Sony aired its semi-regular State of Play online show on the afternoon of March 9, showcasing some of the upcoming projects that will appear on the PlayStation platform later this year.
This included the debut of a new IP from Capcom that inexplicably isn’t Dino Crisis, a free update for Returnal that adds co-op mode to its campaign, a new trailer for the recently-delayed Forspoken, and two new projects from Square Enix, one of which is a sequel in the long-dormant Valkyrie Profile franchise.
The State of Play opened with a reveal trailer for Capcom’s Exoprimal, a 2023 release about volunteers in cybernetic “Exosuits” tasked with keeping Earth’s cities safe from “dinosaur outbreaks.” This is a universe where roving packs of murderous raptors and T-rexes just appear out of holes in the sky, and now you have to fight them with your mech-suited buddies. Sure. Why not.
Despite the appearance of an unnamed redhead woman in the trailer who could’ve easily have been Regina White, Exoprimal does not appear to be the sequel to Dino Crisis that certain particularly rabid fans have been demanding. Instead, as per a developer overview from Capcom Europe’s official YouTube channel, Exoprimal is an online team-based action game.
The other marquee news from State of Play was arguably the debut of Valkyrie Elysium, which appears to be the fourth game in the Valkyrie Profile series. The trailer makes it look like a third-person action game, with the Valkyrie fighting against enemies on the ground, occasionally with the help of AI-controlled companions created from the souls of fallen warriors.
If this is what it seems, Elysium would be the first Valkyrie game on consoles since the 2009 Nintendo DS game Covenant of the Plume. The original Valkyrie Profile was a 2000 action RPG for the PlayStation from before Squaresoft and Enix’s merger, which has fallen into relative obscurity in the last 20 years. Elysium is due out this year.
Sony announced the return of JoJo’s Bizarre Adventure for fighting-game and anime fans with a new version of 2013’s All-Star Battle, slated for debut this fall.
The original game was a PlayStation 3 exclusive with a final cast of 41 characters from across the JoJo manga and anime arcs. The new version, All-Star Battle R, was identified as having 50 characters in total, so it’ll feature nine newcomers. This could include more fighters from the recently concluded 8th arc of the series, JoJoLion, or even incorporate somebody from the forthcoming 9th arc, should it start before the game’s release.
Other announcements from today’s State of Play include:
- Returnal will receive a free update later this month. The 3.0 patch, Ascension, introduces two-player co-op for the campaign, as well as a survival mode.
- GigaBash, from the new Malaysian studio Passion Republic, is a “kaiju brawler” due out this year where up to 4 players compete to wreck both one another and the city they’re in.
- Square Enix aired a debut trailer for Diofeld Chronicle, a strategy RPG with a certain Fire Emblem flavor to it. In a fantasy world, the soldiers of the independent nation of Diofeld must protect its borders from the forces of two larger, warring nearby alliances. It’s planned for release in 2022.
- Flying Wild Hog, the developers behind the Shadow Warrior remake series, begin a new IP with Trek to Yomi, a black-and-white action game with an all-star cast of Japanese voice actors. Hiroki, a samurai who’s vowed to protect his village, isn’t going to let a small thing like “getting killed” stop him from fulfilling his duty.
- Hey, Konami remembered it can publish video games. The TMNT Cowabunga Collection is a 13-game compilation from Digital Eclipse that features American and Japanese versions of several of the earliest video games in the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles franchise. This includes the notoriously difficult NES game, the 4-player arcade beat-’em-ups like Turtles in Time, and both versions of Tournament Fighters.
- For those who are looking to kill Chaos, a new demo for Stranger of Paradise: Final Fantasy Origin is scheduled to arrive on the PlayStation Network later today.
- A new “pre-launch” trailer for Ghostwire: Tokyo aired during the show.
