When I loaded up Ghost of Yotei on my PS5 Pro for the first time last week, I pretty much expected to be deeply impressed by its visual presentation, and it’s duly obliged. The island of Ezo that Sucker Punch has produced is fairly staggering, full of vistas so perfect that you just know they were hand-crafted with extreme care.
I’ve also hugely enjoyed the game’s cadence so far – a familiar one for anyone who played Ghost of Tsushima, but nonetheless a super satisfying pattern. You explore a series of open areas, each of which houses a big boss somewhere. Playing a few story missions gets you closer to that boss, but there are also a host of side quests and collectables to find as you move around.
Those collectables do a good job of actually impacting your playthrough with buffs and ability points, but they can still start to feel a little repetitive to hunt down. That said, I’ve noticed that the game has done a much better job of fleshing out its sidequests compared to Tsushima, with more dialogue and story beats that make them feel far more engaging.
That’s not what surprised me, though. What has really taken me aback while playing has been the sound design, which is absolutely stellar. I’ve been playing using the incredibly premium SteelSeries Arctis Nova Elite, a headset that nearly costs as much as the PS5 Pro on its own, and the quality of Yotei‘s sound is amazing.
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To be clear, the PS5 Pro offers no advantage over the base PS5 in terms of sound quality, so anyone with one of the best gaming headsets should be able to hear what I’m hearing and revel in it. The soundscape summoned up as you move through the open world is expansive and detailed at the same time.
From the wind rustling through grasses or loose leaves, to the clashes of thunder in a huge storm and the splintering of wood as lightning strikes, it all sounds so perfect it’s hard to imagine how much work the sound department had to do. This is only added to by excellent voice acting from an engaging cast.
It makes the island of Ezo so much more immersive to be in, and has me looking forward to booting the game up at the end of my workday, which is what you really want from a blockbuster like this. If you want to see and hear what proper sound design can do for a big-budget game like this, you owe it to yourself to check Ghost of Yotei out.
