'Ghost of Yotei' And The Sorry State of Anti-Woke Discernment

Before I get too far into this essay, I am obliged to say that that critics these days are not necessarily combing through devs’ private lives to audit their sexual orientation or political leanings. They don’t have to. The devs tell you outright. They wear it like a badge: queer, trans, anti-fascist, intersectional, whatever the label of the moment. They frame their work as a front in the culture war. None of it is subtext; it’s marketing a product to their ideological base.

Furthermore, this essay isn’t a defense of Ghost of Yotei. It’s a defense of discernment. If you want to critique the game, do it. If you want to boycott it, fine. But don’t fabricate motives and don’t pretend your speculation is revelation. Because when the anti-woke movement starts making things up, they’re not resisting the Left. Instead, they’re mirroring it, and that’s a rally I want no part in.

Proverbs 14:15 – “The simple believes every word, But the prudent considers well his steps.”

Now, If one were to review Ghost of Yotei, naturally one ought to start with the radical act of playing the game. But, as we know, that’s not how public discourse works anymore. This is especially true on X, where the “anti-woke” libertarian force has become a parody of itself: speculative, performative, and increasingly indistinguishable from the very moral panic it once claimed to oppose.

Let’s begin with what’s verifiable:

Yes, Ghost of Yotei was dragged into controversy when Drew Harrison, a senior character artist at Sucker Punch Productions, posted a tasteless joke about Charlie Kirk’s assassination: “I hope the shooter’s name is Mario so that Luigi knows his bro got his back.”

However, it should be noted that Harrison was fired. Studio co-founder Brian Fleming confirmed the dismissal, stating that celebrating political violence was a deal-breaker. That’s real. That’s documented. The dev was punished. Keep this in mind if your original intent was to boycott over this controversy.

A focus on woke aspects would also entail you acknowledge that the game’s protagonist, Atsu, is voiced by Erika Ishii, a voice actor who is openly queer and bisexual. Her casting in a stylized Edo-period revenge arc where a lone woman slaughters grown men by the truckload. Of course, this has drawn ire from critics who see it as ideological posturing. You need only analyze the dialogue to further confirm the extent of it. Regardless of any instance that the game’s enjoyment is dependent on your tolerance for mythic license and genre stylization, the game is undeniably woke in this aspect.

Now, for the rest of the discourse? It’s a circus.

There are tweets from the anti-woke faction accusing streamers like Synth Potato and Detective Seeds of being “shills,” and part of a coordinated PR push to rehabilitate the game’s image. There are also claims that all positive reviews are “footage media,” that drone shots and heroic riding sequences are distractions from the “real issues.” These threads unravel into fevered talk of corporate collusion and ideological grooming which would be compelling if even a shred of proof ever backed any of it up.

Of course, spiraling into accusations isn’t anything new. These are echoes reminiscent of a post-GamerGate reflex where suspicions about cozy relationships between journalists and developers were, at times, backed by receipts. But here? One can certainly raise eyebrows and can connect dots with red string and a corkboard. But unless you bring proof, it’s just noise.

And look, I’ve found plenty within the progressive or Leftist faction to be insufferable. The moral grandstanding, the ideological purity tests, the performative antics are all exhausting and must be fought against in earnest. But I also recognize a hard truth: you ultimately can’t help people who don’t want to be helped and you can’t reason with a faction committed to its own emotional absolutism. It does us no good to counter that with fabrication. If your agenda can’t survive without making things up, then it’s not an agenda worth defending.

Proverbs 9:8 – “Do not correct a scoffer, lest he hate you; Rebuke a wise man, and he will love you.”

Matthew 7:6 – “Do not give what is holy to the dogs; nor cast your pearls before swine, lest they trample them under their feet, and turn and tear you in pieces.”

And let’s not ignore the platform itself. X doesn’t punish lying (at least not hard enough to matter.) The algorithm rewards engagement, not accuracy. Outrage travels faster than evidence, and speculation masquerading as truth gets retweeted into gospel. That’s how we end up with figures like Grummz (Mark Kern) accusing streamers of shilling for games like Dragon Age: Veilguard, based on nothing but vibes and volume.

In this case, Grummz presented a fabricated document which claimed that influencers who praised Veilguard were part of a coordinated PR campaign to distract from the game’s “woke” content. And, for a while, the platform let the claim and the document fester. No real consequences followed. Instead, we were given another round of speculative outrage amplified by an audience primed to believe the worst. Unfortunately, this risks becoming the default mode of engagement for a faction that supposedly prides itself on being the rational counterweight to progressive hysteria.

Nowadays, if you look on X, even Ghost of Yotei’s minigames are being nitpicked as somehow indicative of ideological distractions. Critics complain that these mechanics cater to “tourists and toddlers,” as if patience, pacing, and worldbuilding are now suspect traits. The irony? Many of these same mechanics were in Ghost of Tsushima, the predecessor to Ghost of Yotei. The difference now is that they’re being filtered through a lens of anti-woke paranoia.

So, here’s the crux: many voices within the anti-woke crowd have become more embarrassing than the woke. This is not to dismay legitimate concerns about wokeness in general (which I have done), but rather to criticize methods of critique which have collapsed into the same speculative, emotionally reactive sludge they once mocked.

Ultimately, If you’re going to critique a video game, do not trade objectivity for performative outrage. For in doing so, you will eventually be seen as having forfeited your credibility for clicks and attention. In other words: grift.

NEXT: GOG Removes ‘Rosewater’ Review After It Criticized The Game’s “Woke Writing”