Astro Bot director Nicolas Doucet is adamant the PlayStation 5 has “really brought something special”, amid criticism of this generation of hardware being an incremental improvement over the last.
It’s been five years since Sony released the PS5, but many of its exclusives have been crossovers with – or sequels to – PS4 games. Astro Bot, however, was a showcase of the PS5’s capabilities, as Doucet explained to The Game Business.
“When you put graphics side-by-side between an end-of-lifecycle PS4 game and early cycle PS5 game, you could argue, to an untrained eye, that it’s hard to see the difference,” Doucet admitted.
“But early on [with PS5] we got the DualSense prototypes, with this haptic feedback and adaptive triggers. And we tried to understand what could be different about having this kind of trigger, so you can simulate pulling something, or cracking something, or crushing something… We tested all of that.
“When you’ve gone through [that process], you get to appreciate the changes,” he continued. “There are some leaps, but they’re maybe less obvious than when we went to HD graphics. That’s something that you can just stare at the screen for a few seconds and understand. With the controller, you have to get it in your hands and get a feel for it.
“But I do think the PS5, between the DualSense and the SSD, really brought something special. With the SSD… I’m thinking of things like the Souls games, where you die a lot. And when you die, you used to have to wait a long time before you get a second try. With the SSD, that becomes really, really fast. So, in terms of just the pleasure of play, that’s really increased.”
What’s more, Team Asobi is focused on PS5 exclusive games, despite Sony releasing its first party games on PC.
“We really focus on PS5,” said Doucet. “We want to take full advantage of the DualSense and SSD. There is always a way to cross bridges if we ever need it. But really, the main focus is on the PlayStation console.”
Doucet also prefers console development as it avoids incompatibility issues with varying PC setups.
“It’s specific hardware that is absolutely set,” Doucet said of the PS5. “You know that what you see in your office making the game, is definitely what people will see in their home playing the game. That allows us to focus, because you’re not putting in time dealing with compatibility or permutations. It’s why I’ve always liked consoles.”
Further, Doucet discussed the length of Astro Bot too, and the benefits of developing a more concise, focused experience.
While there is a “minimum scope” for a project to be considered a full game, the team didn’t want to spread itself too thin.
“We use the analogy of food,” Doucet explained. “When you’re really hungry, if I propose to go to a buffet, you can eat anything you like and that’s going to sound appealing. But as you go through that meal, maybe by the end of it you’ve eaten too much and you almost regret it and you don’t necessarily appreciate what’s left, and maybe you keep a lukewarm memory of it.
“Whereas if we go to a place where it’s going to be just enough, you’re going to keep a good memory and maybe you want more. The way we think of it is to not overload the player so that in the end they feel fed up.”
Doucet’s comments echo his own from GDC earlier this year, where he stated it’s “OK to make a small game”. “A lot of choices we made with Astro Bot could be labelled as AA… like the size of the team, the size of the game, there’s no voice, it’s not open world, but that doesn’t really matter,” he said. “We could still make something that gets people really happy.”
Which games do you think prove the success of the PS5? Let us know in the comments.