Ghost of Yotei: Complete(ly mid) Edition

     Ghost of Yotei is a game that is less than the sum of its parts. In my review of the game last year, I expressed a sense of profound disappointment with the game. Afterwards, I asked myself if I was just blinded by nostalgia for Ghost of Tsushima and no, I was not. I do in fact prefer Tsushima. Earlier this month, the Complete Edition came out, and I decided to give it a whirl. Having finished the campaign content and gotten a taste of the other stuff, I now come to you all with a fresh-ish perspective on a game that is pretty good.

Just like last time, I don't have my own screenshots because the game is a PS5 exclusive.

Revisiting Ezo

    Knowing the DLC was coming out in October, I decided to give Yotei a replay to see if my opinion on it had broadly changed in the intervening years. I couldn't find a lot of good criticism online, but I did enjoy this video from Peter Spittech (and its companion piece on Nebula) that I feel goes into why the main story ultimately doesn't land the same way its predecessors did-a particular weakness I noticed was just how rare it is for multiple NPCs to interact with each other. Even on NPC-themed sidequests, there were usually multiple named characters at play, be it Yuna and her brother Taka, Sensei Ishikawa and his wayward student Tomoe, or Lady Masako and the conspirators who killed her entire family. 

    Instead, Yotei is a game that shines in its small moments-spying small landmarks in the distance, going "I wonder what's there?" and then finding out that its usually something, whether its a fight or a painting or even just a cool hat. I was surprised to remember just how much I had forgotten-the couple you protect during childbirth, where the animal sanctuary was, or how many fun little exploration shrines there were. Ghost of Yotei is much more successful in delivering the fantasy of being a wandering cowboy, out on the plains, with a list of names and a plan.

    Speaking of that list, after watching Spittech's Nebula video, I was also struck by how badly the game wanted to be Breath of the Wild: the focus on exploration, of finding your upgrades, cooking and crafting, and a list of objectives that the game's marketing pretends you can do in any order. All games bear the scars of their development, but this one bears them more than most.

I don't want to make any claims of false advertising, but this ad from PlayStation Europe is misrepresenting the game. You kill the Snake first, he's the tutorial boss. The only choice you as a player get is which foe you take on second. And frankly given the intended arc of Atsu's character I think the game should have been more linear to support it. She can go from forgiving one member of the Yotei Six to spiting her last remaining family member to kill another if you get the order wrong.

    The other thing I noticed returning to Yotei has that I had gotten good. I decided to not rush to get all of the weapons at the start, instead building up each new weapon as I ventured into its area. Because of that, I got more comfortable with each of them, learning new tricks as I went along. Between that and rushing an armor that is, frankly, kinda busted, I felt a lot more comfortable fighting my foes for most of the game (those gun line guys can still go fuck themselves).

    But enough about the old shit, let's hear about the new shit!

Most Wanted Mode

I will freely admit I was excited to see that Jin was coming back. I love that guy.

    Aside from the new area and campaign, the big feature of the Complete Edition is Most Wanted Mode, a roguelike mode wherein you go through a series of combat challenges pulled from the base game (existing enemy camps, duels against old minibosses, etc). in an attempt to take out members of the Yotei Six. As you progress through a given series of fights, you unlock additional traits for that run, and also gain coins for the purposes of meta-progression and boss tokens to unlock alternate looks for Atsu's armor in the main game.

Sweet Liberty, the blood!

    It's fine. It basically works, and the complaints I have with are matters of personal taste-it feels too grindy to get any of the fun unlocks, individual runs are too short for my taste (an individual Hunt lasts about fifteen to twenty minutes before everything resets), and the fact that it's bolted onto the side of a much larger game means there isn't really any narrative progression to speak of. If you can't get enough of Ghost of Yotei's combat, here's a lot more of it (I enjoyed some wacky bullshit involving a kusarigama that made people get hit by lightning, but alas, nothing gold can stay.) However, for many, and especially me, the key draw to the Complete Edition is

The Story DLC

    Major expansions have an interesting place in a game's life cycle. It's the point in development where the game is largely done, the developers are comfortable with their tools, and they're thinking about their next project. This is also where you get ideas that later become staples in future installments: Borderlands adopted a tabletop aesthetic for Tiny Tina's Assault on Dragon Keep which became the narrative framework of the spin-off Tiny Tina's Woinderlands, Dishonored's The Knife of Dunwall and The Brigmore Witches expanded options for nonlethal play, Dishonored 2's Death of the Outsider offered a massive variety of mission types, and Fallout New Vegas' DLC all explored alternate types of stories that could be told in the Fallout universe. This was also true for Ghost of Tsushima, which had its own expansion in the Director's Cut, which took you to

Iki Island

    It is an unspoken rule when designing game worlds that each area has to have a different theme; your lava world, ice world, etc. Ghost of Tsushima follows this rule as much as its high-fidelity graphics will allow, from the bright optimism of the first island to the frozen hellscape of the final one. Iki, which can be unlocked as early as the beginning of Act 2 (but I prefer to wait until finishing everything on Tsushima proper), is a jungle, a wild untamed place full of pirates and criminals. It is these vagabonds-against whom Jin's own father died in an attempt to stamp them out-whom our hero must ally with against a new Mongol threat. There's lots of fun stuff in the narrative that I don't want to spoil, but the game touches on themes like trauma, imperialism, and even class consciousness here. It's some really neat stuff, and a delightful treat to end your playthrough on.

picture yoinked from Gamingbolt

    

    Crucially for the purposes of our analysis, several things found within Iki island were clearly beta tests for things found in Yotei. The ones that I noticed are:

• Unmarked quests that you just have to pay attention to find. 
• Using your grappling hook to pull stuff down.
• Controller-gimmick based instrument play.
• Charging your horse at people.
• A set of armor that makes your perfect parries more powerful but reduces the parry window.
• A red dye merchant who has to be unlocked by doing a special task. 
• Enemies that switch up what weapons they're using.
• Enemies that passively boost their comrade.
• Firing multiple shots at once from your bow (weirdly, this also only survived in the DLC).

    Overall, Iki is fucking fantastic. Can't recommend it and Tsushima as a whole enough.

Ashoro Foothills

     It is an unspoken rule when designing game worlds that each area has to have a different theme; your lava world, ice world, etc. Ghost of Yotei follows this rule to the best of its ability, from the wide-open fields of the Yotei Grasslands to the smoldering embers of Ishikari plain, from the frozen hellscape of Teshio Ridge to the storm-battered Oshima Coast. The new region, the Ashoro Foothills, is unique in that its "theme" is not inherently tied to the natural landscape. Rather, it's an abbatoir.

Doesn't really look like a good place to bring the kids.

    The story of the land is simple: the foothills were once the domain of tutorial boss The Snake, used to feed Lord Saito's war machine. With him gone, his followers-the Vipers-have stripped the land bare, felling trees and hunting down everything larger than a mouse. Your Golden Bird ally (a signal that there's something neat nearby) is found in a cage. Your wolf companion is shot and hauled to be eaten. The first bounty I encountered was a horse thief whom I dueled amidst a puddle of blood. The largest enemy stronghold in the area is a literal slaughterhouse.

    Subsistence is the key theme of this area. Each area has its own unique Rare Resource picked off of fallen enemies-Shinobi Steel, Oni mask fragments, or gun parts. For the Foothills, it's Viper rations, which are both used to upgrade the DLC-exclusive armor and also in a new  cooking system that uses proper recipes, instead of just deciding whether to eat fish or mushrooms over and over. 

Taken from Noobstew.

    The enemies themselves are nothing to write home about; there's a gimmick where their barbed arrows need to be pulled out before you can use your special abilities (including, crucially, healing) and you now have the ability to steal weapons from big guys to peel the armor off of Extra Big Guys, which the Power of the Dualsense always renders a cromulent and satisfying experience. Beyond that and a sidequest which changes the rules of the Zeni Hajiki minigame, the other Big Change is that the two new sets of armor in the DLC change your L1+R1 ability, suggesting a willingness to experiment with swapping out special abilities in the future.

    The actual zone is also nice, fun to explore and densely packed, even if its smaller than the Island I'm comparing it against. The story of the area-of nature reclaiming its place-is nice even if the process of doing so is somewhat generic, and the final reward (which I won't spoil here) is well worth the effort. One final thing before going to the main story that I found interesting was the game's highlighting of Snake Contenders-seemingly one-note bounties that nonetheless get a title card their main game contemporaries don't get. I couldn't help but feel like a Shadow of Mordor-esque Nemesis system was missing here, though I obviously can't prove that. 

If you're the kind of person who looks at an NPC and says "I want their hat" then Ghost of Yotei is the best game ever.

Echoes of Sekigahara (spoilers)

    Echoes of Sekigahara sucks in the same ways its main-game contemporaries (Teshio Ridge and Ishikari Plain) suck: the game just can't decide what it wants to do with Atsu. This is because, unlike Iki Island, which took place outside of the main game and wasn't really calling back to it, Echoes of Sekigahara is explicitly set during a very specific point in the story-the tiny sliver of game time that is Act 2 and Act 3. In Echoes, just as in the main game, Atsu is yanked between "Single-purpose spirit of vengeance" and "Person who cares and is capable of forgiveness" based entirely on how the writer was feeling that day. 

    

    This is even further mucked with with the inclusion of Nagato the Handsome, Atsu's ex who abandoned her during the battle of Sekigahara for a chance at money and, with it, a better life. All of this is told in flashbacks that take my damn toys away while they search for the stash of Portuguese gold that Lord Saito is using to fund his war effort. The entire thing hinges on the audience being dramatically invested in Nagato's comeback, in him being willing to put aside his own needs for the woman he cares for. The whole thing comes to a climax when he willingly helps Atsu bury the convoy (and the money), managing to grow and change as a person.

Nagato is also one of the four player characters for the Roguelike mode, because the game just has that few memorable characters.

    Psych!

    During their escape with a few saddlebags full of money, Nagato ends up becoming distracted by the treasure and gets shot in the neck with an arrow for his trouble.

    A lot of the emotional weight of the DLC hinges on this question of "Can people change?" Is Nagato capable of getting past his ambition? Was Atsu really capable of abandoning her quest for vengeance if it meant staying with him? And the answer the DLC gives is a resounding "No," even after the game's finale gives a resounding "Yes." It's an absolute fucking mess that says nothing and means even less.

Conclusion

    The thing I found most interesting upon returning to Yotei was how little my opinions have actually changed, and how much those same problems continue into the DLC. The third Ghost game, which is undoubtedly in production, has a very strong mechanical foundation, but I hope they either fully commit to some radical new structure or simply return to linearity so they can tell the story they want to tell.

    That said, now I'm in the samurai mood. I remember Shogun 2 was really good. And it's getting a remaster! I wonder how that turned out-

As of time of writing, the Complete Edition has been pulled off of Steam.

    Oh no