Ghost of Yōtei

Developer Sucker Punch Productions is, in some ways, underrated. It is a successful developer that has released popular games, but it doesn’t immediately rise to the surface when discussing Sony’s deep bench of first-party developers. And frankly, I think that’s unfair. Its Sly Cooper trilogy is fantastic, and it expertly tackled open-world superhero games both before Insomniac became closely affiliated with the genre with Spider-Man and the MCU became an acronym we all used with reckless abandon. Sucker Punch Productions is an immensely talented studio that releases games infrequently, which is why the imminent launch of Ghost of Yōtei is so exciting.

The follow-up to 2020’s Ghost of Tsushima is not a sequel, really. More of a successor. Yōtei takes place hundreds of years after Tsushima and follows Atsu, the titular ghost, who is on a mission of revenge against the Yōtei six that killed her family. “The game takes place in 1603, which is a pretty interesting time in Japanese history,” co-director Nate Fox says. “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.”