Ghost of Yotei Director Reveals Cut Mechanic, Double the Game Size

It turns out that Ghost of Yotei was originally much bigger than what we got, but it sounds like the team cut it out for the right reasons.

Ghost of Yotei was Sony’s big first-party exclusive of the year, and it’s been getting rave reviews from players. The game sold around 3.3 million copies in just one month, making it a rather big success for Sony so far.

With those kinds of numbers, Ghost of Yotei has become one of 2025’s biggest action-adventure games, but it turns out that it actually could have been quite bigger. We’ll put a little spoiler warning in here, read at your own risk!

As players will know, Ghost of Yotei has a feature that allows you to time travel back to Atsu’s childhood, which you can do from simply holding down the touchpad on your PS5 controller.

This allows you to see the world during the time when she was a child, which is huge when you consider a large part of Ghost of Yotei’s plot is seeing how events from her childhood have shaped her as an adult.

Sucker Punch Productions

The time travel feature is only available in a few pre-determined locations, however Sucker Punch creative director Jason Connell has explained how this was originally going to be a feature that was available across the entire game.

“It started off as let’s do that in as many places as we can, maybe everywhere,” Connell explained in an episode of Creator to Creator with Pluribus and Breaking Bad creator Vince Gilligan.

However, Connell then said that “you are doubling your art” when designing a feature like this, because you have to account for both time periods, and so it had to be shortened in the end.

“While it’s this amazing feature, it saddened me on the day I had to kill that,” Connell adds.

"However, he then calls it the “right choice”, choosing to emphasise its use as a powerful narrative tool rather than a broader gameplay mechanic.

"He then finishes this point by saying that “in the final game, it’s perfectly fitting where it needs to be.”

Fair enough, really. Having to redesign pretty much the entire game world of Ghost of Yotei for Atsu’s childhood perspective would have proven to be a monumental task for Sucker Punch Productions.

In related news, Ghost of Yotei is adding a multiplayer Legends mode similar to its predecessor, Ghost of Tsushima.

It’ll be coming in 2026, and will add new content to the game for free.