Kena: Bridge of Spirits Boots in “About Two Seconds” on PS5

When Sony took a deep dive into the PS5’s technical specifications back in March, lead system architect Mark Cerny positioned the console’s solid state drive as fundamental feature of the new console. Six months later, we’re learning how the technology is being used in Kena: Bridge of Spirits, the colorful adventure game that was announced during the PS5 reveal stream.

As part of the September cover story for its magazine, Game Informer met with Kena developer Ember Lab to see how the game’s development has benefited from the PS5’s extra horsepower. Senior Editor Jeff Cork says that “we watched as Kena was launched from the PlayStation 5 system menu. It took about two seconds. That’s not resuming a suspended game, but launching the game fresh.” The article also mentions that the PS5 dashboard can perform a transition when a game is selected, but because Kena loads so quickly, the animation doesn’t have time to play in totality.

News of Kena: Bridge of Spirts’ brisk load times is certainly welcome, as the time needed to start up games and load their various sections has become rather substantial in the current generation. When FromSoftware’s Bloodborne launched on PS4 back in 2015, some of the game’s load times came close to 60 seconds, though they were reduced with a post-launch patch. Loading into the Hunter’s Dream hub area took about 11 seconds with the game’s 1.03 update, which seems like an eternity compared to how quickly Kena launches on the PS5 hardware.

Kena: Bridge of Spirits is slated to release this year on PS4, PS5, and on PC via the Epic Games Store. According to the game’s twitter account, owners of the PS4 version will get an upgrade to the PS5 version free of charge.