Some developers have a name that buys a lot of goodwill with fans, and Fumito Ueda is near the top of that list. The creator of ICO, Shadow of the Colossus, and The Last Guardian used Summer Game Fest to reveal his next project, officially titled gen ATLAS, a single-player open-world action-adventure developed by his studio genDESIGN and published by Epic Games.
True to Ueda’s track record, the reveal focuses more on atmosphere than on specifics. The official description drops you onto an abandoned planet with no explanation for how you ended up there, surrounded by a quiet, enormous world of towering structures, emptied-out facilities, and a sea that never stops shifting, all of it littered with the leftovers of something once built on a massive scale. “This planet… is still alive,” the store page promises, and that’s pretty much what you’d expect from an Ueda game.
If you’re relying on just the trailer to get a good grasp of what the game is, good luck. Just like watching a small slice of ICO, Shadow of the Colossus, or The Last Guardian doesn’t give you a real sense of what makes those games so brilliant, the gen ATLAS reveal trailer isn’t designed to explain how the game’s features are going to work. But reading its Epic Games Store listing, it sounds like you will cross paths with a colossal robot whose power cracks open routes to areas that were sealed off before, shifting how you read the place entirely. The description ends on the idea that, across a vast stretch of time, those long-dormant constructs are beginning to stir again, which is about as much of the hook as Ueda is willing to give up for now.
On the platform side, gen ATLAS is confirmed for PlayStation 5, XBOX Series X|S, and PC through the Epic Games Store. There’s no release date or even a window attached yet, just a Coming Soon tag and a wishlist button on the store page. Considering how much I’ve enjoyed Ueda’s past creations, I’m looking forward to exploring this one.
