"One of those emails was an invitation from Sony": PlayStation's new Final Fantasy-style action RPG started with one dude screwing around with Unreal Engine 4 in 2014

Ahead of the impending release of Chinese action RPG Lost Soul Aside, PlayStation's put out a mini documentary exploring the game's origins and ambitions, and it's an interesting look into the project's nearly 11-year journey from Unreal Engine 4 experiment to marquee release.

The video, earmarked "PS5 and PC games" as PlayStation continues to invest more in PC with simultaneous multiplatform launches, largely centers around Yang Bing, the original creator who posted the prophetic "my Animation made by unrealengine4" on YouTube back in 2014.

That short video featured a quick and dirty mockup of a dude who looks like Kingdom Hearts' vision of a goth fighting red-eyed demon ninjas as a sassy, talking dragon skull floats around him, set to rock music seemingly recorded from inside a sock inside a handbag.

I say this with all the love in the world as someone who's seriously interested in this game: it's amazing how closely Lost Soul Aside has stuck to this original vision.

Lost Soul Aside - A Hero’s Journey (Behind The Scenes) | PS5 & PC Games - YouTube

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The full game – polished and expanded under PlayStation's China Hero Project at full-fat developer UltiZero Games, and re-announced or teased in various forms over the years – has a Final Fantasy 15-adjacent HD anime aesthetic and stars long coat enthusiast Kaser, joined by parasitic magic dragon head Arena. It looks incomparably better than that 2014 animation, but it's still got that charming edginess about it.

"The earliest stage of the project can be traced back to 2014," Bing says in the video. "At that time it was more of a personal hobby. I personally liked fast-paced, fluid combat games. I just wanted to gradually bring the things in my mind to life."

"Like Bayonetta or Devil May Cry, it belongs to the hack and slash category," battle and system lead Xu Siwei says elsewhere. Lost Soul Aside does feature RPG-lite elements like a skill tree, but it's firmly combat-first. PlayStation calls it an action RPG, which seems fair enough, but its long combos, extravagant weapons, and flurrying visual effects do scream hack and slash to me.

There's a degree of flourish and embellishment I associate with the genre, whereas modern action RPGs tend to have more heft and consequence to attacks, and I'm thrilled to see it celebrated here. But what do most genres mean in 2025, really?

The soundtrack, described as a mix of rock and electronic music, also gets a nod in the documentary, and is thankfully now recorded sock-free.

Bing says "when I first uploaded the trailer online, I didn't think much about it," but then came the deluge of emails. "Later, I just found one of those emails was an invitation from Sony PlayStation. I was shocked and excited, and immediately replied."

Fast forward a decade and Sony Interactive Entertainment Shanghai president Tatsuo Eguchi reckons Lost Soul Aside has become a standard bearer for the publisher's Chinese efforts. "The successful development of this game represents the spirit of PlayStation's China Hero Project," he says. Eguchi also acknowledges the "numerous difficulties" Lost Soul Aside has overcome in its long, winding production.

Bing thanks fans for their support and encouragement: "No matter what difficulties I encountered along the way, I've been able to persevere to this day."

Per the game's dedicated PC features trailer, it's also another step in Sony's off-console growth. Lost Soul Aside promises "optimized 4K graphics, advanced ray tracing, high dynamic range display [support]," and other bells and whistles like DualSense controller functionality.

Lost Soul Aside will launch on PS5 and PC on August 29 at $59.99.

Legally distinct Final Fantasy 15, better known as the PlayStation-published anime action RPG Lost Soul Aside, has gone gold ahead of its PS5 and PC launch this month.