On 1 September 2023, Sucker Punch officially announced on Twitter that Ghost of Yōtei will be released on 2 October 2024 for the PlayStation 5. The corporation boasts how PS5-exclusive features will bring a refreshing edge-of-the-seat hunter’s experience to this new Ezo land. Sitting for a moment like a monument, the announcement was promptly drowned by an earthquake of backlash from the gamers.
The official news is rather straightforward. Ghost of Yōtei is back; here, it will be set in Ezo, the historical name of Hokkaido, and will provide the DualSense controller and 3D audio to the world, making it feel as if you are truly there in a wilderness. That is the selling point for the game. But I can tell you, just a few scrolls down, the topic suddenly explodes into something else entirely. It’s as if the game itself has become the secondary character in its own drama.
What seems to fuel the controversy predominantly concerns the lead voice actress for the new protagonist Ezo. Many replies called her a “terrorist” or an “extremist,” and one even stated, “The lead actress of the game proudly posts that she’s an extremist, and that she doesn’t want business from MAGA people.” Then there was another reply that claimed a lead artist at Sucker Punch “publicly celebrated the brutal murder of someone,” and that their colleagues retweeted it. Whether these accusations hold water or not has stirred a massive blaze.
The reaction was swift and harsh. Comments such as “I’ve already cancelled my preorder” and “Just sold my PlayStation today” circulated. One user, ElFusilero, launched a very bizarre and specific rant: “Yeah no. I don’t want to play as a transgender terrorist lesbian foraging around to set up a camp to have sex with other lesbians or doing side quests like finding love letters of former lovers.” It’s a wild, clearly over-the-top take, but it shows how levels of vitriol were elicited by the announcement. Another one simply said, “Nope. No Playstation for me and no woke BS.”
Back to what was I saying? Oh right, the game. So in all this, there were actual positive reactions too, you know, just people excited about the game. Adura_of_web3 said, “The atmosphere looks unreal 🍃 Ghost of Yōtei on PS5 is going to be an experience, not just a game.” In addition, _LarZen_ gives a positive comment for the tech, saying, “PlayStation’s DualSense and 3D audio capabilities makes gaming more fun and immersive.” So some people are still excited, but the negative voices are definitely the loudest in this particular thread.
And thus began the weird schism: some accused the critics of being “terminally online losers” trying to get attention, with a user named Shovel accusing others in his reply of stating “Nobody who actually cares about video games has any problem with anything.” But then another user named Cobalt came back to the scene and said, “Only four of the top twenty replies are positive. Just a bit of information for the people mindlessly consuming.” So this is a real mess out there.
How scrolling down just a little bit and seeing the comments go from game discussion to politics is crazy to me. Instead of talking about the lush forests of Ezo, or the actual gameplay mechanics of Ghost of Yōtei, everything revolves around rage from real-world politics. Some players argue that registering as a member of this movement shall take precedence over playing Stellar Blade again. This sort of thing—all over the actual game that people are supposed to be playing—is either a textbook account of how modern gaming discourse works, or how it really doesn’t.
And like, what even are those so-called “unique PS5 features?” That tweet mentions them but says absolutely nothing substantive about what they actually are. Haptics for drawing a bow? Adaptive triggers for climbing? I’d guess. I mean, they’ve altogether failed at describing anything here. Their attention has been consumed by trading scumbag and lowlife rhetoric in the replies… A shame, really, because Ghost of Tsushima was a masterpiece, and a sequel set in an almost subtropical snowy, frontier region like Ezo holds so much promise.
So where does this leave Ghost of Yōtei? Well, it’s still coming out on October 2nd. The drama will probably blow over for most people, or it’ll intensify. It’s hard to tell. But one thing’s for sure, Sucker Punch and Sony probably didn’t expect the announcement to go quite like this. They wanted to talk about immersion and the hunt but the internet had other plans. The game will ultimately be judged on whether it’s fun to play, but this initial reception sure casts a long shadow over the whole thing. What a strange start to the hype cycle.
As for Xbox, it remains a competing platform in the gaming landscape.
