PlayStation’s State of Play for 2024 was today, and while general feelings seem lukewarm - there was some good news for a few speedrunning communities out there!

Astro Bot

Astro Bot speedrunners @noamsk and @CommanderFoxQ told me they are excited about the new Speedrun Levels. They look great and come with an in-game timer as well as a global leaderboard! The only downside? There are just 5 Speedrun Levels for now. But hey, free content is an absolute win for games these days.

Alan Wake 2: The Lake House DLC

I spoke with Alan Wake 2 moderator and speedrunner @TaintedTali about the reveal trailer for AW2’s latest DLC, “The Lake House” and while the trailer left much to the imagination, Tali shared her excitement for what appears to be more horror-focused content.

She’s also hoping the shorter DLC speedruns will appeal to new runners, especially compared to the main game, which averages around 3 hours even for speedrunners. With any luck, these shorter runs could spark interest in the full-length speedruns!

Ghost of Yōtei

Ghost of Tsushima runners are curious to see how the newly added musket plays in Ghost of Yōtei. @Aeshmah pointed out that while it may seem like adding a gun to a game about sword fighting might be overpowered, muskets traditionally were powerful but very slow to reload - so the working theory is that the musket will be powerful to start an encounter, but not so helpful mid-combat

Perhaps the more exciting part of Ghost of Yōtei is all the new various weapons - for a brief moment we even see Atsu (the new protagonist) wielding a kusarigama. So weapon/combat routing should certainly be more interesting in Yōtei compared to Tsushima.

As far as wishlists go, Tsushima speedrunners are really hoping for skippable cutscenes on a fresh save file this time around!

Horizon Zero Dawn Remastered

Horizon speedrunners might be the most optimistic of all. @Bdud5 is excited that save files used for speedrunning will automatically transfer to the remaster from the original meanwhile @huntks can’t wait for the faster load times and quality-of-life features from Forbidden West such as Quick Swap and no pickup animations. Quick swap is especially interesting (at least in Forbidden West) since it allows you to cancel the animation on reloads!

User “Dan Pop” (not a speedrunner, as far as I know) asked Guerilla Games Studio Director @janbartvanbeek on Twitter about the engine behind HZDR, to which Jan-Bart responded

“We call it the Franken-engine. It’s built from parts of the old engine that ran the game code, and combined with a ton of elements from the upgraded DECIMA rendering engine.”

Speedrunners are already debating what these engine changes could mean for the speedrun - but only time will tell!

https://x.com/danutz_plusplus/status/1838835929181474876

So in the end, while we may not have Silksong or Bloodborne Remastered to look forward to - at least State of Play wasn’t a total bust!