Ghost of Yotei has already been critically acclaimed and commercially successful, surpassing even Ghost of Tsushima. This is mainly due to the improved open world in the sequel. Where Tsushima was filled with basic open-world points of interest that served as boxes to check, Yotei made each one feel interesting and gave out a useful reward for each.
However, traversing the open world remained mostly the same. You can fast travel between settlements and points of interest, take your horse to unexplored areas and use the grappling hook to reach higher places. Yotei had more climbing than Tsushima, and it seems the developers were toying with a “climb any surface” feature like in The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild.
Wild ghost
At a GDC 2026 panel, directors Nate Fox and Jason Connell explained how Ghost of Yotei's development expanded from the conceptualization phase to full-scale production (thanks GamesRadar). This involved creating game pillars and adding or removing them if they didn't fit the overall vision of the game.
Connell explained that “if something doesn't go well, we can be like 'does that make you feel like a walking ronin?' And if the answer is no, and it's a bad feature, why are you working on it? Just move on.” One of the features cut through this process was making every surface climbable, like in Breath of the Wild.
Fox called in and said he was playing Breath of the Wild and thought every game should include its climbing feature. The developers started working on it and created a version that even worked in Ghost of Tsushima. However, they later realized that the system might not work for the game's open world, as it had too many walls.
“If we gave you a tool that said you can climb anywhere, and you started using it and you found bupkiss, it pretty much trains you to stop climbing, because exploration wasn't worth it,” Fox added. So the team decided to go back to the original climbing mechanic. You know, those climbable ledges highlighted by bird poop.
- Released
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October 2, 2025
- ESRB
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Mature 17+ / Blood and Gore, Drug Reference, Intense Violence, Language, Partial Nudity, Use of Alcohol
- Publisher
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Sony Interactive Entertainment
