“We call it Astro Bot because we treat this as a new beginning,” says Nicolas Doucet, who’s studio head at Team Asobi.

True to recent leaks, at the recent State of Play event, Sony and Team Asobi announced Astro Bot, the fan-favourite IP’s first full-fledged platformer for a console. Since its reveal, more details have been shared, with Team Asobi revealing that the game is going to feature more than 80 levels, over 70 new enemy types, and more. With that in mind, then, it’s no surprise to hear Team Asobi studio head Nicolas Doucet describe Astro Bot as “a really, really big game”.

Speaking in a recent interview with Entertainment Weekly, Doucet described the upcoming platformer as “the biggest game we’ve ever made”, saying that the reason it’s titled simply Astro Bot is because the developers look at it as “a new beginning.”

“We wanted to make a big game,” Doucet said. “This is really about going up one notch — really several notches — and having Astro’s big story. We call it Astro Bot because we treat this as a new beginning. That’s a really, really big game. I think for us, that’s the biggest game we’ve ever made.”

Elsewhere in the interview, Doucet promised vast diversity across the game’s collection of levels and environments, saying, “We really wanted to make sure that the player had a renewed experience every 10 minutes or so.”

Meanwhile, he also describes the game as a “PlayStation fiesta”, saying that there will be several cameos for bot versions of beloved PlayStation characters and icons- several of whom we saw in the game’s reveal trailer, including the likes of Kratos, Nathan Drake, Ratchet, PaRappa the Rapper, and more.

“It’s a kind of eye candy,” Doucet said. “There’s going to be more. We’re going to be talking over time about what they mean to the game, but, yes, there’s going to be a big reunion. There’s a lot of characters from the PlayStation universe crossing over with Astro’s path. It’s an Astro Bot story, of course, with Astro being the main character, but there’s a lot of PlayStation characters that play a part.”

Astro Bot launches exclusively for PS5 on September 6.