Toma Otowa and Brad Meyer discuss the craftsmanship that went into the Ghost of Yōtei [Interview]

Talking about the shamisen being such an important part of Atsu’s identity, my lead sound designer Josh Lord had the great idea of like, "Well what if we incorporate shamisen into our UI sounds, into the interface sounds?’"So that we have the core identity of Atsu in the identity of the interface and what the player’s doing in the menu. So it would basically start with several measures of one of these melodies that Toma wrote, so they would start playing that and then they would just kind of improvise from that melody and create completely new kinds of tapestries of sound that we could use… A lot of what you hear when you’re just kind of exploring out in the world, riding your horse across all of Ezo kind of came from some of those sessions. They gave us, I think, four original tracks and then we gave them some of Toma’s music and they remixed Atsu's theme, and the Yōtei Six Theme, and so that was super cool too, hearing the melodies that Toma has written that appear throughout all of the game that are two of the most evocative melodies about our hero and our antagonists in this lo-fi style.

Author: Lauren Crumble

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