Welcome to Urgent Fury

Email us at PSPodcast@sony.com! Subscribe via Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or download here Hey, y’all! Tim and Kristen are back this week to chat through news from the week and games we can’t stop playing. Plus, Gillen stops in to interview Ghost of Yōtei actor Erika Ishii to celebrate the release of the game’s Complete Edition and its one year anniversary. Stuff We Talked About Next week’s release highlights: Kingdom Hearts I-III | PS5 Star Wars: Galactic Racer | PS5 Deck of Haunts | PS5 Ghost of Yōtei Complete Edition The Blood of Dawnwalker (Kristen gets its name right this time) Silent Hill: Townfall Onimusha: Way of the Sword God of War Laufey pre-orders available now, editions detailed – All the juicy details on pre-order bonuses, Digital Deluxe Edition, some peeks at Faye’s armor coming in those editions, and a highlight of Faye’s Serpent Bow combat. How Control Resonant’s art design and tech shaped its bosses, paranaturally-twisted Manhattan and more – Deep dive into Remedy’s inspirations, how they designed Dylan and his combat animations, the twisted version of Manhattan, liminal spaces, boss fights, and PS5 features PlayStation Plus Monthly Games for October: F1 25, Hunt: Showdown 1896, Earth Defense Force: World Brothers 2 Kena: Scars of Kosmora launches 2027– Ember Labs offers a development update, as well as a new look at Kena’s spirit companion The Cast View and download image Download the image close Close Download this image Tim Turi – Content Communications Manager, SIE View and download image Download the image close Close Download this image Kristen Zitani – Content Communications Manager, SIE Thanks to Dormilón for our rad theme song and show music. [Editor’s note: PSN game release dates are subject to change without notice. Game details are gathered from press releases from their individual publishers and/or ESRB rating descriptions.] View the full article

Last week, we asked you to share portraits of Logan from Marvel’s Wolverine using #PSshare #PSBlog for a chance to be featured. Here are this week’s highlights: calisarah1998 shares Logan growling in front of some wreckage Gib84G shares Logan surrounded by money from the casino PurplePampano shares Logan with his hat tipped lets_gaming.vp shares a black and white portrait of Logan peering through his claws PatmanGames shares Logan with a shredded shirt abd23.gameframes shares Logan leaping into the night Search #PSshare #PSBlog on Twitter or Instagram to see more entries to this week’s theme, or be inspired by other great games featuring Photo Mode. Want to be featured in the next Share of the Week? THEME: Marvel’s Wolverine – Allies & Villains SUBMIT BY: 11:59 PM PT on October 7, 2026 Next week, share moments fighting alongside Team X and Jean Grey, or against various villains in Marvel’s Wolverine using #PSshare #PSBlog for a chance to be featured. View the full article

Atsu’s hunt is not over. A year after the original game launched, PS5 players can dive into the Ghost of Yōtei Complete Edition. Available now on PS5, this brings together the story campaign, the Ghost of Yōtei Legends multiplayer mode, and two new major additions: the roguelike mode Most Wanted, and the narrative expansion Echoes of Sekigahara. The story is split between the present day and flashbacks to Atsu’s time on the mainland. To mark the Complete Edition’s launch, and celebrate the game’s first anniversary, we welcome back the voice of Atsu, Erika Ishii, to talk about the game. Note: The below interview is condensed for clarity and brevity. You can listen to the full chat on the latest episode of the PlayStation Podcast, available later today. Play Video PlayStation Blog: It’s been a year since the game originally launched. What has Atsu brought to your life since? Erika Ishii: I still can’t get over it, you know, because again, this was my dream. I played The Last of Us and I said, I want to do that. I already knew I wanted to act. I already knew I loved video games. But I said specifically – that. That is what I want to do. And… yeah, being on my PlayStation home screen, playing the game, getting to travel to Tokyo Game Show, which was another dream of mine. And to have a beautiful professional cosplay made for me of Atsu so I could be Atsu on the Sony PlayStation stage in Japan… it really does feel like a fever dream sometime. I was curious to know whether your dialogue for the expansion was recorded after the fact or part of the bundle together with the original recording. Sounds like you came back. So what’s the time gap there between that last piece of dialogue you recorded for the main story campaign and then coming back to the expansion? There were at least a couple of months between. They had to work really hard on polish to get the game out, then take a very well-deserved little bit of a break. But as we were nearing the end of production, I was inquiring constantly. “Are we doing DLC? Because Iki Island was really great and really fleshed out some stuff that I wanted to know about in Atsu’s backstory…” And I did have a list of pitches for them [laughs] They didn’t go with anything that I suggested. But even at the launch party I was talking with Courtney Woods, the writer for Echoes of Sekigahara. And we were scheming. We thought “Atsu needs a little romance in her life”. Like, there’s no way she didn’t have any romance. She mentioned [as such] in one of the onsen scenes. So you know she’d had bedtime bed companions at least. But what’s the deal with personal attachments? Is this the only time in her life up until now she’s had them? And so I got my wish. You had that little bit of time away. Did that time increase your awareness of the character, or anything you experienced outside the role that helped inform your performance of Atsu further? Pretty much playing the game. It’s wild because, you know, most of the time voice actors don’t get to play the game until after it comes out. I was fortunate enough [to do so] during production. But playing through the finished game and literally being hands-on and in her shoes. Because a lot of times, if it’s been a while since you’ve played a character, they’ll play you reference audio. But I could go directly to being Atsu, go right into the booth. It was such a gift. There are flashbacks. So it’s two periods of Atsu’s life. So how do you get into that headspace where you’re having to switch? A couple of things helped. We had done a lot of flashbacks with young Atsu. And so extrapolating what happened. Most of the time in acting you have what is called a prior moment. Before any scene starts you have to know where you were. You have to have a whole lived life experience prior to this moment. I already had to have it in my head and sort of know what she had been through and what this huge informative point in her life felt like. For an actor, you have to have [to be able to] drop in at any moment and be like, okay, well, I think that her time doing this probably informed how it’s going to be in the quote-unquote present day. Play Video This roguelike mode, Most Wanted. Did you record new dialogue for that? Yes, there is some new dialogue for that. Because it is a new mode and non-canonical, it has a slightly different feeling to it, more mystical, in the way that the multiplayer is more mythological. There’s a heightened quality to it. You’re not the only character in Most Wanted. There’s some familiar faces, but a surprise face is… Jin, who is returning, and I believe Daisaku Tsuji recorded new voice lines for this as well. I understand you didn’t crossover during the recording sessions but you folks must have got together to talk all things Ghost and just compare experiences? I got to chat with him [when he was in Los Angeles] and we chatted a little bit about it. And that was actually before the game had launched. I told him how much his work meant to me and how I’m grateful to be accepting the Ghost torch. In a lot of ways he was new to video games with Ghost of Tsushima. But since then he’s appeared in many other games. I think almost all of which I am also in. We joke that we’re bound together forever, and one of us will follow in the other’s footsteps. Last year I asked you where launch day would find you. You mentioned it was a gathering of folk from the game. So where does the first anniversary of Yotei find you? Oh, my gosh. I think the big thing is that the Complete Edition is out. I didn’t know the launch date until the rest of the world did. We all had a little betting pool as to when we thought this was going to drop. And I said, I guarantee it’ll be on the anniversary. I was one day off [laughs]. I feel like this is the one year celebration. It’s very bittersweet to me. It’s been four years of my life being her face, her movements and her voice, and helping to develop her and working with just like some of the greatest team of all time is… Atsu is going to be a part of my heart forever. And, you know, when they have the PlayStation logos, they’re going to have a picture of Atsu, a picture of my face there. I still see cosplays at conventions. I… This is, again, to bring it back around to the beginning, this was my dream. And I think that what do you do when you accomplish the big thing when you get to the top of the mountain is you just got to keep going there. There are more mountains to climb, I think. I have the great privilege of, in addition to Atsu, having other characters or work that are a part of my oeuvre. I don’t have to be defined by Atsu, but she is… gonna always be so special to me. View the full article

Since the launch of PlayStation Spectral Super Resolution (PSSR) on PS5 Pro, players and developers have asked whether similar image-quality improvements could be brought to the PS5 console. PSSR analyzes game images pixel by pixel and uses AI to upscale them with more detail and stability than conventional approaches; until now, its computational demands made bringing that experience to PS5 impossible. Today, we’re excited to announce Quick Spectral Super Resolution (QSSR): a new performance tier of AI upscaling. Born from Project Amethyst, our AI graphics collaboration with AMD, this quick new evolution of PSSR is built on two key innovations: A streamlined neural network architecture A hand-tuned implementation that maximizes performance on PS5 With these, we are bringing the benefits of AI-guided upscaling to PS5. While PSSR remains the gold standard on PS5 Pro, QSSR provides some notable improvements to both image detail and image stability on PS5. The first titles to use this innovative new library are Marvel’s Wolverine and Ghost of Yōtei. Both are being patched today to offer QSSR as an additional graphics option on PS5. Here’s what Insomniac Games and Sucker Punch Productions have to share about the benefits of this new technology: Play Video “Our team at Insomniac works hard to make sure each of our games is a showcase of PlayStation hardware, and we’re excited for Marvel’s Wolverine to be one of the first titles to bring this new QSSR technology to players. QSSR adds more pixel-level clarity and stability to our environments, bringing out extra detail amidst the busy streets of Madripoor, the dense alleyways of Shinjuku, and many other areas across Logan’s epic journey. It’s a perfect companion to the launch of Marvel’s Wolverine, and it brings a great taste of the PS5 Pro experience to our players on PS5. Personally, I love seeing how the PlayStation tech teams continually improve the PS5 platform, and I’m excited for more games to make use of QSSR in the future!” – Mike Fitzgerald, Head of Technology / Insomniac Games Play Video “At Sucker Punch, we’re excited to bring QSSR to Ghost of Yōtei players so that they can experience the world we’ve created with even more clarity and detail. QSSR excels at resolving the fine details in our characters and environments and does so with a level of temporal stability that hasn’t been possible on the PS5 console until now. We’ve long wished that all PS5 players could experience the incredible image quality that PSSR brings to PS5 Pro, and QSSR is a positive step towards that goal!” – Jasmin Patry, Lead Rendering Engineer / Sucker Punch Productions QSSR will be offered broadly to all PlayStation developers, and we look forward to seeing these improvements in many more titles going forward! View the full article

Take the punchy, fast-paced combat of a brawler, the tight platforming and exploration of a search-action game, and a cute dragon companion (who’s also the millennia-old god you worship), and blend everything together with a dash of anime flair. That is the recipe for Elta: Defy All Gods, our upcoming game here at Afterburner Studios, launching February 2nd, 2027. Dive in with us as we explain how our action-platformer brings back the best from the classics while making it a fresh experience, what inspired us, and why you should jump into the free demo on PlayStation 5 today. Play Video A new take on action-platformers Action-platformers have had a resurgence of interest in the last few years, providing an interesting mix of combat, exploration, and story, but few have tried blending explosive hand-to-hand fights with labyrinthian, non-linear exploration. Elta: Defy All Gods provides just that: impactful melee action, mixing martial arts and magic, broken up by flowing aerial platforming and discovery across three winding sci-fi worlds. The challenge lies in mastering both combat and navigation; juggling enemies in dynamic encounters across sprawling worlds that won’t always hold your hand. The best way to explain our unique take on the genre is to coin a new term. We like to call Elta: Defy All Gods a “brawlervania”. Brawler enthusiasts will enjoy three martial art stances, each with their own skill trees, alongside magic systems to unleash built-up energy in massive attacks. Platforming players, on the other hand, will get a growing set of movement abilities with classic moves, such as the double jump, dash, wall run, and grapple. That’s not all though; Elta, your dragon, will be key, by giving you new unique abilities to hit harder and reach previously inaccessible locations. The inspirations behind Elta: Defy All Gods Veteran players will definitely catch nods to series we grew up with, like Castlevania: Symphony of the Night, God of War, Darksiders, and Jak and Daxter. We take a lot of pride in honoring these classics, but we wanted to do more than just rehash them. To carve out our own identity within that familiar formula, we traded traditional weapon-based hacking and slashing for fluid, hand-to-hand martial arts. By weaving your dragon companion’s abilities right into your fights and platforming acrobatics, we hope to bring something fresh to the table. To find that specific energy, we also sought creative inspiration outside of the gaming realm entirely. Moving to TV screens, shōnen anime, and especially Dragon Ball Z, have been a massive inspiration for us, echoing the power fantasy you can experience playing the warrior monk Victus. With such a heavy focus on melee combat, we also turned to Hong Kong martial arts movies, ranging from the Ip Man saga to Shaw Brothers’ classics. These influences have been wrapped in a painterly art direction that makes each vista look like living concept art. The sense of power you get while playing echoes the sense of scale you feel when taking in each landscape. Reaching high ambitions as an indie team Despite the big-budget games listed above, we are not a large studio by any means. With three co-founders and a dozen core members, delivering on this game’s promise has been a real challenge for us at Afterburner Studios. It’s one that required us to lean heavily on our background in indie development. We’ve taken lessons from our previous game into Elta, finding clever ways to achieve bigger things with our small-sized team. While we’ve stayed true to our vision of a modernized take on classic mechanics, Elta has gone through constant iteration over the course of the last five years to allow us to deliver the best versions of this game to players – both in world, gameplay and tone. This was also made possible through a partnership with Focus Entertainment, the folks behind Warhammer 40,000: Space Marine 2 and Resonance: A Plague Tale Legacy. By lending us their design, production, and QA experience, they allowed us to expand our vision and tackle a dream project – one that would only be possible with their support. Instead of getting slowed down by our ambitions, this fruitful partnership allowed us to double down on what we do best: crafting satisfying game feel. Game feel as our main priority At every stage of development, we’ve gotten the same feedback: this is a game that must be felt, controller in hand, rather than just watched. All our mechanics, in both combat and platforming, have been tuned to be as satisfying as possible. By using the haptics of the DualSense controller, landing punches and hitting platforms has a real tactile weight, resulting in a more immersive experience for PlayStation players. Ultimately, we want to create an action-packed adventure that puts fun first and continues to defy your expectations for what a small indie team can pull off. And you don’t need to wait to try it out for yourself: our free demo is available today on PS5, allowing you to experience the very beginning of Elta: Defy All Gods. Retrieve the lost dragon-god you worship, brawl corrupted enemies in intense melee combat, and explore Lerna, a glacial world filled with hidden secrets, ancient ruins, and industrial remnants. The full game releases on February 2, 2027, and if you pre-order, you can get the Vanguard Armor, a special cosmetic skin for Victus. Find Elta, face off against the gods and start the journey to bring salvation to your people with the free demo, available today on PlayStation 5. View the full article