See Square Enix's Luminous engine world editor in action

Square Enix's in-house Luminous engine is currently being used to make the game codenamed Project Athia, which we saw being teased at a PS5 event earlier this year, but still know only the most basic details about. The latest incarnation of the engine, however, is being shown off in more detail thanks to a video demonstrating its world editor, which was shown as part of Luminous Productions' presentation at the Computer Entertainment Developers Conference 2020 in Japan this week.

It may only be 1080p and look kind of like somebody playing a remake of Populous, but this showcase of the way the Luminous engine's auto-generation can fill out natural environments with trees and grass and rocks and so on still looks quite pretty. Now if someone can walk into that grass without it clipping through their legs, that'll be impressive.

As for Project Athia, it's definitely coming to PC and is apparently a third-person open world game about a woman in a fantasy world full of huge beasts. It sure looks like it'll feature some platforming and give you nature-themed powers.

Jody's first computer was a Commodore 64, so he remembers having to use a code wheel to play Pool of Radiance. A former music journalist who interviewed everyone from Giorgio Moroder to Trent Reznor, Jody also co-hosted Australia's first radio show about videogames, Zed Games. He's written for Rock Paper Shotgun, The Big Issue, GamesRadar, Zam, Glixel, Five Out of Ten Magazine, and Playboy.com, whose cheques with the bunny logo made for fun conversations at the bank. Jody's first article for PC Gamer was about the audio of Alien Isolation, published in 2015, and since then he's written about why Silent Hill belongs on PC, why Recettear: An Item Shop's Tale is the best fantasy shopkeeper tycoon game, and how weird Lost Ark can get. Jody edited PC Gamer Indie from 2017 to 2018, and he eventually lived up to his promise to play every Warhammer videogame.