Ghost of Yotei’s photo mode clearly has black magic in it but just I can’t prove it. I’m like that one James Doakes meme, trying to find out how Sucker Punch Studios manage to make perhaps the best photo mode in gaming.
The gorgeous landscapes of Ezo (now Japan’s Hokkaido region) are beautiful. This once untouched land wasn’t ravaged by war unlike Japan’s mainland. It’s a thriving and tranquil place where people escape to live a peaceful life. Having to walk across a glade full of flowers with barely any dead body laid on it feels so different from what we’ve had in Jin Sakai’s adventures in the island of Tsushima. The only place for violence in Yotei is in Atsu’s quest for revenge against the Yotei Six.
Ezo is by far one of the prettiest open worlds I’ve explored in a videogame. The sheer sight of the eponymous Mount Yotei on the horizon has wired my brain to immediately press the screenshot button and tweak it to make that perfect shot.
I am about 7 hours into my Ghost of Yotei playthrough and I can only hope that my PlayStation 5’s internal storage can keep up with the number of screenshots and video clips I am about to take. Just wandering around with my horse Mochizuki (Japanese for Full Moon) is already giving me enough material to create subpar screenshots. They’re not even worth a page in a National Geographic website, but damn the environments in Yotei are magnificent to look at.
What makes this experience even better is how Ghost of Yotei’s screenshot button only takes a few seconds to activate. With a simple press from your DualSense’s right D-Pad button, you can pause the moment and revel in the game’s picturesque visuals. As usual, Ghost of Tsushima’s photo mode options are still here. Things such as adding particle effects like leaves and butterflies floating in the background never gets old, and having to change the weather from clear skies to thunderstorms is another win for photo mode enthusiasts. Moreover, all of this can be cancelled on the fly, putting you back into gameplay mode in mere seconds.
Yotei’s Photo mode is too important not to ignore. There are moments in the game that are clearly begging for you to do it, particularly during the nighttime, where the skies are glistening with cosmic wonder from gorgeous auroras to shooting stars. Even simple things like Atsu dueling against a Ronin or entering a local inn has already taken more than 10 screenshots in my library. And this is still at the game’s 5 hour mark, that means I’m still in Yotei’s first grasslands area. Obviously there will be more places worth taking photos as I keep playing, but before that, I’ll keep wandering around the first grasslands area and marvel at the sights.
Sucker Punch has made a great decision to take the next Ghost story to Hokkaido.
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