As we agreed in our previous article, a visit to Japan was an crucial part of the creation of the world Ghost of Yōtei.
Sucker Punch reference assembly team from left to right: Nate Fox, Ryuhei Katami, Jason Connell, Ian Ryan, Joanna Wang, Rob Davis.
Sucker Punch is an American company and we are aware that we are not naturally equipped with cultural knowledge to revive feudal Japan. To do this, we need a lot of support. Fortunately, we are also part of PlayStation, for Ghost of Tsushima we were lucky to receive constant feedback from our colleagues in Tokyo. As you can guess, the same applies to the spirit of Yōtei. Only this time we expanded our list of advisers.
While establishing a game in Hokkaido, we knew that the key element was to try to represent Ain’s culture with respect. Fortunately, we joined with Ain’s cultural advisor before we set off on our reference journey and was nice enough to introduce us to her family. A group of us traveled near the nearby mountain and met while feeding vegetables. It was great, everyone from Sucker Punch stopped taking pictures and grubby our hands. We started to really look at the plants under our feet. It was a wonderful way to establish modern friends and start our journey in science about Ain culture. That night we decided to put in our modern game, we wanted players to share the experience we were lucky to experience.
Yukiko Kaizawa leads the Sucker Punch team that feeds the vegetables.
Yukiko Kaizawa shows Joanna Wang and me how to sort vegetables as part of turning them into lunch.
We also had the opportunity to examine the shows at the Nibutani Ain Museum during a conversation with our adviser. This really helped us understand the type of objects that we saw in the game and how to exploit them.
Ain Nibutani Museum.
The discovery of the Oshima Peninsula also watched us a great look at the life of the Matsuamae clan, which was there when our game takes place. It was engaging to see the spread of cherry trees on the peninsula, brought there from Honshu, but infrequent in the rest of the island. This really told a story about how rarely Hokkaido settled in 1603 by Wajin people. We tried to imitate this quality in the game, leaning into the areas of wild nature between the houses. Of course, on the clan of the Oshima Matsumae peninsula, they were very present, bringing a sense of Honshu with them.
Matsumae clan castle.
Our producer, Ryuhei, took us around Honshu to educate us about Edo culture. Here are some photos we took.
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My favorite stop was the impressive Nikko Toshogu sanctuary. There we received a blessing for the game from a saved deity, Tokugawa Ieyasu. Omamori and EMA, which we received proudly in our studio on a high shelf south. This is a constant reminder of the time spent on a research travel. While our Hokkaido version is fictitious, a sense of authenticity that we try to create, has roots in this real world.
Sucker Punch office
For anyone who reads this, thinking that he may want to visit Hokkaido, my advice is: do it. Japan is a place where many of us go into our imagination so that there is a dream come true.
