'Ghost of Yōtei' Developer Striving For Authentic Depiction Of Hokkaido And Ainu Culture
This comes from the latest entry in a series of PlayStation blog posts, where Fox described their trips to Japan to learn more about Hokkaido, the setting of the game, and more specifically, the Ainu culture, an indigenous group primarily inhabiting the area. The Sucker Punch team at Matsuamae Castle, Hokkaido
'When setting a game in Hokkaido, we knew a crucial element was doing our best to represent Ainu culture in a respectful way.' Fox wrote, 'Thankfully, we'd connected with an Ainu cultural adviser before setting out on our reference gathering trip [and] travelled up a nearby mountain and got to know each other while foraging for vegetables.'
'That night we resolved to put foraging into our new game, we wanted players to be able to share the experience we were lucky enough to have experienced.'
According to Fox, the team also spent some time in the Oshima Peninsula, which was the domain of the Matsuamae clan in the 1600s, noting that even today, the Wajin people, the main ethic group in Japan, seldom live as far North as Hokkaido. 'We've tried to mimic that quality in the game, leaning into areas of wilderness between homesteads,' he added.
The team also visited the Nibutani Ainu Museum, which helped them 'get a sense for sorts of objects [seen] in the game and how they were used,' alongside learning about Edo-period Japan by visiting places in Honshu such as Nikko Toshogu Shrine, to which they received a blessing for the game from the enshrined deity, Tokugawa Ieyasu.
Despite the game being a few months from release, it's already clear how much respect the Sucker Punch team has paid to portraying the games setting as accurately as possible, a move that will surely serve to enrich Ghost of Yōtei's world when the game launches on 2 October 2025 for the PS5.
Kevin is a reformed PC Master Race gamer with a penchant for franchise 'duds' like Darksiders III and Dead Space 3 . He has made it his life-long mission to play every single major game release – lest his wallet dies trying. Ghost of Yotei Sucker Punch sucker punch productions
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