Ghost Of Yotei’s Climbable Ledges Are Actually Covered In Bird Poo

Ghost of Yotei has the best reasoning for why all of its climbable ledges are covered in white paint, as they’re actually just coated in bird poop.

Games have always looked for innovative ways to guide players without explicitly telling them what to do, and nowhere is that more clear than with the recent, somewhat infamous, trend of “yellow paint”. While it’s not always yellow, the vast majority of triple-A games cover the interactable parts of their environment with some kind of bright paint that’s meant to catch the player’s attention.

“Yellow paint” has been around for a while now, but it’s becoming more and more commonplace, leading some developers to have some fun explaining it. South of Midnight tied it into the game’s lore and Hi-Fi Rush just placed signs around with its tongue in its cheek, but Ghost of Yotei has the best explanation to date – it’s just bird poo.

Ghost Of Yotei’s Climbable White Ledges Aren’t Covered In Paint

Maybe Don’t Accept Any Food Atsu Cooks For You…

If you’ve been playing a ton of Yotei since it released, you’ve probably noticed that Sucker Punch decided to go with white paint on its ledges to show where Atsu can climb. Only, it’s not actually white paint at all, as Twitter user RossTweetsGames pointed out that the ledges are just covered in surprisingly helpful bird crap.

The video that RossTweetsGames shared shows Atsu approaching one of the game’s white ledges and reaching the top to find a bird flying away, revealing to the player that it’s not a helpful traveller marking the best path forward. Nope, Ezo’s birds are just very particular about where they like to poo, and it just so happens to be everywhere the player can climb.

I checked this out for myself and headed to the nearest climbable cliff in Yotei, and can confirm that I also saw a bird fly away as Atsu reached the top, which is something I’d never paid attention to before. Sucker Punch really went all out with environmental storytelling in Yotei and proved that you can guide players while also having a bit of fun with such a common trope.

Ghost of Yotei

Systems

4.0/5

Released

October 2, 2025

ESRB

Mature 17+ / Blood and Gore, Drug Reference, Intense Violence, Language, Partial Nudity, Use of Alcohol

Publisher(s)

Sony Interactive Entertainment

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