Speed has been one of the biggest selling points of next-gen consoles like the PS5. With the introduction of a solid-state drive (SSD), the PS5 will effectively make loading screens a thing of the past, as the most recent glimpse at Ratchet and Clank: Rift Apart shows. By that same token, this also means that the time it will take to start up games, like Kena: Bridge of Spirits, will also be drastically decreased.
Game Informer’s magazine has been highlighting Kena for this month’s cover story, and as a result a lot of new details about Ember Lab’s action-adventure title are making their way online. For starters, Game Informer states it only takes around two seconds for the game to be launched from the PS5’s system menu. To clarify, that’s booting up the whole game, not just resuming it from a suspended state.
“They have a whole thing set up where you can do transition and it’s very nice, but frankly it doesn’t have time to play the animation. It just loads the game so fast,” says Ember Lab COO Josh Grier. Adding to that, studio CEO Mike Grier explains that the team had spent most of the project developing for the PS4 and were struggling to get the performance they wanted for Kena: Bridge of Spirits out of it. “But having done all that, when we went to PS5 it was nice, because we had a good baseline and then we could just add to it and take advantage of the extra juice.”
That extra juice will naturally lead to a few differences between current and next-gen versions of Kena. One of the most notable will be how the Rot, Kena’s collectible spirit companions, will appear on screen. On the PS5, all 100 of the game’s Rot will be visible simultaneously. That won’t be the case on PS4, but Ember Lab assures that this won’t have any effect on the parts of gameplay involving the Rot. Additionally, it was confirmed that the game’s forests and other foliage will be denser on the PS5.
An accompanying Game Informer article also answers several questions about Kena and its gameplay. Kena has been described as a mix between The Legend of Zelda and Pikmin, but it won’t be an open-world game like Zelda. Instead, Ember Lab says the game will utilize a more “wide linear” approach that offers players plenty to explore beyond the main path. And unlike Pikmin, the AI companions can’t die, since the Rot are meant to be treated more like teammates than a consumable resource.
Another intriguing piece of information is that the game won’t cost the standard $60 when it launches. Making that deal even better is the fact that anyone who buys the PS4 version will be able to upgrade to the PS5 version of Kena for free.
Kena: Bridge of Spirits is slated to launch this holiday season for PC, PS4, and PS5.
Source: Game Informer