A few new details have emerged about Project Athia, Square Enix’s new gorgeous-looking RPG that was revealed officially during Sony’s PlayStation 5 event in June. Specifically, we now know that Project Athia will indeed be an open-world game, allowing players to traverse its gameworld freely. We’ve also learned that Project Athia will support ray-traced lighting effects on both PC and PlayStation 5.
There were, to be sure, hints of both an open world and ray tracing (watch the light from the wolf creature reflect off the nearby pillars as it passes) in the Project Athia teaser trailer, but these facts were confirmed by Square Enix president and representative director Yosuke Matsuda, who spoke with Weekly Tokyo Keizai Plus in an interview translated by Gematsu. Matsuda said Project Athia will be taking advantage of the increased hardware capabilities of Sony’s next-gen system.
“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,” he said. “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.”
Here’s the teaser once again, to get a sense of what Project Athia looks like – in theory, at least. While Matsuda only mentions PS5, we’ve already learned that Project Athia is also coming to PC.
There’s no Project Athia release date set yet, but with Sony showing it off in the PlayStation 5 showcase event, it’s possible they’re planning on making it available some time close to the platform’s launch this holiday season.
In the meantime, you may want to start shopping for the best graphics card for your system if you’re currently running a GPU that’s starting to show its age, who knows what the next generation of RPG games will demand of your rig.