The quest structure is open in Ghost of Yōtei. Is it structured as wholly open where there are six people you must kill and you can go after them in any order or direction you want?
So to be clear – it's not that. It's not that you can pick any order of the six. And I'll tell you why. Nate and I and the studio – and you've played a lot of our games – we really believe in the structure of story. It's really important to us that we develop great characters with good arcs with beginning, middles, and ends. You got to have that, right? That is true. There is an arc with a structure in place. But at the same time, one of the aspects from Ghost of Tsushima that we wanted to not only carry forward but just do an even better job of, was that sense of curiosity and freedom of exploration that the game delivers upon.
And so you have this delicate impasse of, if the story's just perfectly linear and you are just forced on the gold path all the time, you might lose that opportunity for people who just want to explore the landscape. But if you go too far on the other side, you might lose the structure of the story. So, the balance, without giving away all the details, is there is a structure there. A very important structure. But the way it's presented in the first few hours of the game, especially that first section, is it is really about us delivering to you which aspects of the Yōtei Six you want to go after first. There are some options that might lead you in some interesting areas.
I kind of mentioned it a little bit in the State of Play: if you're into sort of ninjas and snow stuff, then this story over here might be more interesting for you. If you're into these castles and these fire weapons, then this area might be for you. But you can bop back and forth between the two of those major areas.
There's a bit more choice in there, but there's still a linear story structure that we really believe in to make sure that Atsu's vengeance quest tears at the heartstrings. That's the ultimate goal.
