After over a decade in development, it looks like Lost Soul Aside is finally about to release.
Lost Soul Aside started out as a solo project by developer Bing Yang, all the way back in 2014. Just to put that in context, that was one year after the Xbox On and PlayStation 4 released. The biggest games at the time included Dark Souls II, Dragon Age: Inquisition, the first Watch Dogs, and Mario Kart 8.
Bing Yang would go on to join Sony’s China Hero Project, and form a new studio to ramp up its development, called Ultizero Games. As we reported, the game received an ISBN license in China last April. That meant that Lost Soul Aside was close to the finish line, but neither Sony nor Ultizero made any announcements yet.
Until now.
The official Lost Soul Aside Twitter account retweeted the State of Play announcement from the official PlayStation account. And then, without directly mentioning or quoting anyone, they made this tweet:
“The answer is « yes ».”
The fans following this project shared their enthusiasm in the comments, and it’s easy to see why. Following the success of Black Myth Wukong last year, Western gamers are hyped up for new games coming from Chinese game studios.
But there’s a big difference between Black Myth Wukong and Lost Soul Aside. While Sony definitely benefited from Game Science choosing to publish the game on PlayStation 5 and PC before Xbox Series X|S, it isn’t actually part of Sony’s China Hero Project. Lost Soul Aside is the big China Hero Project that Sony has put substantial more investment into. That’s even more than what they funded for Stellar Blade’s development.
While fans were properly hyped for Lost Soul Aside from its first trailer, 11 years is not a short time to make a game, even at this day and age. To put things in context, Diablo 3 took 11 years in development, and Final Fantasy 15 took 10 years. Both were commercial hits, but their development was also considered troubled and extended, with well-known accounts of the struggles both projects went through.
So we aren’t entirely sure how well Ultizero Games was able to execute on their vision for Lost Soul Aside, but if their Twitter activity says anything, it would be that they are confident and ready to show the world what all those years and money went to. Even if it doesn’t end up being shown in today’s event, all signs point to Lost Soul Aside getting revealed very, very soon.
