Upcoming Astro Bot Game Almost Went Open-World

The upcoming Astro Bot game for PS5 almost went open-world before developer Team Asobi instead considering downsizing the game to 80 planets, which offered “the most control over the game’s variety.” 80 planets may seem like a lot but compared to a full-fledged open-world, it allowed the studio to reign in on the finer details and better orchestrate levels.

Speaking to Edge in its latest issue, Astro Bot creative director Nicholas Doucet said the team did consider making an open-world game at one point. It’s a trend in most PlayStation exclusives to take the open-world route but Team Asobi wanted a bit more creative control over the flow and design of levels. As a result, the lovable mascot will now travel to 80 planets to try and fix his ship, meeting plenty of familiar PlayStation icons along the way.

Doucet later talked about the galaxy-spanning scope of Astro Bot and how the idea came about because of extensive gameplay testing:

“The way we work at Team Asobi is that we do a lot of prototyping of gameplay mechanics, without necessarily knowing what game we’re making yet. So we created a lot of these demos, trying to come up with new, expressive ways to use the DualSense, and [then asked] how these could translate into power-ups.”

To that end, the worlds and galaxy of Astro Bot were seemingly developed around its gameplay mechanics instead of the other way around.

Team Asobi presumably began development on the new Astro Bot game some time after wrapping up Astro’s Playroom, which shipped free with every PS5 console. The upcoming title will be a full adventure-platformer as opposed to a tech demo or short experience. With 80 planets to explore, it seems like it won’t be short on fun content. You can read more about why Astro Bot is one of the most important releases for PlayStation this generation.

Astro Bot launches on 6 September 2024 for PS5.

Source: Edge