Ghost Of Yotei Scaling Back A Key Game Feature Was Difficult But The Right Call, Dev Says

"Creative director Jason Connell said in a conversation with Breaking Bad creator Vince Gilligan that this feature was something he was "very excited about" when it was originally pitched years ago. He said the appeal was that players could be at one moment experiencing Atsu's story in the main timeline when things are dark and bleak and she's on her lone wolf quest, and the next they could travel back in time and feel the "warmth of her past" and understand what she's fighting for."

"However, after about a year of working on this, and with the understanding that it would require double the art, Sucker Punch had to scale it back and only have this feature available in certain areas of the game. "So while it's this amazing feature, it saddened me the day that I had to to kill that and narrow it. But in the end, it was the right choice," he said."

A time-travel mechanic lets players press a button to travel back and view protagonist Atsu's past at certain locations in the game world. The mechanic was originally planned to be available anywhere to contrast the bleak main timeline with the warmth of Atsu's past and deepen player understanding of her motivations. Implementing it everywhere would have required doubling art production, so the feature was limited to specific areas after testing and internal review. Narrowing the mechanic preserved its narrative weight and avoided turning it into an unsupported gimmick, though scaling it back was a difficult decision.

Read at GameSpot