Ahead of the impending release of Chinese action RPG Lost Soul Aside, PlayStation’s put out a mini documentary exploring the game’s origins and ambitions, and it’s an interesting look into the project’s nearly 11-year journey from Unreal Engine 4 experiment to marquee release.
The video, earmarked “PS5 and PC games” as PlayStation continues to invest more in PC with simultaneous multiplatform launches, largely centers around Yang Bing, the original creator who posted the prophetic “my Animation made by unrealengine4” on YouTube back in 2014.
That short video featured a quick and dirty mockup of a dude who looks like Kingdom Hearts’ vision of a goth fighting red-eyed demon ninjas as a sassy, talking dragon skull floats around him, set to rock music seemingly recorded from inside a sock inside a handbag.
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I say this with all the love in the world as someone who’s seriously interested in this game: it’s amazing how closely Lost Soul Aside has stuck to this original vision.
Lost Soul Aside – A Hero’s Journey (Behind The Scenes) | PS5 & PC Games – YouTube
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The full game – polished and expanded under PlayStation’s China Hero Project at full-fat developer UltiZero Games, and re-announced or teased in various forms over the years – has a Final Fantasy 15-adjacent HD anime aesthetic and stars long coat enthusiast Kaser, joined by parasitic magic dragon head Arena. It looks incomparably better than that 2014 animation, but it’s still got that charming edginess about it.
“The earliest stage of the project can be traced back to 2014,” Bing says in the video. “At that time it was more of a personal hobby. I personally liked fast-paced, fluid combat games. I just wanted to gradually bring the things in my mind to life.”
“Like Bayonetta or Devil May Cry, it belongs to the hack and slash category,” battle and system lead Xu Siwei says elsewhere. Lost Soul Aside does feature RPG-lite elements like a skill tree, but it’s firmly combat-first. PlayStation calls it an action RPG, which seems fair enough, but its long combos, extravagant weapons, and flurrying visual effects do scream hack and slash to me.