If there is one tradition that went curiously under serviced during the Playstation 5 reveal event, it was that of weird new games that defy everybody's expectations. Wild brand new ideas that make the audience scratch their heads and wonder, new IPs that carry with them a bevy of unknown potential and genre defiers who plop a nude Norman Reedus down in front of you and say "This is game now." For Microsoft's event, there were a smattering of new IPs and indie projects thrown in there as that company is desperate to find at least one first party studio who can consistently put out quality to the same level as Playstation's close partners can. (They're still looking on that front) Sony are far in the lead on that regard however, so they spent quite a lot of time during their event pimping out the latest entries in well established series (which is a great way to drum up hype for a new system. Even Nintendo are familiar with that tactic.) However, that isn't to say that they didn't manage to sneak in a least one outlier within all that fan service.
If I say the name 'Square Enix' to you that probably comes with a certain degree of expectations. Perhaps they are known to you as the most westernized producers of JRPGs, or maybe as that place you go to for the gritty 'Tomb Raider Reboot', gritty 'Deus Ex' continuation, and that one story about the spiky haired kid with big shoes who has gatecrashed every popular Disney property ever at this point. But if there is one thing about Square that a lot of people forget, it's the fact that they are prolific producers who put out a frankly ludicrous amount of high quality and varied products. (It's one of the reasons why I rate these guys so highly) As such, the second that we saw their name dribble in to the list of trailers for Sony's event, it was clear that the gloves would be coming off. This could be literally anything guys; Tomb Raider 8, Chrono Trigger 2, Final Fantasy 13-4, the sky isn't even a limit with this studio. What we got instead was something interesting, yet frustrating vague; we got 'Project Athia'.
Now with that naming convention and a shred of familiarity with the game design process, you can already deduce that this is a game in very early stages of development. Afterall, the team isn't even ready to share a finished name with us, just 'Project Athia: Working title' (Unless- is that the name?) but if the game is apparently still ready for public consumption then there surely must be something there that the team wants us to see. Some sort of vision that the team knew the public would pick up upon. Me, I'm always more a fan of the games that put their cards more clearly on the table, for the second you open things up to the audience's wider imagination you are setting them up for disappointment, but at least one mystery game to ponder upon isn't going to sink the industry, so I'll bite. What is Project Athia?
Well isn't that just the question of the hour? What we've seen so far has been quite the interesting amalgamation of imagery to pick through that it's tough getting to grips with what we should take away. On one hand we see a lot of fantastical and medieval looking imagery around the trailer, with fire-leaking hell wolves and old gibbet-strewn castle walls. Yet one the otherhand we have a somewhat modern looking protagonist with her side-part hairstyle and rundown trainers. Of course, the trailer itself explains this with the simple tag "In a world not her own", so we can certainly expect a fish-out-of-water kind of story to come out of this project. (Also, I've seen this sort of story before; what, did she fall into her video game console?) Wherever she's from, our world or elsewhere, the place in which she now inhibits seems to seasaw between medieval and demonic with some far-off shots of hulking monstrosities conjuring up the memory of 'Shadow of the Colossus' in my mind.
Again, as an extreme teaser it's hard to get to grips with exactly what it is that Square are propositioning with this title, but from the vibe of the trailer we can make some guesses. Just as with 'Ratchet and Clank', some of vistas in this trailer are specifically designed to emphasise scale and distance, such as the one featuring our protagonist brooding above a sea of clouds, meaning that either some semi-open world elements are going to be at play here or that this is a new full-action entry in the Xenoblade Chronicles franchise. (Which I find very unlikely) I find this reinforced by one shot of our heroine spinning through the air like sonic before landing in a hero pose, alongside scenes of her jumping large bounds in a single step, indicating impressive moments of traversal and exploration to be a key design pillar for Athia. If that is in fact the case then this will be interesting, Square have never actually made a big budget open-world exploration title before and I'll be curious to see what sort of unique angle they can bring to the premise. (At least it should be more unique than the tag. I wan't the only one who confusedly thought 'Tomb Raider' at the line "She will rise". You guys forgot how you already used that one?)
It's too early to quite pick up on a story or conflict that will arise from this games' narrative, but we can always speculate with the little we've been shown. Already I think it's safe to say that the demon-looking beasts with the fires raging in their chests are probably the big threats for the moment, meaning that demon dog and dragon are the ones worth our attention here. Protagonist lady somehow finds herself stranded in the same world as them and in doing so is imbued with special powers and abilities, like the ability to control nature as seen in the trailer. With that little nugget, I find it pertinent to broach whether or not nature and our relationship with the wild is going to be a core theme here. Although there are some shots of man-made structures, most of what we see in the trailer is of nature or overgrown ruins, indicating that this is a world that has been abandoned and reclaimed by the natural spirits. Perhaps our protagonist represents some sort of guardian for nature (She's the Avatar!) and does battle against these monsters in that pursuit. Again, I'm grasping at straws right now, I don't have anything concrete to build upon. But in my head cannon that's what this game is for the time being.
Visually, which I think was meant the main focus of the trailer, the game looks good enough to be at this event. I wasn't really blown away by anything I saw, even if bits of it were pretty impressive. (Such as the fluffiness of the clouds.) As I've implied, I'm not really the sort of person to be swooned by graphical fidelity, as I appreciate an arresting design direction more, and in that regard this game has done little to impress thusfar. The game seems to be going for grounded realism in it's design, which doesn't inherently mean that things have to be boring so-to-speak, but when coupled with very grounded-looking, or inspired, enemies I find myself lacking in eye candy. "Oh that looks like a wolf, great. Seen those before". There's nothing to drag me away into a new world beyond my imaging. (Even the dragon looked like one of the more generic of his species) . Now of course, we haven't seen the best this game has to offer but they could have thrown in something wild there to keep us interested. The most 'otherwordly' thing I saw from this trailer (besides the demon fire wolf) was the curious land formations sticking above the clouds and even then, they just looked like the exact same formations one would see in Duscae from Final Fantasy XV. Speaking of which...
This is the game that the FFXV team are now working on, which means that this is the game they abandoned their extended DLC plans to pursue. Now I will admit that this fact alone does inherently make me a fan of their work, but I'm a bigger fan of the wider Final Fantasy aesthetic so I won't give 'Project Athia' the benefit of my excitement just yet. The generic tinge to the design does quite confuse me, as this is a Square Enix game we're talking about and they are quite literally renowned for strange and uncompromising designs. If ever you've seen concept for a character and thought "Huh, they looked better in the drawing than in person"; then you probably weren't looking at a Square game because they rarely ever make that compromise. Their artists work wonders to capture the vague emotions bouncing around the heads of their imagineers and that's part of what makes this studio special, yet I see none of that profound creativity reflected here. But at the end of the day, this is a very light teaser and analysing it too hard is clearly a losers game. So rock on, Project Athia, and show us something we didn't know that we wanted next time, Square. You've always been good at that...
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