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Team Asobi says Astro Bot will push the DualSense controller “to a new level”

June 13, 2024
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Team Asobi has said Astro Bot players can expect the game to feature a ton of sequences that take advantage of the PlayStation 5 DualSense Wireless Controller.

In a recent interview with IGN during Summer Game Fest 2024, Team Asobi provided a much deeper insight into its upcoming platforming adventure game, following its announcement last month.

According to studio head Nicolas Doucet, when advancing the technology for the sequel, it wanted to focus more on the platforming aspect of the game than it did with Astro’s Playroom, while also making use of the PS5's DualSense controller. He also described that game as lots of tech demos stitched together with platforming sequences.

For example, one moment in the reveal trailer shows a moment where Astro absorbs water to make him bigger, then squeezes it all out like a sponge. Doucet said this was a prototype that was done separately that they later added into the game.

"It was like a sponge and you could squeeze water out of it with an adaptive trigger, because you can change the pressure of the trigger," he explained. "So we want to see if you can have something feeling heavy, and then over time, feels lighter. 

"That felt really good as a demo, but it was just one big sponge on screen. That was it. So we brought that into [Astro Bot] and said, 'What can we do with it?' And then we thought maybe we could do a power-up. The other way around would've been probably impossible. If somebody came with a thing on paper without that prototype having proven it and said, 'I've got an idea. Let's turn Astro into a sponge.' Probably we would think it's a bit weird. Let's not do it. Maybe we'll try it, maybe we won't. But because that demo was there, which is kind of like a household demo. You're a sponge. It could have been a cleaning game, right? But in the end, we liked that demo, so we brought it in."

The game also features a moment where you can "run your hand on the wall" to feel texture, then find a secret passage, which Doucet compares to Uncharted or Indiana Jones.

"That was one of the things that came out from us trying to push DualSense to a new level," he said. "It's always like that. Through the life cycle of a system towards the end, you still see stuff that wasn't possible at the beginning."

Astro Bot launches on September 6 exclusively for PS5. We previously learned that the game will feature over 50 planets to explore, with more than 150 PlayStation cameos to find.

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