained missions that you end up spending a lot of time with some of these NPCs, and some of the relationships you actually make in the side-missions in the city, in particular – or at least for me – stand out as some of the more interesting ones.” There were plenty of more details to cover surrounding Dominion, but I withheld them from this story for the sake of avoiding spoilers. Suffice it to say, the environmental storytelling will shatter some of your preconceived notions you may have had coming into Dominion for the first time. If you're itching to storm Dominion and take down the Timekeeper, you don't have much longer to wait, as Borderlands 4 arrives on September 12.  For more on Borderlands 4, head to our magazine hub for the vast array of exclusive content.
Game Informer PreviewsJul 11
Everything We Know About Dominion, The Late-Game City Of Borderlands 4's Antagonist
Everything We Know About Dominion, The Late-Game City Of Borderlands 4's Antagonist Platform: PlayStation 5, Xbox Series X/S, Switch 2, PC Publisher: 2K Games Developer: Gearbox Software Release: September 12, 2025 ( PlayStation 5 , Xbox Series X/S , PC ), 2025 ( Switch 2 ) Borderlands 4 features a seamless open world , but your journey seems to culminate in an assault on the Timekeeper's stronghold city, Dominion. Though not much is known about the densest environment in Borderlands' history, Gearbox gave me a guided tour of the city. While I can't share everything I saw and heard, here is everything I can say about this late-game zone. In contrast to much of the rest of Borderlands 4's open world , you don't get access to Dominion until later in the game when you are on your march to confront the Timekeeper . Using an event that occurs on Pandora's moon, Elpis , which is now in the orbit of Kairos, the Vault Hunters can enter Dominion with the hopes of facing off against the Timekeeper. Once inside the walls of Dominion, things aren't as orderly as the Timekeeper's obsession would lead you to believe. The various Borderlands 4 factions are at each other's throats within the city limits, and, without spoiling anything, the city isn't quite what I expected coming in; the Timekeeper values order at any cost, but the city in which he bases his operations feels oddly chaotic. As I watch creative director Graeme Timmins give me a tour, the Timekeeper taunts his Vault Hunter in their ear.  And despite the Vault Hunters knocking on the door, he's keeping his composure. "Even though we're breaking in, really trying to get to the Timekeeper, he's still in his element," senior project producer Anthony Nicholson says. "He's still very calm and sure of his plan and what he has in store." But even if playing solo, the Vault Hunter storming Dominion won't be alone. "Obviously, you make a lot of friends along your way, and they're all going to help and contribute to your time here in the city," Timmins says.  Throughout the game, players can see Dominion in the distance, similar to how Hyrule Castle is always visible to players in The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild. It's intentionally placed so that players are aware of the goal, and it remains front-of-mind. "As you're starting your journey in Fadefields, you'll see that tower in the distance," global creative executive and former Game Informer editor-in-chief Andrew Reiner says. "That's actually there. That's not a skybox. It's not in the background. [You] can fly out of here, back to the starting point of the game. That content is always there." Dominion serves as the home of Borderlands 4's main antagonist, the Timekeeper The design of Dominion appropriately feels like the culmination of the game, as each zone you visited in the rest of the game has a dedicated biome within the city limits. Additionally, the city is extremely dense and vertically oriented, with numerous places to climb and explore. "As you move throughout the missions and go through each of these different districts, you get more of the story that's evolving and unfolding," Nicholson says. Timmins and Nicholson share additional details, both about Dominion and the Timekeeper, which I won't disclose in the interest of maintaining surprises. However, Timmins is excited for players to explore this area. "There are a lot of important story moments that happen here in the city," he says. "It is a whole 'nother zone's worth of content. It's also the most content-packed. Being the city, we prioritized really making it feel like an urban sprawl. We slammed together lots of locations that are stacked on top of each other."  The main story will give you a tour of the various districts within Dominion, which, like Borderlands 4's open world, can be explored seamlessly. But players can go off the beaten path to experience additional content. "There's tons more side-missions that are located here as well," Timmins says. "Actually, some of my personal favorite side-missions happen to be in the city. And they're pretty lengthy, too. Some of the side-missions in Dominion, in particular, have a lot of chained missions that you end up spending a lot of time with some of these NPCs, and some of the relationships you actually make in the side-missions in the city, in particular – or at least for me – stand out as some of the more interesting ones.” There were plenty of more details to cover surrounding Dominion, but I withheld them from this story for the sake of avoiding spoilers. Suffice it to say, the environmental storytelling will shatter some of your preconceived notions you may have had coming into Dominion for the first time. If you're itching to storm Dominion and take down the Timekeeper, you don't have much longer to wait, as Borderlands 4 arrives on September 12.  For more on Borderlands 4, head to our magazine hub for the vast array of exclusive content.
Game Informer PreviewsJul 11
Ghost Of Yōtei Has New Director Modes Inspired By Miike And Watanabe And Lots, Lots More
Ghost Of Yōtei Has New Director Modes Inspired By Miike And Watanabe And Lots, Lots More Developer Sucker Punch Productions’ Nate Fox and Jason Connell, co-directors of Ghost of Yōtei, appeared in voice today for an 18-minute presentation detailing a bit of the game’s story and new features ahead of its release on PlayStation 5 on October 2. In Ghost of Yōtei, players control Atsu, who the citizens of Ezo (which contains Mount Yōtei) seee as the Onryō, a ghost hellbent on revenge. The rumors circulating around her are not entirely untrue, as she is out for revenge and will stop at nothing to achieve it. Atsu’s family was slaughtered by the Yōtei Six, a group that she has sworn to kill one by one. After her family is killed, Atsu left Ezo, but has returned 16 years later fully prepared to act out her plan of vengeance.   The showcase for the game shows that, when returning to Atsu's childhood home, players can push a button to instantly travel back in time to when Atsu was a child to gain a better understanding of her past and her family. It's unclear where this ability is limited to, but the technology looks impressive. As players explore the world and get into trouble, they will collect cards that represent clues and potential locations to explore. When you interrogate a character after defeating them, you will apparently get a choice of cards. Some cards will push you towards interesting places with upgrades. Others will show you where to get into fights. The card system is how you will keep track of various missions. Also, as you fight on your path to take down the Yōtei Six, your reputation will grow, as will your bounty, making Atsu more susceptible to random passerby trying to start trouble. Atsu can also chase bounties herself, which will be part of the card collection system. In terms of exploration, Sucker Punch showed Atsu sliding down a hill, a new ability, and finding an Altar of Reflection, which gives her access to new abilities. You can buy maps to important locations from cartographers, but taking some inspiration from Zelda: Breath of the Wild, Atsu can also look through a spyglass in the distance and mark interesting locations players want to explore without ever entering a menu. As was the case in Tsushima, the wind will guide you to your new destination, but Fox and Connell point out that you can now guide your horse through paths of flowers to ride faster. Fox and Connell also made frequent points that the game is designed to be taken at whatever pace players want. Along with story missions and exploration, Atsu was briefly shown playing a game with coins sliding across a table and cutting down bamboo, just as Jin Sakai did in Ghost of Tsushima. When you’re not riding your horse and playing games, Atsu gets into fights and uses a broader range of weapons than Jin. She can use a katana, kusarigama, ōdachi, dual swords, or spear. She also has access to bows and arrows, muskets, kunai, bombs, and blinding powder. Her arsenal is deep. In one sequence shown, Atsu grabbed an enemy from a distance using a kusarigama to pull them close and kill them. Then she threw a spear at an enemy from a distance before closing in with dual swords to the rest of the group. She has no qualms with using whatever is necessary to win a fight. We also saw a stealth sequence where Atsu took out a collection of three enemies at high speed without alerting anyone, much like Batman was able to do in Arkham Knight. Weapons can be changed mid-combat, and it will apparently be necessary for each fight to move between weapons. We also learned at least a little more about animal companions. Atsu has a wolf with her, or can choose to have a wolf with her, and we saw a scene where the wolf helped her take down an enemy very quickly. In the open world, Atsu can set up camps to rest and cook food, but it will also make various characters and peddlers show up. The implication from the presentation is Atsu can set up camp and invite specific peddlers to join her where she can buy various tools, weapons, clothes. Sucker Punch showed off tons of various clothes options and combinations. These various character-based shops will let you know when they have new inventory. Two music tracks from the game from composer Toma Otowa are apparently immediately available on various streaming services. The soundtrack is using Eastern instrumentation with Western flavors to hopefully craft something unique and authentic. The game, at launch, will be playable in Japanese with English subtitles, and Sucker Punch has once again partnered with famed Japanese film director Akira Kurosawa’s estate for Kurosawa mode. This mode allows you to play the game in black and white, adds film grain and audio effects and more. But Kurosawa isn’t the only director Sucker Punch is working with. Miike mode, inspired by director  Takashi Miike (13 Assassins, Ichi the Killer), zooms the camera in closer and adds more blood and mud. Watanabe mode, inspired by director  Shin'ichirô Watanabe (Samaurai Champloo, Cowboy Bobop) lets players explore while listening to lo-fi beats that have been curated by Watanabe. Photo mode is also making a return, which is good news as it produced some of the most impressive photo mode images of the previous generation of consoles. One photo during the segment showed Atsu with a bear. Maybe it’s another friendly animal partner? Ghost of Yōtei is coming to PlayStation 5 on October 2. So far? It looks fantastic.  
Game Informer PreviewsJul 10
Ghost Of Yōtei Has New Director Modes Inspired By Miike And Watanabe And Lots, Lots More
Ghost Of Yōtei Has New Director Modes Inspired By Miike And Watanabe And Lots, Lots More Developer Sucker Punch Productions’ Nate Fox and Jason Connell, co-directors of Ghost of Yōtei, appeared in voice today for an 18-minute presentation detailing a bit of the game’s story and new features ahead of its release on PlayStation 5 on October 2. In Ghost of Yōtei, players control Atsu, who the citizens of Ezo (which contains Mount Yōtei) seee as the Onryō, a ghost hellbent on revenge. The rumors circulating around her are not entirely untrue, as she is out for revenge and will stop at nothing to achieve it. Atsu’s family was slaughtered by the Yōtei Six, a group that she has sworn to kill one by one. After her family is killed, Atsu left Ezo, but has returned 16 years later fully prepared to act out her plan of vengeance.   The showcase for the game shows that, when returning to Atsu's childhood home, players can push a button to instantly travel back in time to when Atsu was a child to gain a better understanding of her past and her family. It's unclear where this ability is limited to, but the technology looks impressive. As players explore the world and get into trouble, they will collect cards that represent clues and potential locations to explore. When you interrogate a character after defeating them, you will apparently get a choice of cards. Some cards will push you towards interesting places with upgrades. Others will show you where to get into fights. The card system is how you will keep track of various missions. Also, as you fight on your path to take down the Yōtei Six, your reputation will grow, as will your bounty, making Atsu more susceptible to random passerby trying to start trouble. Atsu can also chase bounties herself, which will be part of the card collection system. In terms of exploration, Sucker Punch showed Atsu sliding down a hill, a new ability, and finding an Altar of Reflection, which gives her access to new abilities. You can buy maps to important locations from cartographers, but taking some inspiration from Zelda: Breath of the Wild, Atsu can also look through a spyglass in the distance and mark interesting locations players want to explore without ever entering a menu. As was the case in Tsushima, the wind will guide you to your new destination, but Fox and Connell point out that you can now guide your horse through paths of flowers to ride faster. Fox and Connell also made frequent points that the game is designed to be taken at whatever pace players want. Along with story missions and exploration, Atsu was briefly shown playing a game with coins sliding across a table and cutting down bamboo, just as Jin Sakai did in Ghost of Tsushima. When you’re not riding your horse and playing games, Atsu gets into fights and uses a broader range of weapons than Jin. She can use a katana, kusarigama, ōdachi, dual swords, or spear. She also has access to bows and arrows, muskets, kunai, bombs, and blinding powder. Her arsenal is deep. In one sequence shown, Atsu grabbed an enemy from a distance using a kusarigama to pull them close and kill them. Then she threw a spear at an enemy from a distance before closing in with dual swords to the rest of the group. She has no qualms with using whatever is necessary to win a fight. We also saw a stealth sequence where Atsu took out a collection of three enemies at high speed without alerting anyone, much like Batman was able to do in Arkham Knight. Weapons can be changed mid-combat, and it will apparently be necessary for each fight to move between weapons. We also learned at least a little more about animal companions. Atsu has a wolf with her, or can choose to have a wolf with her, and we saw a scene where the wolf helped her take down an enemy very quickly. In the open world, Atsu can set up camps to rest and cook food, but it will also make various characters and peddlers show up. The implication from the presentation is Atsu can set up camp and invite specific peddlers to join her where she can buy various tools, weapons, clothes. Sucker Punch showed off tons of various clothes options and combinations. These various character-based shops will let you know when they have new inventory. Two music tracks from the game from composer Toma Otowa are apparently immediately available on various streaming services. The soundtrack is using Eastern instrumentation with Western flavors to hopefully craft something unique and authentic. The game, at launch, will be playable in Japanese with English subtitles, and Sucker Punch has once again partnered with famed Japanese film director Akira Kurosawa’s estate for Kurosawa mode. This mode allows you to play the game in black and white, adds film grain and audio effects and more. But Kurosawa isn’t the only director Sucker Punch is working with. Miike mode, inspired by director  Takashi Miike (13 Assassins, Ichi the Killer), zooms the camera in closer and adds more blood and mud. Watanabe mode, inspired by director  Shin'ichirô Watanabe (Samaurai Champloo, Cowboy Bobop) lets players explore while listening to lo-fi beats that have been curated by Watanabe. Photo mode is also making a return, which is good news as it produced some of the most impressive photo mode images of the previous generation of consoles. One photo during the segment showed Atsu with a bear. Maybe it’s another friendly animal partner? Ghost of Yōtei is coming to PlayStation 5 on October 2. So far? It looks fantastic.  
Game Informer PreviewsJul 10
Mycopunk Early Access Preview—Mushroom Mania
Mycopunk Early Access Preview—Mushroom ManiaWhile Mycopunk is certainly geared towards multiplayer, I was consistently impressed by how well the game works as a single-player experience.
Previews – CGMagazineJul 10
Going Hands-On With Of Ash And Steel—Twisted Metal
Going Hands-On With Of Ash And Steel—Twisted MetalI was immediately intrigued by Of Ash and Steel when I saw it, specifically because of how ambitious it looked for an indie project. For what appears to be the first game by developer Fire & Frost, its size and scope as an action RPG seemed pretty impressive, and I’m always on board with indie […]
Previews – CGMagazineJul 10