Ghost of Tsushima is officially getting a sequel titled Ghost of Yotei, it was confirmed during today’s Sony State of Play presentation. It’ll arrive sometime in 2025.
It was the big announcement to close out the State of Play, and one of the biggest surprises. Developer Sucker Punch showed off a significant look at footage too, including some gorgeous cinematics. And if you couldn’t glean from the title, it’ll focus on a different setting and a brand-new protagonist, Atsu, moving away from Ghost of Tsushima’s Jin Sakai.
Sucker Puncher didn’t reveal too much during the presentation, but we got a little more insight thanks to a PlayStation blog post shortly after. It’ll take place in 1603, 300 years after the events of Ghost of Tsushima, in the lands surrounding Mount Yōtei, known as Hokkaido today. Sucker Punch calls it “a far cry from the organized samurai clans who lived in Tsushima, and it’s the setting for an original story we can’t wait to tell.”
According to the post, the developer “wanted to maintain the core pillars established in Ghost of Tsushima: playing as a wandering warrior in Feudal Japan, offering freedom to explore at your own pace, and highlighting the beauty of the world.”
“We also wanted to continue to innovate. To create something fresh but familiar, we looked beyond Jin Sakai’s story and the island of Tsushima, and shifted our focus to the idea of the Ghost instead,” the post continues. “At Sucker Punch we love origin stories, and we wanted to explore what it could mean to have a new hero wearing a Ghost mask, and uncovering a new legend. This led us to Ghost of Yōtei: a new protagonist, a new story to unfold, and a new region of Japan to explore.”
As “Sucker Punch’s first game built from the ground up for PlayStation 5,” it’ll also include new mechanics, gameplay improvements, and new weapons.
Unabashedly inspired by the works of Akira Kurosawa (to the point where the game even included a “Kurosawa Mode”) and other samurai films, Ghost of Tsushima followed a samurai on a quest to protect Tsushima Island during the first Mongol invasion of Japan. It released for the PlayStation 4 in July 2020 followed by a multiplayer mode, Ghost of Tsushima: Legends, that October. A Director’s Cut was released for PS4 and PS5 in 2021, and a PC port finally arrived last year.
A Ghost of Tsushima movie is also in the works with Sony Pictures and PlayStation Productions, with John Wick director Chad Stahelski set to direct.
IGN gave Ghost of Tsushima a 9/10 back in 2020, calling it “an absolutely gorgeous adventure through one of history’s most strikingly beautiful landscapes, and that beauty is compounded by one of the best blade-to-blade combat systems the open-world action genre has seen.”
Alex Stedman is a Senior News Editor with IGN, overseeing entertainment reporting. When she’s not writing or editing, you can find her reading fantasy novels or playing Dungeons & Dragons.