Atsu’s hunt is not over. A year after the original game launched, PS5 players can dive into the Ghost of Yōtei Complete Edition. Available now on PS5, this brings together the story campaign, the Ghost of Yōtei Legends multiplayer mode, and two new major additions: the roguelike mode Most Wanted, and the narrative expansion Echoes of Sekigahara. The story is split between the present day and flashbacks to Atsu’s time on the mainland.
To mark the Complete Edition’s launch, and celebrate the game’s first anniversary, we welcome back the voice of Atsu, Erika Ishii, to talk about the game.
Note: The below interview is condensed for clarity and brevity. You can listen to the full chat on the latest episode of the PlayStation Podcast, available later today.
PixelArena.io: It’s been a year since the game originally launched. What has Atsu brought to your life since?
Erika Ishii: I still can’t get over it, you know, because again, this was my dream. I played The Last of Us and I said, I want to do that. I already knew I wanted to act. I already knew I loved video games. But I said specifically – that. That is what I want to do. And… yeah, being on my PlayStation home screen, playing the game, getting to travel to Tokyo Game Show, which was another dream of mine. And to have a beautiful professional cosplay made for me of Atsu so I could be Atsu on the Sony PlayStation stage in Japan… it really does feel like a fever dream sometime.
I was curious to know whether your dialogue for the expansion was recorded after the fact or part of the bundle together with the original recording. Sounds like you came back. So what’s the time gap there between that last piece of dialogue you recorded for the main story campaign and then coming back to the expansion?
There were at least a couple of months between. They had to work really hard on polish to get the game out, then take a very well-deserved little bit of a break. But as we were nearing the end of production, I was inquiring constantly. “Are we doing DLC? Because Iki Island was really great and really fleshed out some stuff that I wanted to know about in Atsu’s backstory…”
And I did have a list of pitches for them [laughs] They didn’t go with anything that I suggested. But even at the launch party I was talking with Courtney Woods, the writer for Echoes of Sekigahara. And we were scheming. We thought “Atsu needs a little romance in her life”. Like, there’s no way she didn’t have any romance. She mentioned [as such] in one of the onsen scenes. So you know she’d had bedtime bed companions at least. But what’s the deal with personal attachments? Is this the only time in her life up until now she’s had them? And so I got my wish.
You had that little bit of time away. Did that time increase your awareness of the character, or anything you experienced outside the role that helped inform your performance of Atsu further?
Pretty much playing the game. It’s wild because, you know, most of the time voice actors don’t get to play the game until after it comes out. I was fortunate enough [to do so] during production. But playing through the finished game and literally being hands-on and in her shoes. Because a lot of times, if it’s been a while since you’ve played a character, they’ll play you reference audio. But I could go directly to being Atsu, go right into the booth. It was such a gift.
There are flashbacks. So it’s two periods of Atsu’s life. So how do you get into that headspace where you’re having to switch?
A couple of things helped. We had done a lot of flashbacks with young Atsu. And so extrapolating what happened. Most of the time in acting you have what is called a prior moment. Before any scene starts you have to know where you were. You have to have a whole lived life experience prior to this moment. I already had to have it in my head and sort of know what she had been through and what this huge informative point in her life felt like.
For an actor, you have to have [to be able to] drop in at any moment and be like, okay, well, I think that her time doing this probably informed how it’s going to be in the quote-unquote present day.
This roguelike mode, Most Wanted. Did you record new dialogue for that?
Yes, there is some new dialogue for that. Because it is a new mode and non-canonical, it has a slightly different feeling to it, more mystical, in the way that the multiplayer is more mythological. There’s a heightened quality to it.
You’re not the only character in Most Wanted. There’s some familiar faces, but a surprise face is… Jin, who is returning, and I believe Daisaku Tsuji recorded new voice lines for this as well. I understand you didn’t crossover during the recording sessions but you folks must have got together to talk all things Ghost and just compare experiences?
I got to chat with him [when he was in Los Angeles] and we chatted a little bit about it. And that was actually before the game had launched. I told him how much his work meant to me and how I’m grateful to be accepting the Ghost torch.
In a lot of ways he was new to video games with Ghost of Tsushima. But since then he’s appeared in many other games. I think almost all of which I am also in. We joke that we’re bound together forever, and one of us will follow in the other’s footsteps.
Last year I asked you where launch day would find you. You mentioned it was a gathering of folk from the game. So where does the first anniversary of Yotei find you?
Oh, my gosh. I think the big thing is that the Complete Edition is out. I didn’t know the launch date until the rest of the world did. We all had a little betting pool as to when we thought this was going to drop. And I said, I guarantee it’ll be on the anniversary. I was one day off [laughs]. I feel like this is the one year celebration.
It’s very bittersweet to me. It’s been four years of my life being her face, her movements and her voice, and helping to develop her and working with just like some of the greatest team of all time is… Atsu is going to be a part of my heart forever. And, you know, when they have the PlayStation logos, they’re going to have a picture of Atsu, a picture of my face there. I still see cosplays at conventions. I… This is, again, to bring it back around to the beginning, this was my dream. And I think that what do you do when you accomplish the big thing when you get to the top of the mountain is you just got to keep going there. There are more mountains to climb, I think.
I have the great privilege of, in addition to Atsu, having other characters or work that are a part of my oeuvre. I don’t have to be defined by Atsu, but she is… gonna always be so special to me.