Square Enix and its internal developer Luminous Productions revealed Project Athia at Sony’s PS5 Future of Gaming Event.
Project Athia is still just the working title for the project, and from the sound of things, much of the game is also a work in progress. Its reveal trailer showed epic landscapes and fantastical creatures, but actual gameplay and story details are thin on the ground. We see the main character, presumably Athia, jump mighty grandly and summon some tree roots, but that’s about it.
The expository blurb threaded through the teaser isn’t terribly informative either. “In a world not her own, where resolve will be tested, truths will be questions and devotions will be doubted,” it says. “She will rise.”
In a statement, Square Enix said that, “Project Athia will transport players to a world filled with beauty and dismay as they set upon a thrilling story-led, action-packed adventure which can be twisted, tempestuous and forbidding.”
To put all that together, Project Athia is a third-person action game set in a fantasy world, and it’s being developed by the internal Square Enix studio that handled the Stadia version of Final Fantasy 15. We know it’s coming to both PS5 and PC, but we have no idea when – 2021 at the earliest, I’d say. When we know more, you’ll know more. In the meantime, let’s ponder the significance of Athia wearing oddly familiar white sneakers in a fantasy world full of dragons and wolves that seem to have been carved from stone.