PlayStation’s upcoming platforming celebration, Astro Bot, is already launching with roughly 80 levels. But there will be even more on the way later, via free DLC.
Speaking to IGN, Team Asobi studio head Nicolas Doucet told us there were plans for eventual free DLC for Astro Bot, coming “soon” after launch. He says it will be based around adding more challenge levels to the game – shorter levels focused on specific platforming challenges – but that won’t be the only component.
Doucet didn’t share more details about what else might be coming in these DLC additions, but we can throw some guesses out there. For one, both of the challenge levels we played in the preview were centered around rescuing a bot in a PlayStation character costume, so it only seems logical that more DLC means more character cameos that won’t appear in the base game. Given that there are apparently around 150 PlayStation character cameos already, it will be interesting to see how deep the cuts go here.
Beyond that, we can hope that we’ll also see more large, character-themed levels both in the base game and the DLC. While playing Astro Bot in our hands-on preview, we rescued a Kratos and Atreus bot via a boss battle, which led to them flying off to an ice-covered world. For this reason, we suspect there will be at least one God of War-themed level in Astro Bot, and perhaps even more character-themed levels beyond that.
“The hammer and the two Odin's Ravens kind of give it away, but what happens inside that world is TBD,” Doucet said. “Please play it when it comes out.”
Doucet told us that PlayStation “completely opened the doors” to whatever characters Team Asobi wanted to include in the game, and internal studios even sent requests pouring in for their characters to be featured. In our demo, we saw Ratchet and Rivet, PaRappa, Kratos, Atreus, Jak, and the Traveler from Journey. I’m told PaRappa’s pal Lammy also made an appearance, but we missed her.
Astro Bot getting free DLC makes sense, as Astro’s Playroom also got a little love recently in celebration of the Astro Bot announcement. If you open up Astro’s Playroom now, a number of new objectives have cropped up throughout its PlayStation-themed worlds, all leading up to a countdown to Astro Bot’s September 6 release date.
You can catch up on the rest of our interview with Doucet from Summer Game Fest right here, as well as our full hands-on preview of Astro Bot.
Rebekah Valentine is a senior reporter for IGN. Got a story tip? Send it to rvalentine@ign.com.
