Final Fantasy: Its absence of Astro Bot was very noticeable. The creator of this PS5 exclusive speaks

Game news Final Fantasy: Its absence of Astro Bot was very noticeable. The creator of this PS5 exclusive speaks

Astro Bot is a great game for several reasons… First of all, it’s an excellent platformer 3D, with rope sensations as well as power-up and varied levels, but it is also a unprecedented tribute to the PlayStation brand – which celebrates its 30th anniversary in 2024. For the occasion, Team Aobi, developer of Astro Bot, continued the work started in Astro’s Playroom. In the new platform game, we find Sony’s hardware, but also – and above all – the heroes who made the heyday of the Japanese company’s consoles.

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An unprecedented gallery of heroes

In Astro Bot, you play as a small robot who crashes on an unknown planet. His ship (a giant PS5) can no longer take off and the hero only has to explore the surrounding galaxies to repair his rocket and find his metal compatriots, lost in the crash. Within some 80 levels, Astro must therefore rescue 300 robots, half of which come from major video game franchiseswhether they were created by Sony and having shared a close collaboration with the company. And we find everything, from the newest to the oldest: from God of War to Uncharted via Ape Escape, PaRappa the Rapper or even Metal Gear Solid.

A big absence to deplore

However, several players have pointed out something that is missing: the Final Fantasy saga. Indeed, in Astro Bot, there is no trace, for example, of Cloud from FF7, even though we found the sword of the hero with the blonde locks in Astro’s Playroom. In view of the roster of Astro Bot, it would be hard to imagine Team Asobi forgetting to contact Square Enix, the publisher of Final Fantasy, when Final Fantasy 7 Rebirth was released exclusively on PS5 a little earlier in the year.

Obviously, Square would have declined the invitation. This is what Nicolas Doucet, director of Team Asobi, admits half-heartedly – in a recent interview given to Game File. When asked about the absence of Final Fantasy in Astro Bot, the studio boss replied that it is “difficult” to comment on that: “We really respect the choice of each publisher,” he explains. Obviously, Cloud and his gang in the platform game of the year are not happening right away. At the end of the year, Astro Bot will welcome Stellar Blade and Helldivers 2 as bots via free DLC. In the future, other licenses, such as Assassin’s Creed, are expected.