Atsu is a wandering sellsword from a lowly family who loses her loved ones to murder and lacks social status in 17th-century Japan. She cannot claim samurai standing or customary paths to revenge, so she adopts the onryo identity, a revenge spirit from folklore, to become feared by enemies. The game places the player in a romanticised open-world feudal Japan with horseback travel and katana combat, but removes contemplative samurai moments in favor of harsher interactivity. The project contrasts Atsu's vagrant sellsword life with Jin Sakai's samurai-to-Ghost arc, emphasizing different sources of power and tone.
Atsu is no samurai. The lead character in Ghost of Yotei is a wandering sellsword from a lowly family. Her sex and lack of status mean that, following the murders of her family, she has no fixed place in 17th-century Japanese society, and there is no permitted path for her to tread if she is to get revenge on the Yotei Six, the men who killed her loved ones.
Yotei's predecessor, Sucker Punch Productions' 2020 sprawling open-world game Ghost of Tsushima, is the story of a samurai, Jin Sakai, who shreds his honour to defend his homeland. Jin can't repel the Mongols attacking Tsushima as a noble warrior, but as the Ghost, a fear-inspiring legend willing to use any dirty tactic to gain the upper hand, he can. If Ghost of Tsushima is about a man grappling
Atsu adopts the mantle of an onryo, a revenge spirit from Japanese folklore. By embracing this legend, she becomes a figure of fear to her enemies. While the resulting game is similar to Tsushima in Ghost of Yotei you also travel across a romanticised open-world recreation of feudal Japan on horseback, carving up your enemies with precise strokes of your katana the shift from high-class samurai to vagrant sellsword shows itself in unexpected ways.
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