The highly anticipated Sony PlayStation 5 action video game Ghost of Yōtei launches next week, and the game’s developer, Sucker Punch Productions, has taken the wraps off a very promising in-game photography mode that gives photographers a mythical zoom lens.
Ghost of Yōtei‘s standalone predecessor, Ghost of Tsushima, incorporated a cinematic, albeit simple photo mode on PlayStation 4. Ghost of Yōtei will turn the dial up to 11 and deliver a much more robust, realistic photography mode, complete with fine-grain controls over focal length and camera exposure settings.
The game is set in northeastern Japan in the early 17th century, and promises beautiful Japanese environments, diverse ecosystems, and violent Samurai-inspired action, all of which should prove to be compelling subjects for virtual photographers.
Players will be able to devise their own tracking action shots for still or motion capture, zoom their in-game lens from 12mm to 300mm, adjust aperture from f/1.2 all the way to f/63, and manually focus from 0.1 to 200 meters away from the virtual lens. A 12-300mm f/1.2 lens sounds like an absolute dream, albeit one that is practically impossible given its immense size and preposterous cost. It would make Sigma’s 200-500mm f/2.8 “Bigma” look like a toy.
The game also offers color grading and filters, including vivid, black and white, black and white vintage, storm, autumn, samurai red, smoke, maple, gingko, and tintype filters. Each filter can be adjusted in intensity from 0% to 100% and photographers can also utilize exposure compensation from -5 to 5 EV. Additional image settings include contrast, aspect ratio, and stamp overlays.
These features alone should be fun to try out, but Ghost of Yōtei‘s photography system goes well beyond simply capturing in-game events as they happen. Virtual photographers can also control the scene itself by adding “particles” to their scene, like leaves, ash, pollen, insects, or birds. Beyond adjusting these particles, players can also modify the wind speed and direction, cloud cover, time of day, weather conditions, and the number and poses of characters in the frame. It is a full-blown virtual photo shoot with much more control than is possible in real life.
Gamers have shown time and again that it’s possible to capture incredible virtual photos inside video games, and Ghost of Yōtei looks like it will enable virtual shutterbugs to flex all their creative muscles.
PlayStation even offers some tips for players keen to capture their adventures in Ezo, including recommendations on lens selection. For landscapes, PlayStation recommends starting at 24mm or below. However, for portraits, 35mm is a good choice for environment “slice of life” images, 50mm is a good choice for headshots, and 80mm, used from a reasonable distance away, works well for full-body portraits with a shallow depth of field.
The game also promises plenty of macro photography opportunities, both when photographing people and the game’s rich Japanese environments. For this, PlayStation recommends a 100mm lens to “zoom in on the finer details.” Just like in real life, virtual photographers are advised to look at all their surroundings through their viewfinder.
“You might catch sight of an until then unobserved detail — be it an NPC interaction, nearby wildlife, or even an alternate composition for your existing shot,” Sony Interactive Entertainment’s Gillen McAllister writes.
Another commonality between real and virtual photography is the importance of light. With the ability to cycle through a 24-hour day/night cycle while composing images, players are encouraged to tinker with the light and weather to get the most impactful frame possible.
“You may welcome harsher shadows due to a midday sun, the softer, warmer light of golden hour (the time just after sunrise or just before sunset), or enjoy the epic nighttime sky. You can also shift natural light until it illuminates a specific part of the photo that you want to draw attention to,” Sony explains.
Ghost of Yōtei launches on PlayStation 5 on October 2.