Ghost Of Yotei Dev Prototyped A Zelda: Breath Of The Wild-Style Climbing Mechanic For The Game Before Cutting It

Sucker Punch Productions‘ Nate Fox and Jason Connell have revealed during a talk at GDC that Ghost of Yotei nearly implemented a rock-climbing mechanic similar to The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild.

Fox revealed that he thought “every game” would benefit from a climbing system like Nintendo’s open-world title, and said that “we got right in there and started prototyping,” saying that it was “going to be magnificent.” However, Sucker Punch ultimately decided to give it the boot, noting it didn’t fit the type of world the team was building in the sense it would have had many areas “you weren’t supposed to climb up.”

Fox added that if players were able to climb anything and didn’t receive any reward from doing so, “it pretty much trains you to stop climbing, because exploration wasn’t worth it.”

“If something is not going well, we can be like ‘does that make you feel like a wandering ronin?’ And if the answer is no and it’s a sucky feature, then why are you working on it? Just move on,” added Connell.

Ghost of Yotei was released exclusively for the PS5 in October 2025, and yesterday (March 10) saw the release of its Legends co-op mode. You can read our full review of the game here. Sony announced that Ghost of Yotei sold 3.3 million copies worldwide one month after its release, and later revealed the title exceeded sales of its predecessor in the same period of time but didn’t offer any updated sales figures.

[Source – GamesRadar]