Our team at Arkane has always loved a good kick. In fact, we’ve been looking for ways to get it back into our games for a while. We liked the Dark Messiah kick very much, but there was no real need for it in Dishonored as other systems were serving the same purpose. Finally, in Deathloop, we had our chance to resurrect it. We decided with this game we were going to expand on the melee combat by adding new tools and moves. Thus, we revived the kick.

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The kick has gone through a lot of testing and evolution. I remember our earliest discussions were all about which kind of kick is the best kick. Dinga [Bakaba, game director] and I both practice different martial arts, so our coworkers would often see us talking about and performing front, back and rotating kicks. (No one was harmed in the process.)

The first code implementation was done by Gameplay Programmer Pierre-Adrien Branche. When we finally got it into the game, we did a lot of testing with animators to have the kick look good in both first- and third-person. We tried different legs, size, leg orientation… You name it, we probably tried it. We experimented with different kicks, like a low kick when aiming below the horizon and a (very cool) flying kick, but that one became useless when we decided that the regular kick would just shove an NPC.

First early development Deathloop kick implementation

Here to help explore Colt’s calamitous kick with me is Jérôme Braune, game systems designer.

Braune: In these comparison images, you can see that in an early version of the kick the foot orientation was different and the leg was displayed more in the center of the screen. To free some space and prevent visual noise around the crosshair, the leg position and foot orientation was later moved further to the right. 

Foudral: When we were finally happy with the visuals of the kick, a lot of work was put into making it responsive and easy to use in all si

Hello! Alex here, I’m a designer and the technical lead at 2pt Interactive. As many of you may know, we’re the little indie studio making the challenging, physics-based game Heavenly Bodies.

Ahead of our fast-approaching 2021 release (put it in your diaries, folks), I wanted to take some time to share why we’re so excited to be working with the PS5 to make our passion project.

A quick refresher

For those who aren’t as familiar with it, Heavenly Bodies is a game about cosmonauts, the body, and the absence of gravity. You move the limbs of a weightless, physically simulated space engineer (or two, in local co-op) to assemble and maintain structures and systems aboard a rickety space station. Your assigned tasks will often appear straightforward, but without gravity to keep you grounded, even the most mundane requests will require wit and willful coordination to perform.

Make sense? Okay, Welcome aboard.

Why we love using the DualSense wireless controller

At its heart, Heavenly Bodies has been created with the love for rich detail, physicality, and tactility. We’ve engineered a uniquely challenging movement scheme which lets you manipulate each limb of your weightless body. While (very) tricky at first, these flexible controls paired with physically simulated environments make for a world that begs to be tinkered with.

With a game that quite literally requires you to feel your way through the environments, you can only imagine our excitement with the opportunity to use the features of the DualSense controller. With the triggers used to grasp your cosmonaut’s hands and a chaotic, zero-g environment where bumps and thumps are inevitable, it made so much sense for us to use the adaptive triggers and haptic functions to transport you into the floppy suit you see on screen.

Feel the palms of your hands… at your fingertips

The best way to play Heavenly Bodies is by using your cosmonaut’s hands. You’ll need to grip with the triggers to grab onto objects and to push yourself off walls. The DualSense controller’s adaptive triggers are remarkable at communicating what objects and surfaces are within your cosmonaut’s grasp.

For example, when doing some weeding in the oxygen garden, you’ll feel the delicate stalkiness of dry plants compared to the thick, hard metal framework of the station.

And this scrunchy piece of paper? You can bet it feels scrunchy.

Email us at PSPodcast@sony.com!

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This week the team celebrates 5 years of PlayStation VR and shares more games they almost missed out on.

Stuff We Talked About

• PlayStation VR
• Sheepo
• Moss 2
• Jackbox Party 8
• Jett: The Far Shore
• A whole bunch of games we almost missed out on

The Cast

Sid Shuman – Senior Director of Content Communications, SIE

Tim Turi –  Manager, Content Communications, SIE

Brett Elston – Manager, Content Communications, SIE

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Last week, we asked you to take a stroll through the moonlight of your favorite games using #PSshare #PSBlog. From moon-soaked portraits to nights out on the road, here are this week’s highlights: 

Gamography_ shares a side profile of Aloy from Horizon Zero Dawn.

dee_danya shares Dani making a daring dive in Far Cry 6.

Jin rides his horse through a field under the moonlight in this Ghost of Tsushima share from foxghost181.

ZacheryyyEduard shares Deacon hitting the road under the crescent moon and stars in Days Gone.

Amianan_NiRaGuB shares Eivor’s raven Synin seemingly grip the moon in its talons in this Assassin’s Creed Valhalla share.

mett981 shares Ratchet gazing towards the cosmos in Ratchet & Clank: Rift Apart.

Search #PSshare #PSBlog on Twitter or Instagram to see more entries to this week’s theme. Want to be featured in the next Share of the Week? 

THEME: PlayStation VR
SUBMIT BY: Wednesday 9 AM PT on October 20

PlayStation VR turned 5 this week! To celebrate, share moments that shook your reality from a PlayStation VR game of your choice using #PSshare #PSBlog for a chance to be featured. 

Jett’s out now, it’s resonating, and we’re thrilled. It’s the latest videogame from Superbrothers A/V and Pine Scented, it was co-created for years by two full-time people and composer scntfc, then bolstered by an all-star Jett Squad of contributors. It took a village to get Jett done, and we’re all immensely proud of our efforts together.

Jett is my second video game as director, writer, art director, and music coordinator, among other roles. Unlike Sword & Sworcery, Jett is grandiose, with depth and breadth, intricate, and byzantine.

So, I had a pretty heavy workload for a while there. However, an advantage of being at the intersection of those roles is the opportunity to try to craft something very distinct, in keeping with the Superbrothers A/V approach.

The Superbrothers A/V approach goes roughly like this:

1. You start with a vision, and a vibe.
2. You marry the picture to the sound, get them to stew together.
3. You get it to move right and feel right.
4. You present a world with intriguing narrative concepts, with credible naturalistically-proportioned intelligent characters with heart and soul, who have interesting concerns.
5. You choose your moments, intimate or epic, a few here and there, and you get those exactly right.
6. Nested within all this, you figure out a design that supports that vision, and that vibe.

Foundational to creating a distinctive vibe, and powering Superbrothers A/V’s approach, is audio. Sound and music, and how they fit. Getting the spirit of the music and sound right is essential, as music ends up being foregrounded in our videogames, often becoming almost the primary text.

For Superbrothers: Sword & Sworcery EP we collaborated with Toronto composer, maestro Jim Guthrie, whose immediately appealing and memorable score accounted for so much of sworcery’s magic. 

As an album it found its way into headphones and speakers around the world, and resonated.

This time out, for Jett, we were so fortunate to have on deck the brilliant Seattle-based composer scntfc since day one, with whom we collaborated for years. 

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C Andrew Rohrmann, known in the biz as scntfc, has since composed beloved scores to several video games, most notably Oxenfree. However, scntfc’s first videogame contribution was to Sword & Sworcery back in 2010.

On Sword & Sworcery we had the idea for a “number station transmission” and we were put in touch with scntfc, who cooked up some relevant audio in his laboratory, audio that ended up in Sworcery’s “moon grotto” as well as at Sworcery’s memorable fi

As we near the release of Sledgehammer Games’ Call of Duty: Vanguard on November 5, we’re excited to share with PlayStation players a deep-dive on two of the game’s core modes. It’s time to take a closer look at the epic characters and stories you’ll encounter across the single-player Campaign mode and in Zombies, the latter of which is developed by Treyarch, the studio responsible for bringing Zombies to Call of Duty more than a decade ago. 

From the international heroes forming the original Special Forces group, Task Force One, to the undead threat of Kortifex the Deathless, Vanguard is set to take PlayStation players on one wild ride on November 5, in addition to the massive amount of content players will experience with 20 maps coming to the Multiplayer mode at launch.

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“Der Anfang”: The Next Chapter in the Zombies Saga

The next iteration of Zombies, developed by Treyarch Studios, is coming to Call of Duty: Vanguard on November 5.

Prepare to face a new type of evil, bond with new allies, and meet terrifying new enemies in a gameplay experience that gets you to the fun faster, all wrapped in a brand-new dimension of Zombies that you’ve never experienced before.

In Call of Duty: Vanguard, Treyarch is introducing a Zombies experience that builds on the Dark Aether universe introduced in Black Ops Cold War, in a franchise-first crossover that provides continuity from a lore standpoint while innovating on the core gameplay loop.

It began with the opening of the Dark Aether gateway at Projekt Endstation. As the Nazi experiment went catastrophically wrong, punching a hole through the dimensional veil, the effects traveled far and wide.

You are now stranded in the snowy graveyard of Stalingrad, held in by the dark magic of Kortifex the Deathless, one of five Dark Aether entities bonded with mortals via their otherworldly artifacts. The other four — Saraxis the Shadow, Norticus the Conqueror, Inviktor the Destroyer, and Bellekar the Warlock — are in revolt against Kortifex, and are now there to help you defeat him and Von List.

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How high are the stakes in the all-new Battlefield Hazard Zone? Let’s just say it’s definitely not for the faint of heart. A tense, squad-focused survival experience, Hazard Zone combines edge-of-your-seat gameplay with the best of the Battlefield sandbox. 

Before we dig into the details, let’s give you a little of the in-game history that will help you understand this new mode. In the year 2040, a worldwide event known as The Blackout took out roughly 70% of satellites in orbit – decimating worldwide communication, navigation, and surveillance. Prior to this mounting tensions caused by rising sea levels, economic collapse, and massive waves of the displaced set the stage, but it was The Blackout that completely destabilized a world already on the brink. 

International distrust inspired both the US and Russia to engineer a surveillance solution: the use of satellites equipped with capsules containing radiation-hardened data drives. These capsules (and the precious intelligence they contain) are dropped into their respectively controlled territories for the Occupying Forces to secure.

Of course information isn’t only prized by the superpowers, many of the Non-Patriated (or No-Pats) are very interested in getting their hands on the data drives as well. Some want them for the price they’ll fetch on the Dark Market, while others are more focused on using it to keep themselves and their friends and families safe. Regardless of their reasons, the No-Pats are very motivated to intercept as many data drives as possible – so much so that they’ve organized and funded Task Forces for this sole purpose. And in Battlefield Hazard Zone you and your squadmates will make up one of these teams. Your job: locate, gather, and extract data drives before a storm overtakes the area. 

Oh, and did we mention you only get one life to do it? Hey, we did warn you the stakes would be high.

So how does this all play out? Well, there are five elements to every match:

Step 1 – Strategize and equip 
Step 2 – Insert on all seven maps from 2042
Step 3 – Retrieve the intel 
Step 4 – Extractions
Step 5 – Pat yourself on the back and claim your rewards

You’ll start with a Mission Area Briefing where you’ll get the info you need to succeed, from regions of the map with a high probability of enemy combatants, data drives, and Uplinks. The latter are powerful items that can turn the tide of battle. Three types of Uplinks will be available at launch: Vehicle, Ranger, and Reinforcement Uplinks. Whether you need to bring back a buddy, gain a quick tactical advantage, or get the heck out of Dodge – Uplinks have got you covered.

You’ll then select the Specialists and loadouts you and your squad will join the fight with. Choose wisely (and strategically) at this stage and you’re likely to do well. So balance your squad and skills carefully before you deploy. 

From this point on you’ve got just one mission – securing those capsules and data drives. Of course you won’t be the only ones doing so. Rival squads will have the same objective and then there are Occupying Forces who will guard the contents of those capsules with their lives.

Hi, my name is Spencer Ham and I’m a game director at Jackbox Games. It’s time to dust off your cell phone because we’re releasing The Jackbox Party Pack 8 at PlayStation Store on October 14! That’s right, we’ve broken the record for most Party Packs. Please text us back, Guinness World Records. 

This year’s release feels especially rewarding since our studio was completely remote during production. Although that brought on its fair share of challenges (seriously, Allard, you’re still on mute), it also inspired us to work in new ways. Gone were the days of us huddled in a room, brainstorming game concepts with quick paper tests. Being forced to move to a completely digital landscape meant we had to adapt and find new approaches to our (record-breaking) method. 

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Here’s some insight into how three of the games in this year’s Party Pack came to be.

Drawful: Animate

As you may know, each Party Pack has at least one sequel in it. This year, it’s Drawful’s long-awaited turn. An astute observer will notice that it’s not called Drawful 3, and that is intentional. Since it’s an exciting new twist on the core mechanic, we view it as having its own identity rather than just a continuation of a franchise. 

In this version, players create looping, two-frame animations based on absurd prompts. This concept thrived as a digital prototype because it would’ve been much harder to showcase how fun and effective the animations are if playtesters had to awkwardly fumble through a paper flipbook. 

The Wheel of Enormous Proportions 

The inspiration behind The Wheel of Enormous Proportions came very organically. One of the morale boosters for us this past year was using a digital wheel to raffle off random items. The prizes weren’t even that good—they were things like a t-shirt or a mouse pad, but that didn’t matter because wheel frenzy would take over. During a spin, chat would light up with comments like “Obey the Wheel,” “The Wheel knows all,” and “WHEEL.”

So that got us thinking. What if we replaced a branded mouse pad with a prize just as, if not more, fun? Winning a trivia game. So that’s exactly what we did. The more trivia questions a player answers correctly, the more slices t

Ayrton Senna was a legendary Brazilian driver who changed history – his name is still commonly remembered as one of the most iconic racers of all time.

So what better way to honor his memory than to have a Brazilian-made PS4 game relive his steps in a nostalgia-driven arcade-style racing game? ;)

Horizon Chase Turbo: Senna Forever is the game’s largest expansion to date, debuting an entirely new set of cars, tracks, and features inspired by Senna – which, by the way, is all thanks to the partnership and support of Senna Brands. Part of the profits obtained with the expansion will also be dedicated to support Ayrton Senna’s Institute educational programs, isn’t that amazing?

But let’s get to the fun part: racing! The trailer below shows just a little bit of everything we’ve packed for you, check it out!

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Career Mode? Championship Mode? Achievement system? New exclusive skins? Multiplayer? You name it, we got it. If you heard a familiar tune in this trailer, your ears are also quite right, because it was made by our dearest Barry Leitch, the very same composer for the soundtrack of the main game. The expansion also features tailor-made new tracks for you too!

Imagine being in the shoes of such an amazing driver, especially in first-person view gameplay. That’s exactly what you’ll do on Senna Forever’s Career Mode. There are five different chapters, each with a set number of races from his life you’ll have to go through – oh, there are also his own achievements, which we call Senna’s Marks, that you can complete here as well!

Oh, did I mention you get a cool narrative screen like the Rain Master for completing these? Yeah! Senna was known as the Rain Master because he was so good at racing in this weather – will you too? Let’s find out!