Players will be given a great deal of freedom.
When crafting Ghost of Yotei, the team built in several ways to play, leaving it up to players to choose their own approach.
The creative director told GamesRadar the studio isn’t overly concerned with how fans engage with Ghost of Yotei — whether they follow the main story or clear other activities first — as long as they’re having fun.
“If [players] don’t want to do something, we simply say, ‘Okay — that’s your choice.’ The important thing is that you’re enjoying yourself; we don’t mind.”
Still, the developers added plenty of hooks to nudge players toward the main storyline, while providing “enough gear at a reasonable pace.”
The creator said the team’s philosophy for Ghost of Yotei was to “give you more freedom than in any other game we’ve ever made.”
According to the developer, that’s a challenging goal:
“It’s very difficult, and the pacing [for different playstyles] varies somewhat. Story-driven pacing is easier to control, but open-world pacing is quite complex. We use a number of small tricks to make it all work.”
Source: iXBT.games