Back in June 2020, Square Enix announced a new game for PS5 and the PC, Project Athia. Now while we don’t know much about this game, we do know that it looks beautiful. Moreover, it will feature the same female protagonist that was present in Square Enix’s amazing tech demos, Agni’s Philosophy and WITCH CHAPTER 0 [cry].
Thankfully, Square Enix’s president, Yosuke Matsuda revealed some additional details about it. Project Athia will be an open-world game, and will support real-time ray tracing.
“The game Project Athia (title tentative), which we will release for PS5, is an open-world style game in which users can freely move around the game world. PS5 dramatically improves video technology, such as with the implementation of light-reflecting ‘ray-tracing’ technology. Compared to what you see on PC, it is nearly identical. By utilizing these special traits, we’re able to create incredibly precise imagery. We still plan on developing well-balanced games tailored to a platform’s traits, including smartphone and cloud-based games, but we will never stop developing for high-end platforms such as PS5. Because these things are packed with the best technology.”
Unofortunately, Matsuda-san did not share anything other than that. Thus, we don’t know the engine that Project Athia is using. My guess is that it will use the Luminous Engine, and that it will be a DX12-only game. However, and since Square Enix has used Unreal Engine 4 for both Kingdom Hearts 3 and Final Fantasy 7 Remake, the team may be also using Epic’s engine.
From the looks of it, Project Athia will not come out anytime soon. Still, it’s worth noting that Sony will have another digital event for PS5 in August 2020. Therefore, it will be interesting to see whether Square Enix will showcase another tech demo for Project Athia.
Stay tuned for more!
John is the founder and Editor in Chief at DSOGaming. He is a PC gaming fan and highly supports the modding and indie communities. Before creating DSOGaming, John worked on numerous gaming websites. While he is a die-hard PC gamer, his gaming roots can be found on consoles. John loved – and still does – the 16-bit consoles, and considers SNES to be one of the best consoles. Still, the PC platform won him over consoles. That was mainly due to 3DFX and its iconic dedicated 3D accelerator graphics card, Voodoo 2. John has also written a higher degree thesis on the “The Evolution of PC graphics cards.”
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