Category: PlayStation

Greetings everyone! I’m Jovan, Technical Artist at Ebb Software. The whole team here found joy in bringing you nightmarish experiences that will fully immerse you into somber tapestries. And today we’re excited to reveal that our first game, Scorn, will come to Playstation 5 later this year.

Many of you here may be new to Scorn, so for those less familiar with the game, you are about to experience a horrific adventure like no other. Trapped and stranded in a strange biomechanical world, you must make your way through a civilization in decay, now inhabited with twisted and grotesque creatures. While you will be able to wield various weapons in the game, Scorn is not a shooter, and each encounter can quickly turn deadly. Ammo and life are scarce, and your wits will often advise you to avoid direct confrontation.  Instead, to progress through this mesmerizing labyrinth, you will have to revive and activate abandoned contraptions, part machine, part flesh, all horror.

We like to compare it to the experience of a nightmare. Most often, nightmares are described as strong subjective experiences that can be intensely distressing and frightening, eliciting emotional responses in dreamers, and causing feelings of fear, anxiety, and terror. Scorn tries to offer these emotions to its players in a very subtle manner through a somber atmosphere and its gloomy corridors.

Immersive power of PS5

As we were developing the game for PlayStation 5, we finally had the opportunity to tap into the potential of the DualSense wireless controller to immerse you even further in this twisted world, extending the synesthetic experience of Scorn. It allows us to deepen the player’s immersion and to let the whole world “breathe” in a new way. Since there is no spoken dialogue in the game, we have put a strong emphasis on environmental storytelling, hence haptics are a great addition to this peculiar audio-visual experience. 

The main character in the game interacts with the world mostly by using his hands. Most of these interactions are also painful for the character. That’s where haptics comes into play. The imagery offered to the player’s eyes is painful by itself, but we wanted to increase this feeling by giving a sensation to the hands holding the controller. Players are also able to feel the directions of haptics (left or right hand), further adding to the experience.

From the smallest interaction, such as feeling the low rumble of an organic head-mounted display to the situations in which players find themselves in dire and dangerous encounters, the DualSense controller haptics elevate the feeling of immersion by balancing the intensity of vibration according to in-game sounds.

We have also made immersive use of the DualSense controller adaptive triggers when the player needs to use tools and weapons to survive. Every weapon or tool has a subtle, but different feeling of weight. For example, the piston-like melee tool, used to operate different contraptions, and occasionally in desperate attempts of self-defense, has a specific resistance in the trigger that when used alongside the haptics, enhances the desired effect.

Finally, the DualSense controller light bar represents the health of the player, changing colors in appropriate situations. It is a small addition to the otherwise very minimalistic HUD in Scorn. The idea is that a player can get a piece of immediate information on their HP status while playing the game.

Balancing the DualSense controller features was not an easy task but with coordination between TechArt, Programming, and Audio teams, we have successfully pulled it through and made something special for PlayStation 5 players.

We are also very proud to announce that following popular demand, a physical version of the game will be available at the same time as the digital version, including a digital artbook, digital version of the Original Soundtrack composed by Aethek & Lustmord, and, only available at selected retailers, an exclusive SteelBook:

We can’t wait for all PlayStation fans to delve into our mesmerizing world later this year. Stay tuned for more information!

Hey there, PlayStation Stars members! July is just around the corner, and we’re here to share the new campaigns. Prepare to be challenged, earn points, and unlock digital collectibles for your collection. Stay tuned for regular updates on the PlayStation App throughout the month. Let’s dive into the featured lineup for July.

PlayStation Plus Monthly Games 

Available July 4

New month, new PlayStation Plus monthly games. Try any one of this month’s games for 50 points: 

• Call of Duty: Black Ops Cold War – Cross-Gen Bundle PS4 & PS5
• Alan Wake Remastered
• Endling – Extinction is Forever

Survival of the Fittest 

Available July 6 

Survival of the Fittest is another monthly campaign we celebrate for those who love battle royale games. 

Play any one of the featured titles this month and snag the July “winner-winner chicken dinner – Arroz con Pollo” digital collectible.  

• Hunt: Showdown
• Darwin Project
• Spellbreak 
• H1Z1: Battle Royale 
• Fortnite 
• PUBG: Battlegrounds 

Multiplayer Mayhem 

Available July 13

Play any one of these online multiplayer games and score 50 points.

• Borderlands 3
• Dirt 5
• Doom Eternal

PlayStation Underground Part II

Available July 27

PlayStation Plus Members can play any of the featured demos or PlayStation Plus Game Trials to unlock a special digital collectible that will transport you back to those cherished PlayStation Underground days: 

• WWE 2K22 with PlayStation Plus Game Trials 
• Carrion with PlayStation Plus Game Trials 
• Octopath Traveller II Prologue Demo  
• Street Fighter 6 Demo 
• Resident Evil 4 Chainsaw Demo 
• C-Smash VRS Demo 

Hard Game Club | Wo Long: Fallen Dynasty

Available July 6

Join the Hard Game Club by completing difficult in-game challenges from some of toughest games on PlayStation to get exclusive digital collectibles. 

This month’s featured game is Wo Long: Fallen Dynasty. To get the July Hard Game Club Balloon digital collectible, members must earn the “Mightiest of Men” trophy. Take on the challenge and once completed, you will receive this month’s digital collectible. Good luck!

PlayStation & You Limited Release Digital Collectibles

“PlayStation & You” is a recurring campaign that celebrates players who have been with us over the years.

PlayStation and You: aibo

Available July

Calling all past Aibo owners! We’re celebrating the cherished memories you shared with your robotic companion. Start the “PlayStation and You: aibo” campaign and play any game on your PS4 or PS5 to unlock this exclusive Aibo digital collectible.

As a reminder, PlayStation Stars members can get digital collectibles or points by completing monthly campaigns. PlayStation Plus members enjoy additional opportunities to get points through exclusive campaigns and PlayStation Store purchases. Points received can be redeemed in your Rewards Catalog for PSN wallet funds, select games, and limited release digital collectibles. Learn more about PlayStation Stars and join here. 

Gran Turismo players! The 1.35 update for Gran Turismo 7 arrives today June 28 at 11pm PDT* / June 29 at 7am BST / 3pm JST.

Introduction of 3 New Cars

Aston Martin Valkyrie ’21 
A uniquely shaped hypercar with F1 derived aerodynamics.

Aston Martin is one of Britain’s most beloved luxury sports car manufacturers. This hyper car, the Valkyrie, is a result of their near 110 years of experience in the field combined with the expertise of F1 constructor Red Bull Racing. The design started from an idea for an innovative road car devised by Red Bull Racing’s designer and aerodynamics expert Adrian Newey. Newey took his proposal to Aston Martin where he made a connection with their chief designer Marek Reichman. In 2016, the project began in earnest as ‘AM-RB 001’. The car developed under the AM-RB 001 codename was first unveiled at the 2017 Geneva Motor Show, along with its official name, the Valkyrie. 

Production versions of the Valkyrie were first seen in 2021, taking form as a uniquely shaped hyper car which incorporated F1 derived aerodynamics with the Aston Martin design language. The high nose of the car is equipped with an underslung wing and creates powerful downforce through the Venturi tunnels running under the body. Between them sits the teardrop shaped cockpit where the driver and passenger sit feet-up in the style of a formula car. Extensive lightening has been implemented across the carbon-fiber body with even the Aston Martin nose emblem being reduced to a 70-micron thick piece of aluminum. As a result, the car weighs roughly 1,000 kg, achieving an astonishing power-to-weight ratio of 1.01 kg/BHP. 

Hard mounted to the rear of the cabin is the hybrid power unit, a Cosworth 6.5L naturally aspirated V12 engine with KERS (kinetic energy recovery system). The total output of the system is 1,140 BHP putting the car on par with even top category racing machines. The Valkyrie was first available in a limited run of 150 coupe models, which sold out almost immediately despite the price tag of over 2M pounds. The coupe was followed by the ‘AMR pro’ Le Mans style competition model and an open-top ‘Spider’ model. This pinnacle of performance is notable as one of the first hyper cars to reach the level of an LMP1 machine.

Mitsubishi Lancer Evolution III GSR ’95
Improved aerodynamics and cooling make for the ultimate first wave ‘Evo’.

The Lancer Evolution was launched in September 1992. Starting with the compact body of the commercial Lancer saloon and adding Mitsubishi’s mechanisms used only for the WRC-grade Galant VR-4, the Lancer Evolution became a rally-oriented car. At the core of this car was the 4G63, a turbocharged 2.0 L DOHC inline-4 engine, already producing 246.5 BHP and 31.5 kgfm of torque at the time of its debut. With overwhelming traction and power delivered to all four wheels, it was already much faster than any other model in its class. 

One year after its creation, in December 1993, the improved Lancer Evolution II was revealed, with its maximum power output increased to 256.4 BHP. The tyres were also changed to 205/60R15, and modifications to the wheelbase and the tread size were also implemented. Around this time, it started to be called by its famous nickname, “Lan-Evo”, by the Japanese fans. Another evolution happened in January 1995. 

The 3rd generation, called Lancer Evolution III, saw its exterior drastically modified to improve aerodynamic performance. With a larger opening in the front bumper and a larger rear spoiler, it now had the powerful look of a vehicle focused on competition. The compression ratio of the 4G63 power unit was raised to 9.0, improving maximum power output to 266.3 BHP. Detailed changes and enhancements were also made to the suspension, and these changes greatly improved both engine performance and maneuverability. At the time, the base Lancer model was about to receive a full model change, and it was rumored then that the Evo III may in fact be the last Evo.

Subaru Impreza Sedan WRX STi ’04
2nd generation Impreza which was developed alongside the rally spec model.

Just one year after the release of the radical Spec C, in November 2002, a facelift was already being implemented in the Impreza series. Though loved by many, the previous round headlights proved to be unpopular on the mass market and were abandoned in favor of imposing new teardrop-shaped lights. This time, under joint development with the SWRT (Subaru World Rally Team), new expertise facilitated the creation of better aerodynamic characteristics. On the performance side, a twin-scroll turbo system was introduced for better spool efficiency along with a modified exhaust system to match. The crankshaft, along with the pistons and conrods were reinforced enabling the engine to produce 40.2 kgfm, the highest torque figure in the 2-litre class at the time. 

Some manual transmission models were also equipped with a driver-controlled center differential featuring an automatic mode. Depending on the conditions while cornering, the distribution of torque to the front and rear of the central differential was divided automatically, and the car demonstrated tremendous effectiveness on both circuits and winding roads. In June 2004, a model with larger tires was introduced. This was in response to demands from the motorsport field, such as in the Super Taikyu Endurance racing. The maximum torque was also increased to 42.0 kgfm at this time. The Impreza found its way to fame as one of Japan’s most representative high-performance cars, recognized by enthusiasts the world over. From 2003, the exportation of the STi model to America began, and with the Mitsubishi Lancer Evolution also starting exportation, the fierce rivalry reached further outside Japan’s borders.

Car Livery

The livery for the ‘Anest Iwata Racing RC F GT3’, driven by Igor Omura Fraga in the Super GT, has been added. This livery can be selected when purchasing the Lexus RC F GT3 ’17 in Brand Central.

GT Café Extra Menus

The following two Extra Menus have been added:

• Extra Menu No. 24: ‘Subaru WRX’ (Collector Level 26 and above)
• Extra Menu No. 25: ‘Mitsubishi Lancer Evolution’ (Collector Level 30 and above)

 Music Rally 

The following six events have been added:

• Good Old Days (Classixx Remix)
• DRIFT
• Marechià (With Célia Kameni)
• Hooked on America
• Life’s Coming in Slow 
• Moon Over the Castle GT7 version

Two new Scapes

‘Monterey and ‘Field of Flowers’ have been added to the featured section.

Enjoy update 1.35 and happy driving!

  *Internet connection and Gran Turismo 7 game required for update

The world of Meet Your Maker is expanding with the arrival of Sector 1: Dreadshore.

We’re packing a lot into this release, and since Dreadshore marks our first major content update, we’re celebrating by letting you claim the Sector 1 Arsenal Pack for free beginning tomorrow until July 10.

With Meet Your Maker launched and officially out in the wild, it’s been a pleasure watching millions of Outposts spring up around the world, all thanks to our engaged, incredibly creative community. You’ve made some truly twisted stuff, and we love you for it.

It’s our job to keep fueling that creativity, and Sector 1: Dreadshore with its new lore, environment, arsenal additions, and cosmetics, is an important step in that direction.

Let’s start with the obvious: What exactly is Sector 1: Dreadshore, and what does it include?

“We’re using the Sectors to deliver large gameplay updates though a narrative,” explains Ash Pannell, Meet Your Maker’s Creative Director. “The Dreadshore is a place in our world and the items that you get from that Sector are all tied to its story. It helps expand the lore of Meet Your Maker alongside the actual gameplay.”

Welcome to Dreadshore

Each Sector in Meet Your Maker explores a new location on Earth, devastated in its own specific way.

The Dreadshore, situated on the remains of the New England coastline, is the location of an abandoned Sanctuary housed beneath a lighthouse. Within this facility, clones were subject to a host of cruel, disturbing experiments until one escaped, killing the out-of-control Custodian and Chimera on their way out.

Sector 1: Dreadshore will include a new environment and themed Deco Pack – both free and instantly accessible to all players.

“Environments and Deco Packs give tools to the builders to create stories out of their Outposts,” shares Ash. “Completely different from the Red Sands, Dreadshore is all about being dark, moody and playing with light. As such, it’s the perfect place to construct dark and scary Outposts. The Deco Pack’s rusty metal and worn wooden blocks allow players to imagine a lot of old buildings and structures.”

New tools of destruction

Undoubtedly the most exciting Dreadshore additions come in the form of the Sector 1 Arsenal Pack.

The four new gameplay elements not only deliver new ways for builders to strategize and concoct unexpected kills, but also give raiders some new tricks of their own to survive them.

 “Being a systemic game, every single new item has massive gameplay repercussions,” says Ash. “Just playtesting this sector has been amazing, and knowing what it’s going to do to change the meta in the game is indeed exciting – and that’s before players start getting hold of it and really showing us how to use these new items.”

New Custodian: Nautilus

The Nautilus represents the lone survivor of the Dreadshore Sanctuary. This mysterious figure was one of the clones being held captive and experimented upon. He built a suit in secret that could bolster his defensive abilities and help him escape.

While the two other suits currently available are geared towards ranged and melee perks, Nautilus is all about defensive weapon capabilities with all three of its perks greatly buffing the Arc Barrier’s effectiveness.

 New trap: Sentry Beam

The Sentry Beam was designed by the lighthouse Sanctuary to keep its population of prisoners in check. It uses motion tracking to fire a laser beam of super-heated amplified light at raiders that can ricochet multiple times before dissipating, adding an element of chaos to its attack.

“This trap is great. It’s an area denial trap designed to pin unsuspecting players down,” explains Ash. “As it bounces off walls it brings a nice new sense of randomness that helps break repetitive patterns of play.” 

New guard: Ravager

The Ravager is the unintended result of a Dreadshore experiment gone wrong. The guard sees multiple targets where there’s only one, and simultaneously shoots a bolt at each, creating a deadly scattershot effect.

“Think of this one as a different kind of pattern breaker,” points out Ash. “The Ravager has a horizontal field of fire making it very tough to strafe to avoid. Strafing has previously been the way to defeat these enemies, so when combined with other guards and traps, players will again have to adjust their playstyles.”

New weapon: Demolition Cannon

The Demolition Cannon was developed for war, but as global unrest occurred, it was used more as a lethal crowd control weapon. Essentially a grenade launcher with recoverable ammo, the lighthouse Sanctuary stocked this weapon as a last resort should the prisoners revolt. Nautilus discovered and used one during his blood-soaked escape.

Don’t forget to visit PlayStation Store to claim the full Sector 1 Arsenal Pack for free starting tomorrow, until July 10. We hope you have a blast with this new content!

From the very inception of the world that would come to be known as Luna Abyss, there has always been a clear vision. Bonsai Collective’s Art Director Harry Corr, and Creative Director Benni Hill, set out with a grab bag of influences and a set of aesthetic and narrative waypoints which underpinned the worldbuilding in its early stages. That vision remains integral to the game we have created. 

Caption: Tsutomu Nihei’s Blame! was a major influence on our art style and level design 

Building the world of Luna Abyss has been a process of extrapolation – building outwards from carefully defined core concepts, expressed in early level blockouts and key narrative beats, a core cast of characters to bring those beats to life. All good construction needs a solid foundation; ours was a sprawling brutalist megastructure, a sky within a moon, sufficiently strange as to pique the imagination. How did we get here? Where is here? These are the questions our protagonist asks, and who better to answer than an omnipresent disembodied head…? 

Caption: Beyond the decaying halls of Sorrow’s Canyon lies a vast alien landscape for Fawkes to navigate.

So how do you take something as vast as an alien moon and scale it down enough to understand where your characters fit, and how best to tell their story?

“We started with the cell,” says Lenny Ilett, a character designer at Bonsai Collective. “The game revolves around the axis of the cell, so it was pretty important to define those characters in the cell so we have something to work from.” For our primary characters – protagonist Fawkes, and their prison warden Aylin – the cell is the site of their most important interactions. It’s also a space of transition, literally and narratively – Fawkes returns here between missions to rest and process the events of the day. It was a useful waypoint in building the relationship between these two characters – how were they going to react to one another in this place of forced proximity versus out in the world, where their roles are more clearly defined?

Caption: Ellie: Lift guardian, train conductor, poet.

For the most part, building our characters was a back-and-forth process between the art team and the narrative team. Fawkes and Aylin were defined early on in the process, as the key characters in the story, but over time, and as the world grew in scale, it became necessary to expand our cast in order to tell the story we wanted. Here, art and story worked hand in hand. An example of this is Urien Caldecott, dubbed “axe cat” by the internet, who existed in concept for quite some time before receiving the character design treatment. Lenny describes the process of visualizing a character as chipping away at a block of marble, revealing the character in increments based on their dialogue, or their backstory. “You’re bringing words on a page to life,” Lenny says, of Urien, “but what does that look like? That’s something you have to navigate.”

Caption: The mysterious Waif is the first person you’ll meet in the Abyss – but not the last.

This process exists in parallel, too. Some of our NPCs began life as basic character models; biomechanical wardens, much like the one Fawkes inhabits, which come in a variety of weird and wonderful shapes. Lenny explains that these wardens emerged from a process of continual iteration; back-and-forth between character design and animation, ensuring that the designs were actually feasible in three dimensions. For this, the designers often looked to the natural world for inspiration. Lenny gives the example of a particular warden which originally had human-like legs, but ended up with a structure more akin to a kangaroo, the better to maintain balance. Similarly, Animator Marie Trystad mentions looking at the way snakes move in order to animate Aylin’s uncannily long neck. This in turn inspired the sound design; a particular character the player will encounter in the Meadows is a glorious amalgamation of ideas from across the team, brought to life by Marie, and given even more personality by Sound Designer Sarah Sherlock. In this way, our characters have truly been a team effort.

Caption: Environmental storytelling allows us to shed further light on the world of the Abyss.

Part of the process of making our NPCs feel like living, breathing people who populate a world that is vast and lived-in, beyond the limits of Fawkes’ scope and perception, was bridging the conceptual gap between the machine and the human soul within. It was important to us to give these characters their own self-contained stories, which intersect with Fawkes’, but nonetheless give a sense of a world beyond that which the player experiences directly. In assigning models to these characters, we then found ourselves in a situation where it seemed necessary to understand why they were in these particular wardens – which traits might lead a person to being assigned one type over another, and what this meant for the characters. It was from this core question that we ourselves began to understand more about the world we’d created. The results of this can be seen threaded through the supplementary lore encountered in the game world.

Caption: Our art team rose to the challenge of representing the human soul trapped within the machine.

As these characters began to gain a life of their own, so it seemed important to make them visually distinctive – not just on a practical level, so they might be differentiated from the multitude of other wardens across the Abyss, but also because it seemed reasonable that these individuals, with their own personalities and identities, would seek to individualize their own appearance in some way. This was the most important point of collaboration between the story and art teams. I had an ongoing dialogue with Animators Waseem Shaheed and Marie Trystad, exchanging questions and backstories to gain a greater understanding of who these characters were, and by extension, how they might move; this in turn influenced the personalities of these characters, which became more clearly delineated in the way they held themselves, or in the subtleties of their motion. Similarly, I worked with Lenny and Art Director Harry Corr to develop visual shorthands, within our limitations, to express elements of personality through appearance; working from the understanding that these characters, by virtue of being trapped inside biomechanical bodies, would find ways to customize them to their liking.

We had always intended to create a cast of characters with diverse identities. Our protagonist, Fawkes, is nonbinary; we chose to present this quite simply as a fact about them, without posing it as an issue to be discussed or a dilemma to be pondered. We chose to include a variety of ethnicities, sexualities and gender identities among our cast to reflect the lived reality of those at the studio; it was important to us to normalize all of these things and weave them into the fabric of the world, which also included casting voice actors to authentically represent those characters. From a visual perspective, we faced the challenge of how to signpost certain elements of these identities in a way that felt realistic, given the limitation of the nonhuman warden bodies. In other cases, we decided to play with the cognitive dissonance of – for example – two cisgender male characters housed in feminine-coded bodies. Ultimately, we allowed the characters themselves to guide our hand.

Finally, we also created a library of lore entries, which the player discovers as they progress through the game. Collecting these will build a codex of entries, which act as an archive rather than an exhaustive encyclopedia; letter, diary entries and other windows into life on Luna, adding context to the events Fawkes experiences. The end result, we hope, will be a glimpse into a world which collapsed two hundred years before Fawkes ever set foot on the blood moon.

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Email us at PSPodcast@sony.com!

Subscribe via Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or RSS, or download here

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This week the team chats with Ben Starr, English voice actor for Clive Rosfield, and Square Enix Localization Director Michael-Christopher Koji Fox on all things Final Fantasy XVI.

Stuff We Talked About

• The Callisto Protocol Final Transmission DLC – first gameplay details revealed
• Crash Team Rumble Character Deep Dive Blog
• Final Fantasy XVI – Series Evolution Blog
• Eternights Gameplay/Dating Blog
• Interview with FFXVI’s Ben Starr and Michael-Christopher Koji Fox (starts at 10:35)
• Final Fantasy XVI
• Diablo IV

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The Cast

Thanks to Cory Schmitz for our beautiful logo and Dormilón for our rad theme song and show music.

[Editor’s note: PSN game release dates are subject to change without notice. Game details are gathered from press releases from their individual publishers and/or ESRB rating descriptions.]

Last week, we celebrated ten years of The Last of Us by asking you to share moments from the iconic game using #PSshare #PSBlog. Here are this week’s #TLOU10 highlights: 

YouSpoonyBardd shares Joel’s broken watch in black and white

wingsforsmiles shares Ellie crouching and sneaking

_HypeDX shares Joel wearing a mask, leaving a spore-filled building

LukeKasinger shares a portrait of Sam

Dash_845 shares Joel shining a flashlight on Firefly graffiti on a wall

calisarah1998 shares Ellie and Riley looking at her joke book in front of the mall carousel

Search #PSshare #PSBlog on Twitter or Instagram to see more entries to this week’s theme. Want to be featured in the next Share of the Week? 

THEME: Joel and Ellie – The Last of Us
SUBMIT BY: 11:59 PM PT on June 28, 2023

Next week, we’re continuing the love for #TLOU10 and highlighting Joel and Ellie. Share moments featuring Joel and Ellie together using #PSshare #PSBlog for a chance to be featured.

Since the end of The Callisto Protocol’s main game, things have gone from bad to worse inside the penitentiary. The virus that’s been wreaking havoc inside is threatening to escape the prison and it’s up to you to retrieve Mahler’s data and transmit it off-world. It’s not going to be a walk in the park. You’re going to have to fight tooth and nail to make your way through monster-infested corridors, where new abominations await. 

When it comes to battling Biophage, players need reliable tools to survive. The Stun Baton is a great blunt instrument, but new threats call for new gear. According to Lead Systems Designer, Paul Guirao, the team behind The Callisto Protocol listened to fan feedback and decided to add a new melee weapon to the game. “We wanted to give players something more powerful than the Stun Baton,” Guirao explained.  

The result is the all-new Kinetic Hammer. With its design and shape, you can feel the power and weight behind every swing. It has light and heavy melee attacks that hit harder than the Stun Baton, but that’s not all – Guirao explains, “Holding down the heavy melee button produces an even more powerful attack. But mastery of the heavy charged mechanic can be tricky… you become the ultimate badass once you’ve mastered it. It’s one of our favorite weapons because it obliterates everything it touches.” As a bonus, a successfully executed charge attack also creates a powerful area-of-effect.  

However, the thrill of wielding the Kinetic Hammer is only fully realized when pitted against worthy adversaries. Final Transmission introduces a new enemy type and boss for players to square off with. 

With twistedly agile corruptors and brutally powerful two-headed brutes lurking around every corner, not to mention the hard-to-kill Security Units, Black Iron Prison was always a treacherous place. But now a new enemy is stalking its halls: the Biophage Robot, or the Biobot as the developers affectionately call it. This terrifying foe is a combination of Biophage and UJC Security Units, and a deadly reminder that Black Iron is still as dangerous as ever. 

“In the main game, the security robots are only seen a couple of times,” Guirao tells me, “With the final chapter, we really dug into the idea of what happens when the Biophage starts taking over machinery.”

Visualizing the Biobot as a grotesque and intimidating bio-mechanical enemy was an iterative process, “We worked closely with the Concept Art team to create a look that fits in TCP’s universe. It took several iterations to establish the look. We went in both extremes, too robotic and then too organic,” Guirao explains. The more robotic iterations felt too much like the existing Security Units and lacked the gruesomeness the team was looking for. On the other hand, the more organic versions appeared too fragile and didn’t do enough to differentiate the powerful new enemies from their Biophage brethren. Eventually the team “found that sweet spot.” 

Affectionate nicknames aside, the Biobot is not an enemy to be taken lightly. According to one of the Senior Systems Designers, “Security Unit Robots were big, daunting enemies that couldn’t really be beaten up and would only go down from precision headshots.”

Guirao adds, “we’re not a tactical cover-based game, so making the Biobots a melee unit made more sense for us. We have an in-your-face style of combat and did not want to deviate from that.” 

Guirao and the team at Striking Distance watched hundreds of hours of streamers playing The Callisto Protocol, “there was a lot of feedback on how all our NPCs felt the same and it was something that we needed to address.” To survive, players need to employ new tactics to take down Biobots, however, once players get the new melee weapon, they’ll have the chance to exact satisfying and well-deserved revenge on the bio-mechanical enemies and “finally get their chance to smash them apart.” 

The Biobot isn’t the only new enemy you’ll encounter in your return to Black Iron. Without giving too much away, the final boss in Final Transmission is truly something special. “Our goal was to showcase the Kinetic Hammer’s power and make players strategize on the best ways to beat the boss; deciding when to use melee or ranged attacks and utilizing the arena to their advantage,” Senior Systems Designer Quinlan Richards reveals, “we’ve given the boss similar mechanics as Jacob, switching seamlessly between hard-hitting melee and aggressive ranged attacks. And to keep things interesting, we’ve given the final boss an ability that goes beyond anything Jacob can do.” 

We can’t wait for you to return to Black Iron Prison to face the new horrors lurking its halls. PS4 and PS5 players get exclusive 48-hour early access to The Callisto Protocol: Final Transmission starting on June 26 at 9:00pm PST.  

Developing a new numbered Final Fantasy game is a balancing act. Players have expectations of what they’ll encounter but still crave elements that change up and build upon established series traditions. But even those have to start somewhere: many elements commonly associated with Final Fantasy as a whole–Chocobos, Moogles, summons, and beloved job classes and abilities–were, at one point, completely alien to the series. Finding a delicate balance between tradition and innovation is always challenging, especially so with Final Fantasy XVI, the first numbered game in the long-running series to fully eschew menu-driven battles in favor of real-time combat. 

From Active Time Battle to fighting in real-time

Elements of action gameplay have evolved in Final Fantasy over time, beginning with the implementation of the “Active Time Battle” system in Final Fantasy IV. This upped the pressure on players by forcing them to respond quickly and consider the order in which enemies and allies would be able to act. Waffling on crucial decisions could prove costly, as foes would continue their onslaught no matter how long it took you to input your commands. (If you want to check out the genesis of Active Time Battle, you can play the Final Fantasy IV-VI Pixel Remasters now available on PlayStation.)

Final Fantasy IV (left) and Final Fantasy XII (right) 

Active Time Battle would serve as the mechanical basis for most numbered Final Fantasy games going forward, with the positioning-driven open-field combat of Final Fantasy XII and the dynamic, on-the-fly role-swapping battles of the Final Fantasy XIII saga building on many of the concepts ATB solidified. Final Fantasy XV moved many of the typical menu commands to face buttons, shifting combat in a decidedly action-focused direction. 

Final Fantasy XV (left) and Final Fantasy VII Remake (right) 

Even with this gradual evolution, many modern Final Fantasy games, notably the Final Fantasy VII Remake series, still use some hybrid of menu- and action-driven gameplay. FFXVI going full-on action-RPG surprised many hardcore fans, who wondered how this may impact the “essence” of Final Fantasy. To talk about developing FFXVI to evolve the franchise while satisfying existing fans, we sat down with producer Naoki Yoshida and director Hiroshi Takai to dive deeper into their process. 

Action and drama make for great stories

Yoshida’s love for Final Fantasy blossomed from the very beginning of the series. “Final Fantasy I was an important gaming experience for me,” he says. “I bought it on launch day, and I remember how confused I was when I booted it up and there was no title screen. Then you leave town and cross the bridge, and up comes the Final Fantasy logo! I was blown away that a video game could feel so cinematic, and that’s what I wanted to recapture with this new game—the feeling that you’re playing the leading role in an epic movie.” 

“So yes, I grew up on turn-based RPGs, and they still have a special place in my heart,” he remarks. 

“We decided to go with real-time combat in FFXVI for two main reasons. The first is simply that most of the members of our development team are gamers, and recently, most of us have been into action games. The controller-gripping combat in those games really makes you want to pour hours into them. The other reason is that, in today’s market, going with an action combat system that anyone can get to grips with quickly and easily was our best way of appealing to the largest audience.

“By interweaving the real-time action with a fantastical story, we believed that we could create a game that was still Final Fantasy at heart. And, of course, when we say we want to appeal to the largest audience possible, that includes stalwart fans of turn-based games and those who aren’t the greatest at action games, too. We’ve put systems in place so that anyone of any skill level can enjoy the game just as much as a seasoned action gamer—maybe even more.”

Soul of Final Fantasy

Yoshida, a veteran producer who helmed the universally praised reboot of Final Fantasy XIV, also recognizes the expectations that come with the Final Fantasy name. “Making things different for the sake of it is the easy option,” he says. “For me, the key elements to an FF game are the cinematic presentation, the gripping story, and the battle system that underpins it all–not to mention the cutting-edge graphics and evocative soundscape. The combination of all those things, plus the fact that the world, story, and characters change with each installment, makes it feel like a series that is always breaking new boundaries. As Hironobu Sakaguchi, the father of the series, once said, ‘Final Fantasy is what the director at the time thinks is best.’” 

“FFXVI is no exception–the whole team worked together to make the very best game we could. The challenge we set ourselves was to change things up while keeping the game recognizably Final Fantasy. For instance, the classic high fantasy setting was inspired by the time-honored FFI. When you play through FFXVI, there are lots of little touches and nods to that game.” 

Director Hiroshi Takai chimes in with his perspective. “One of the stand-out things about the franchise is that every one of the games in the mainline series brings with it a whole new world, story, and gameplay experience. It’s the shared elements that tie them together–the summons, the spells, the Chocobos and the Moogles–as well as the things that always change between entries, like the battle system–that make Final Fantasy games unique. Maybe the reason the players have stuck with the series so long is because we’ve always stayed true to the vision Yoshida mentioned–striving to make the very best game they can at that particular moment.”

“I’ve also played every installment in the franchise and have been involved in the making of a fair few of them,” Takai continues. “So naturally, I’ve taken a lot of inspiration from past games, even on a subconscious level. For example, I loved the customizable ability system from FFV–that idea formed the basis of the new battle system in FFXVI.”

Perhaps the most recognizably Final Fantasy element in FFXVI are the Eikons–summoned monsters known by many different terms like “Eidolons,” “Espers,” “Guardian Forces,” and more throughout the series. Takai explained their place in FFXVI. 

“The classic Summons take a leading role in both the story and the battle system,” he says. “Even though we’re switching over to an action battle system with this game, it’s all centered around the Summons, which gives it that all-important Final Fantasy flavor.”

A worthy successor

Even with all of their passion and effort put into the game, the team acknowledges that some players might not see Final Fantasy the same way they do. “Every FF fan around the world has a different idea of what makes for the perfect FF game,” notes Yoshida. “And as a fan myself, I’m sure my own idea differs from everyone else’s. So while we always knew that it would be impossible to satisfy the expectations of the whole fanbase, Takai, [Kazutoyo] Maehiro, and the whole of the development team took the approach to make the game we wanted to make while at the same time keeping an objective eye on the fans’ expectations. I think it’s important to always try to remain objective about your own work, even if it’s only for your own peace of mind.”

Takai is optimistic that fans will find a lot to enjoy about FFXVI upon its release date. “I hope that Clive’s story, and the hopes and dreams of all the people of Valisthea whose path he crosses, will stay with players. The decisions that Clive and his friends make are seen and judged differently by the different people of the realm, and I think there’s a real parallel with the world today, where everyone has a different viewpoint. FFXVI is a game that tackles the issues that it deals with head-on in both the story and the presentation, and I hope that, when people look back on it and its place in the series, it will be remembered for exactly that.”

Final Fantasy XVI will launch exclusively for PS5 on June 22. Be sure to download the demo ahead of time and transfer your progress to the full game.