Astro Bot has received a new update, which adds five new challenge levels for players to conquer, along with new special bots that pay homage to the history of PlayStation for players to add to their already large roster of characters. In particular, two of these newly added characters should help fill a massively glaring gap in representation for a specific franchise that many fans noted was oddly absent from the game at launch.
If you are looking to learn the identities of these characters on your own, more power to you; these characters can be unlocked on the stage High Inflation, as well as by completing all five challenge stages, both in the Vicious Void Galaxy. For everyone else, light spoilers ahead.
These two bots are the hero and villain of Square Enix’s beloved PlayStation 1 classic Final Fantasy VII, Cloud and Sephiroth, with their inclusion marking the first characters from the Final Fantasy series to be included in Astro Bot. Cloud will be the character unlocked in High Inflation, while Sephiroth will require tackling every level to unlock.
Final Fantasy has been a long-requested inclusion for Astro Bot, given the franchise’s history with Sony. Final Fantasy VII, in particular, the first entry in the series to release on PlayStation in 1997, served as a many players’ introduction to the series overall. Since then, Square Enix has maintained close ties with Sony and PlayStation, launching both entries in the Final Fantasy VII Remake as PlayStation exclusives, with other games like Final Fantasy XVI also being debuted as an exclusive for the PlayStation 5.
When asked about it at the time, the Astro Bot developer Team Asobi attributed this omission to a choice on the part of publishing partners, suggesting that Square Enix had made the decision to omit these characters. Square Enix appears to have had a change of heart and is, in fact, letting the floodgates open, as joining Cloud and Sepheroth are 2B from NieR: Automata and Serge from Chrono Cross. Atsu from PlayStation’s upcoming Ghost of Yotei also appears as a special character in this DLC, though that was previously confirmed to be on the horizon.
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