Against the backdrop of Astro Bot’s stellar first reviews, Nicolas Doucet speaks to VGC: Team Asobi’s Game Director retraces the origins of the PS5-exclusive platformer, outlining its creative vision in the broader context of the IPs churned out by PlayStation Studios over the last 25 years.
The representative of the Japanese software house reflects on the importance of developing a video game that, like Astro Bot, breaks away from the canons of recent PS Studios productions, namely those of cinematic adventures with realistic graphics and a mature narrative.
“Team Asobi’s position is not exactly central to the PlayStation Studios galaxy,” Doucet begins, before noting that “if you look at the way each team within PS Studios has evolved, it’s interesting to note that many of the Sony studios have moved from making cartoonish games to more mature and increasingly realistic titles, and this has happened in parallel with the growth of the PlayStation audience.”
For the Game Director of Astro Bot, therefore, “it was precisely this awareness that dictated our agenda in the development of titles like Astro’s Playroom and Astro Bot itself, as a studio it was our intention to fill this sort of gap that had been created in the PlayStation galaxy, a void that other Sony studios had already filled with their video games over the last 20-25 years. So now we are exactly where we wanted to be, that is, in a position that allows us to look at gamers of all ages with a colorful and fun-filled title. It is a vision that transcends genres: if we had made a horror game, it would still have been a light and fun horror”.
Before leaving you with the comments, we invite you to read our review of Astro Bot, one of the best video games of this generation.
