After the reveal of Astro Bot on PlayStation 5 at the recent State of Play, Astro’s Playroom received an update adding iconic Bloodborne boss Lady Maria and an associated trophy. That’s on top of Bloodborne costumes as a pre-order bonus for the new game.
Of course, this led to speculation from Bloodborne fans that something was afoot. Alas, it appears that’s not the case.
“There’s no secret meaning,” Team Asobi studio head and creative director Nicolas Doucet told Eurogamer. “It’s just a celebration of the whole PlayStation history.”
Doucet discussed further how in Astro Bot the team will focus on cameos from PlayStation characters, instead of the hardware references in Astro’s Playroom.
“Instead of the hardware we put our attention towards the characters,” he said. “And that’s why we push these cameos. Before they were quite primitive, but now they feel much richer looking. It’s over 150 [cameos], so it’s going to go really deep and everybody should have their favourite ones.”
The Astro’s Playroom update, then, appears to be simply hinting at what we can expect to see in Astro Bot.
Still, Bloodborne fans are desperate for a re-release of FromSoftware’s game, particularly on PC. And, it turns out, creator Hidetaka Miyazaki isn’t opposed to the idea either.
“I know for a fact these guys want a Bloodborne PC port,” Miyazaki told PC Gamer, referring to FromSoftware producer Yasuhiro Kitao and interpreter Bobby Simpson. “If I say I want one, I’ll get in trouble as well. But it’s nothing I’m opposed to.”
He continued: “Obviously, as one of the creators of Bloodborne, my personal, pure honest opinion is I’d love more players to be able to enjoy it. Especially as a game that is now coming of age, one of those games of the past that gets lost on older hardware – I think any game like that, it’d be nice to have an opportunity for more players to be able to experience that and relive this relic of the past. So as far as I’m concerned, that’s definitely not something I’d be opposed to.”
This mirrors a previous comment from Miyazaki to Eurogamer, concerning the benefits of newer hardware to give remakes value – especially with a possible Bloodborne remake.
“Things you weren’t able to achieve on previous generations of hardware, ways you weren’t able to render specific expressions – [new hardware] sometimes makes it possible,” he said.
“I think purely from a user perspective, modern hardware also allows more players to appreciate all the games. And so, it ends up being a simple reason, but as a fellow player, I think that accessibility is important. I think that can be the driving force between bringing an old game to a new platform.”
It seems the ball is in Sony’s court, then, as it owns the rights to Bloodborne – not FromSoftware. That’s why a cameo in an Astro Bot game is possible, even if a PC port isn’t on the cards.
If you want to find Lady Maria for yourself in Astro’s Playroom, she can be found in the GPU Jungle. Any excuse to listen to that banger of a song, right?
