A week before its launch, Sucker Punch has revealed Ghost of Yotei has an impressive next-gen feature. In a recent interview, the studio explained how the sequel makes major performance improvements over Ghost of Tsushima.
Ghost of Yotei Has Next-Gen Draw Distance Feature
In a September 23 interview, Ghost of Yotei Art Director Joanna Wang revealed that the upcoming RPG has a groundbreaking draw-distance feature. According to the Sucker Punch developer, the sequel can load in millions of assets, so players can experience a seamless world. Wang even describes the game being able to pre-load individual leaves and blades of grass in the game’s Hokkaido map.
“For Yotei, we realized very quickly that we needed to improve draw distance. To portray the vastness of the Hokkaido map, we needed to be able to render distant views with high fidelity and accurate depth of space. We can now load millions of assets, with tens of thousands visible on-screen at once. Real-time particles like leaves, snow, ash, and fog number in the hundreds of thousands across both near and far distances.”
The new tech sounds incredibly next-gen. Given how far Ghost of Tsushima pushed the PS4 in 2020, it’s not too surprising to see Sucker Punch push the limits of what the PS5 can do.
However, draw distance has long been an issue with many modern games. So if Ghost of Yotei is able to pull it off, we could see one of the first true next-gen gaming experiences that many have been waiting for since the PlayStation 5 launched five years ago.
Yotei Will Have Interactive Terrain Effects As Well
The Ghost of Yotei director also revealed that the map will feature terrain deformation and interactive weather elements. For example, players will be able to knock snow off objects that have accumulated it from weather events. While that might seem like a small detail on the surface, it’s actually a pretty big improvement over Ghost of Tsushima’s more static environment.
“We were also able to improve the look of starry skies, auroras, time-of-day transitions, grass rendering, and terrain deformation. For example, realistically kicking snow off trees. Altogether, these make the world feel more alive and interactive.” It’s unclear what other terrain deformation might be in the game. However, Wang stressed the studio’s focus on making the Ghost of Yotei map feel interactive and living.
Given previous Ghost of Yotei feature leaks, it appears that Sucker Punch is really going out of their way to improve on Tsushima in a big way. However, on a purely technical level, we could see a new benchmark for AAA gaming with the sequel.
Ghost of Yotei will launch on the PS5 starting October 2, 2025.
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