Ghost of Yotei was released just a week before PAX AUS 2025, but it was announced that Rob Davis, Campaign Director at Sucker Punch Productions, would be making an appearance at the convention and participating in a panel on Saturday. Even better for Dylan and Ciaran, who were at PAX, they managed to secure some time with Rob to discuss the game.
In their interview with Rob Davis, he discusses the influences behind the game, the classic samurai films that inspired this tale of vengeance, but also how the team at Sucker Punch are always looking to inject more humanity into their games as much as possible, and how essential actors and the collaborative process are for that to work.
As part of this discussion, Rob also talks about creating an open world that is much different from his previous one, and how this differs from Ghost of Tsushima, as the team wanted players to feel less obligated to do everything if they didn’t want to, and focus on making them feel like a wanderer.
How did Sucker Punch decide on Atsu as the lead, and that revenge was the right story fit? Especially when compared to Tsushima, because they’re very different.
Rob Davis:
Sure. We always wanted to do an origin story, and we love origin stories because you actually get to go on the adventure as the player — the narrative, the gameplay, and the character all grow together.Nate Fox and Jason Connell — both creative directors — are kind of the godfathers of the Ghost franchise, and they approach it from very different, equally inspiring perspectives. Nate has a theatrical background, so he’s super into performance, story, and character. And he really wanted to tell a tale of vengeance! Jason was the former art director at Sucker Punch, so he’s about world-building — the lighting, the atmosphere, and the sense of place. And Jason was interested in Hokkaido, so they began building a pitch: a tale of vengeance with an exciting new hero, but also in an area north of the Shogunate in Hokkaido — beyond the rule of law — where things could be wild and lethal.
You put those two things together, and it was a really exciting pitch. It started to feel like films such as Yojimbo, Lady Snowblood, or even Lone Wolf and Cub— and that was a really exciting pitch for us. A tale of vengeance beyond the south, in a world filled with bounties, ronin, and danger. For us, working on all the missions and the open world, it was a very inspiring pitch because we started from this place of a simple story, with a foundation of simple story, complex characters, which gave us both direction and room for nuance, growth, and adventure.
We had the pleasure of being at your PAX AUS 2025 panel yesterday — it was fantastic. You mentioned a few times that “trusting the player” is part of your design philosophy. Have there been any pleasant surprises from that approach, especially now that players are diving into Ghost of Yotei?
Rob Davis:
Absolutely. We talk about “playing wide” versus “playing narrow.” Both types of players are equally valuable.When I first joined the studio, our head, Brian Fleming, told me, “You’re going to be surprised how many different types of players we have.” We have what we call “Gold Path Rabbits” — players who breeze through the main story, drawn to the samurai cinema and the vengeful action spectacle moments. They’re usually very curious about what’s going to happen next, and they often go exploring after the credits. Then we have what I think we called “Hokkaido Time Travel Tourists,” or “Tsushima Time Travel Tourists,” players who enjoy the experience of feeling like they’re transported back in history. And our most common player type is those who are a mix of the two.
Brian also told me — this isn’t God of War. That game is still very wide and has tons of exploration and inspiring moments, but you can’t steer the player the same way. He said, “You’re going ot to have to rethink things a little bit, and think more in terms of the player emotions and the player goals in the game and be okay with taking your hand off the wheel.
We didn’t expect players to play quite this wide. It’s a huge compliment to our writing and design teams that players are so drawn to exploration, curiosity, and discovery.
I actually felt a bit overwhelmed at first because it’s such a vast world. Then I realised it’s best to just explore — to just be Atsu. That freedom really clicked for me.
Rob Davis:
That’s exactly it. We actually started from an emotional place, rather than just a pure game design one.When you watch films like Yojimbo, a stranger wanders into town, and then by the end of the film, wanders off for the next adventure. Spoilers for Yojimbo. For a long time, we wanted to capture that wandering feeling, which isn’t necessarily a precise game design term. It is more of an emotional and tonal goal.
Every time something risked breaking that wandering feeling, we had to take our hands off the wheel and trust the player. We could have put more UI on things, we could have had a formal journal in the game, but we optd not to do those things. Because we know from the films, and we know from out own epericne wandering around Hokkaido, that the feeling is quite adventurous and somehow curious, at the same time.
It plays a little differently from Tsushima and other open-world games, but its been wonderful to see how much people come back and say, “Oh, I really did just feel like I was wandering.” And I hope that we’ve tapped into a unique tone and emotion that you may not be able to play somewhere else.
“We wanted to capture that wandering feeling”
Something else that stood out during your panel — you spoke about the performance process, and how actors like Erika Ishii added so much to the character. You often hear about collaborations in film and TV, but not as much in games. Was that a different kind of experience for you?
Rob Davis:
I’ve personally been fortunate enough to work on games where actors are an incredibly important part of the creative process. And our love for the actors is genuine; replicating that respect for another part of the craft is really important to us.On most of the games I’ve worked on, we get the performance back and it’s a little longer or different than expected. As a developer, you can either shy away from that or lean into it. I will always lean in. If we need to replace something, if we need to retune something, that’s fine, we want the genuine performance from the actor. They turned up, they felt that character and what they did was what they believed was the best moment of embodying that personality.
The great thing about Sucker Punch’s engine — built since Infamous: Second Son — is how fast we can repace and re-edit things. Which is sort of a point of pride for Sucker Punch: our efficiency, and our ability to pivot, if we need to.
Instead of trying to be too precise with what we expect out of a performance, we try to adapt and own it, and bleed into it as much as possible. Which is something that we’ve gotten faster at, developing mission, developing the tools for the engine; it’s allowed us to never worry too much, and instead take it as an opportunity.
“Our love for the actors is genuine”
The quality of performance in games now is incredible — especially compared to fifteen years ago, when VO sessions were often just reading scripts line by line.
Rob Davis:
Exactly. Back in 2005–2008, the narrative often came in during the last six months of a project.These days, players’ narrative expectations — and ours — are so much higher. For Ghost of Yotei, we integrated narrative development from day one to get the highest possible performance, the highest possible tuning, the highest possible honour of the character, and allowed us to take as many opportunities and iterations as possible through the course of development.
Hopefully, what players come out of the experience thinking is “we brought Atsu to life, we saw them develop, we saw Atsu grow with us.”
As someone prone to open-world burnout, I often explore everything early and burn out before finishing the story. How do you balance giving players freedom to explore while encouraging them to see Atsu’s story through?
Rob Davis:
Great question. We talk about that balance a lot.Here’s a simple example: there are onsens in the game with little riddles near them. We debated whether to add checklists or rewards for solving them. In the end, we said, “Let go.” Let’s just have moments of beauty on these. Do we really need another itchy checklist mechanic on this? Can we just let Ghost be Ghost? We didn’t want players to feel like everything was a must-do. Let the players appreciate it at a more human level, and just let it be a moment in Japan that feels sweet.
We don’t want players to rush through the game, and feel like everything is a ‘must do.’ I want you to feel like you’re a wanderer, who’s going through your journey. If you’re inspired by bounties, and that’s part of the fantasy for you, go after them, have a blast in them, if you’re most inspired by the story, focus on Atsu’s tale of revenge and vengeance and the emotions of the characters along the way. The game isn’t going to judge you for playing one way or another.
One of my favourite questlines in Ghost of Tsushima was Lady Masako’s — it showed the emotional cost of violence. When developing a more direct revenge story this time, how do you balance that tone while keeping subtle, human moments?
Rob Davis:
Ghost is samurai cinema brought to life — but it’s also surprisingly heartwarming. Erika’s performance as Atsu actually encouraged us to lean further into those heartwarming moments even more. We even reworked parts of the Yotei grasslands to make them feel like Atsu’s home environment.Whenever the game headed too much in a direction of pure action, or too puzzly in some cases, it’s been really important for us to take a breath, stop for a minute and ask ourselves, “Who are the characters behind these moments? And what are the human elements behind those?”
We start with simple stories, complex characters. And on Ghost of Yotei we actually had character bios and some goals for the characters. So our hope is that while you explore the world, you’ll have thrilling combat, and some cool puzzles and interesting mysteries in the world. But there’s no doubt in mind that the human characters is what’s stick with people the longest. We’re always recording eary dialogue, we’re always looking at the scripts of the game, and asking ourselves, “Can we get more humanity out of this moment?”
And I don’t want to spoil anything for you, but there are a couple of missionins in the game that put their thumb as hard on the scale as possible in the human moments, and I hope you enjoy them.
“Let’s just have moments of beauty on these. Do we really need another itchy checklist mechanic on this?
You’ve mentioned a lot of classic samurai revenge influences — but what about modern revenge films? Have you seen movies like Oldboy or Kill Bill?
Rob Davis:
I don’t know if this is a good example, but I really liked Dexter, because you got to see inside the character and there was a real humanity behind his code, it was real interesting to watch.I didn’t really look at it for this game, but I do think people will look back and Dexter and think “that was quite a nuanced character, especially for the time.”
Thank you, Rob Davis, for taking the time out of your schedule to chat with us about Ghost of Yotei and working on the game with the team at Sucker Punch.
