Launched last month, the Ghost of Yōtei Legends Raid forms the endgame of Sucker Punch’s multiplayer mode, as Ghosts face off against the last two of the supernatural Yōtei Six, The Dragon and Lord Saito. Well, them, plus a horde of warriors and labyrinth strongholds that four players must cooperate together to survive.
With enough time now passed, we sat back down with Lead Designer Darren Bridges to delve into the creative processes behind the Raid. Spoilers follow, so if you’ve yet to level up and tackle the Raid, then bookmark this article until you’ve returned to the lobby flush with success. The full interview will be available to listen to later today on the Official PlayStation Podcast.
“One of our original thoughts was: it’s like an escape room where people are trying to kill you.”
The Raid’s elevator pitch
“One of our original thoughts was: it’s like an escape room where people are trying to kill you. It’s four player, hardcore, challenging content. And there are puzzles that you need to work together as a team to complete. And, of course, there are enemies who are also trying to kill you, so it often will involve a lot of learning, coordinating, and performing as a team in order to succeed.”
Learnings from Ghost of Tsushima Legends and its Raid
“[Ghost of Tsushima Legends] was the first time we’d done anything like that as a studio. It had a lot of successes. It brought that level of challenge and learning and team coordination requirements. But it was also kind of unbalanced in the pacing and the length of it. A lot of players weren’t able to play it. The first time I played the second chapter of the Raid with my friends, I think it took six hours. So you had to have a group of four who were committed and could set out that amount of time. So it was epic, but it was also kind of inaccessible in that way.
You know that you’re serving multiple audiences. When you’re building content, there are people who want really hardcore and those who don’t have that much time. They may want to play, but they may not be able to set aside that much time. So we wanted to enable those same experiences of challenge, but make it easier for players to step in. If they had to step away, they could rejoin.
So this time in Ghost of Yōtei Legends, the missions are paced a little more consistently and, if we’ve enabled it so that if you replay it, you can play just the boss. So if your team has made it through the puzzles, but then you’re struggling with the boss, run out of time, someone has to leave… you can come straight back to the boss.”
“I love hearing in a co-op game where there’s no text on screen naming something, how every team comes up with their own language for describing or expressing it.”
Raid missions built to prepare you for what’s to come
“When we were building the Raid, we wanted to introduce elements [on the mission to the boss encounter] that would prepare you for what you’re going to face in the fight.
“So in The Dragon fight, you’ll see the giant Bo-Hiya missiles dropping, so you get a little bit of an introduction to that. And then Saito’s giant sword attack that is mostly undodgeable. If you hit your ultimate, you can avoid it, but it’s just kind of damage that you have to take. And so we introduce that ahead of his fight. We want them to make sense and build off the things that you learned throughout the rest of the experience.
I would also say I love hearing in a co-op game where there’s no text on screen naming something, how every team comes up with their own language for describing or expressing it. Every time when we watch streams there’s a natural language evolution that happens in-game as people are trying to describe this thing and communicate to each other.”
Adding new threats to throw players off their game…
“In The Dragon fight, there’s a moment where bombs start dropping on individual players, and you have to run around. In Legends in general, you can’t hurt other players, but suddenly there’s bombs dropping on you. So wherever you go, you’re creating a danger area. So as everyone’s panicking, you see someone running towards you, and if you cross paths, you’re both going to get blown up by the bombs that are falling. So you have to coordinate to either avoid the giant bombs or destroy them.”
…and discovering surprising ways to counter those dangers
“If you are a Shinobi and vanish, the bombs stop tracking you, stop dropping. And if you can get near your teammates and cause them all to vanish, it’ll skip that entire bomb drop sequence. That was actually something that we didn’t plan for. But when we were testing it, we saw it, and we’re like, oh, that’s actually really awesome.”
“We wanted to create moments which we call ‘Group Jump Rope’, where everyone has to do something together as a team, and other moments where one person can be the hero and carry and support the rest of the team.”
Built to work together…
“A lot of our combat team play Raids in different games. Especially boss-type Raids. So they’re excited to express that design in the Yōtei universe and with the Yōtei combat mechanics.
“One of my favorite parts is the Shadow Saito guys that attack you. I mean, I hate them. But the fun part is it’s a great moment for players to practice calling things out for each other. If one player sees the boss getting ready to summon you can call it out, and then everyone else can prepare and try to react in time. We wanted to create moments which we call ‘Group Jump Rope’, where everyone has to do something together as a team, and other moments where one person can be the hero and carry and support the rest of the team. So you want blends of those throughout the battle.”
…and Builds to work together
“We wanted to have elements that would reward or encourage different build types, or build craft and people bringing their ingenuity and theory to it. We made sure to place a Gear Station right at the beginning of the [Saito] boss fight. So anytime you die as a team, you’ll start back right at the Gear Station. You can tweak your build. And for that fight, you’ll want some perfect parry buffs, to help you against the shadow warriors. Then you need some way to deal with his health, reduce the damage from his big explosion attacks, either, you know, healing, or, you know, some other way. So we wanted the Team Build to impact the experience.”
“Those teams have a different mindset, even in how they play. It feels like building an obstacle course with your local team and then throwing Olympians at it.”
Watching the first team of players complete the Raid
“When you’re making something, you’re always like ‘no one’s going to beat that, this is going to be tough, this is going to slow people down’. And sometimes it does, and sometimes it doesn’t.
“The world’s first team beat Saito, I think, in like two minutes. And they had spent, I think, an hour or so leading up to that point. And so I thought, oh, you know, I was thinking, proportionally, it’ll probably be another half hour or something… and they just headshot him. They found the most kind of efficient and optimal way to defeat him. And that team, those teams, have a different mindset, even in how they play. It feels like building an obstacle course with your local team and then throwing Olympians at it.
But it’s awesome. You never know exactly what will happen, but that’s part of what makes it exciting. And then a lot of the other teams that we watched took more of what we would have expected, two to three hours, to learn and repeat and practice and defeat that boss. So there’s always a variety.
“There’s not many times in game development where you actually get to release content and see how people react. It’s especially fun with Raid type content, where teams have prepared leading up to that point. It’s really cool when they’re streaming with a Raid team, they will often have their mics on and broadcasting audio. You get a window into what they’re thinking as they’re playing and that communication… you get to see all of it evolving as they’re playing. It’s a very clear window into their full experience. So as developers, that’s really fun to see.”
A Ghosts’ tale concluded
“The Raid update was our last major planned update for Legends. It finishes the story of the Yōtei Six in that mode. We’ve loved to see players playing it, continue to play it and enjoy it. It’s been great.”
You can enjoy the Raid and the entire elections multiplayer mode with Ghost of Yōtei, available now on PlayStation 5.