On Culture: Part 2 of an Interview with Rob Davis

Do you feel like you’ve been stunlocked? “Where’s part 1?” you say with curiosity. It does exist friend. As a collaborative piece over at XENOJAY.COM. There we started a conversation with the Campaign Director for Ghost of Yōtei, Rob Davis. In this part we covered the hand crafted feel of Yōtei and how the load times can have some influence on the story. And with part 2, we continue into how the design doesn’t rush players, along with some lighter questions surrounding their illustrious career.

I think it has been very inspiring to see players ‘play’ in a way we didn’t quite expect.”

I picked up from Davis’s sentiment on how they guided players in the previous part of the interview. It was a reflection on players and their time spent in Ghost of Yōtei. One group had a member say it had been 20 hours and they hadn’t taken down another member of the Yōtei 6. I then had to say it was 40 hours before the game even told me there were chapters. And for players enjoying that freedom, I felt Jason Connell said it best: ‘Ghost of Yōtei isn’t going to rush you’.

“We knew that the game offered a huge variety of exploration. We knew that players would love exploring the wilds of Hokkaido. But also, perhaps we didn’t. At least I didn’t quite expect it. How chill the game can be for players. I think it’s unique to Yōtei and Tsushima.”

Speaking to their use of emotion to set the pace for the campaign, I suggested the separated environments also add to this.

“Yeah, exactly! And it does a really good job of conveying that.”

I said earlier that Davis has an illustrious career in gaming. While there are some outliers I love more, there’s also a particularly popular series they worked on. The 2018 reboot of God of War. Did this franchise teach Davis anything, and I wondered if there were things in Yōtei which were influenced by it?

“We take a huge amount of pride across all of these games, the pacing and the editing. So I would like to say that we have fabulous action in these games, whether it’s Kratos. Atreus. Jin Sakai or Atsu; They’re fabulous heroes to be able to craft the combat experience out of”. And I can’t think of a pantheon of characters who represent action better than these four. “But I’d also like to think that players really enjoy the adventure elements as well. And crafting an adventure means peaks and valleys. Twists. Moments of inspiration. Moments of relief. Excitement and also, tension. So we spend a lot of time across all of the these thinking about how to craft an adventure.”

Thinking for a moment, I suddenly wondered how Davis ended up in this industry and what suggestions they could make to people who’d like to get into it.

“Sure! I have two pieces of advice for anyone, especially if you’re a bit younger. One: Game design and game development are much more technical than people think. For all the wonderful creative materials, and I fall more on the art and animation/adventurous side of things; Those math, science and physics skills never go away”.

His response errs on the classic quote we all know: Keep it simple, stupid.

“You’ve probably seen from the release of this game, we have really great frame rate. And it’s running really well. Players are playing really smoothly. I mean, that is incredible. And hats off to our technical team. And just one other tip, you know, get into Uni! Because it’s really hard to get work visas internationally without a Uni degree in many different parts of the world. So it can be a bit of a grind, you know, to do all the school work and to to hit the books. But it pays off. And you can never be too technical in the games industry. And those technical and creative skills never go away”.

Technical skills in mind, I saw it reflected in one of the mini-docs around the making of the game. That there was some difficulty reshaping the hit boxes for Atsu’s new weapon set.

“You’ve probably noticed in this game, as I mentioned, we hand crafted a lot of the side missions. Even the smallest discovery moments in this game. Those aren’t done by a team of 20 people. That’s one person who’s technical and understands the engine and knows how to do some light coding in there and make an inspiring moment for players”.

“Our team skews incredibly technical and creative at the same time. And we’re an incredibly efficient studio as well. So for anyone starting out, most people either pick a kind of more art and animation direction, which I did, or they pick engineering. But another direction, and now quite a few people pick it, is writing as a direction that’s pretty new as a concept, as it’s about 10 or 15 years old by industry standards”.

You really can’t go wrong with any of those 3 pillars, because a lot of people will those will create the form of their foundational basis of their creative process.”

You can really hear their history in the industry. They’ve been there, and they’ve done that. And I had to ask if there was any particular stand out moments for them from it.

“I’ll give you two”. Oh Rob, you shouldn’t have! “When we did E3 2016, the God of War announcement. It makes me wish E3 was back for this game”. Don’t we all Rob. Here’s a reminder of how epic this moment was:

Davis continues. “[And secondly] I studied Japanese in college and throughout high school, and one of the reasons I wanted to work on Ghost of Yōtei was because of Japan. So many of us do. When I went to Hokkaido with our producer Ryuhei and Jason and more, a little part of me woke up in a way I’d forgotten existed inside my heart. And that was very special to me and very personal”.

I had to say that it sounded like a little piece of them they didn’t know was missing was found.

It woke a little part of me that…as you go on all these different creative journeys, I’d forgotten the part of me that is inspired by the culture. This flame.”

Rob Davis, Campaign Director (Sucker Punch Productions)

And it burns ever bright, in the plains of Ezo; The land on which the Onryō seeks to end the Yōtei 6.

The final part of this interview series can be found over at The Empire NZ.