Sony‘s Ghost of Yotei has had quite an opportune reveal in the 2024 Tokyo Game Show, especially after Ubisoft’s Assassin’s Creed: Shadows got delayed. Still, the Ghost of Tsushima spin-off isn’t without its own form of controversy. Apparently, there’s a loud subset of fans that are decrying the female samurai protagonist in Ghost of Yotei. To that, however, a former Sony head has a rather loaded retort: “If you don’t like it, don’t buy it.”
The argument took place in X (formerly Twitter). Meanwhile, the former Sony head in question is none other than Shawn Layden. It was a reply to EndymionYT’s tweet– a well-known YouTuber and gaming community critic.
More than that, Shawn Layden also said that anyone who complains should just make their own game. Shawn Layden notably served as Sony’s CEO and president from 2014 to 2019.
Now, we’re not really going to deeply investigate whether there was an active female samurai back in Japan in the 1600s– that’s a topic for another article. Even Ghost of Tsushima took its own set of historical liberties. But it didn’t matter back in then, so why should a bit of historical fiction and liberty matter now?
Ghost of Yotei is a Different Setting
For the record, Ghost of Yotei is set in 1603. It takes place around 300 years after the embellished and heavily fictionalized Mongol invasion in Ghost of Tsushima. So those expecting another Jin Sakai-esque hero might be disappointed. Besides, there have been reports and suggestions that female samurai indeed existed.
It’s not clear yet what kind of direction Ghost of Yotei wants to take with its female protagonist. However, it’s already set itself apart from Ghost of Tsushima. Some speculations suggest that Ghost of Yotei would be about the indigenous Ainu people of Japan who were nearly wiped out by the Japanese mainlanders.
