After the official announcement of the game back at E3 2014, we didn't hear a lot of Scalebound, Platinum Games' upcoming Xbox One exclusive. That finally changed a few days ago, as we got the first gameplay video during Microsoft's Gamescom 2015 Media Briefing.
IGN has now published a massive, two pages long interview with Director Hideki Kamiya, whom you may know for his work on influential games such as Resident Evil 2, Devil May Cry, Viewtiful Joe, Okami, Bayonetta and The Wonderful 101.
Scalebound will be very different from the usual title made by Platinum Games. It's going to be an action RPG with no particular focus on chaining combos one after the other.
I’m not focused on that in Scalebound at all. It’s not just about that one encounter. There’s a lot of player management and dragon management that you have to do.
In fact, players will have to control Drew, the human main character, while taking care of Thuban, his dragon companion. As shown in the gameplay footage, it will be possible to give Thuban orders on where to go and who to attack, but that doesn't mean he will follow them precisely.
Even though Drew can give orders to Thuban, the dragon can act independently. You don’t always know exactly what the outcome of his actions will be. You can say ‘go there’ but you can’t always predict what is going to happen - you have to make your own assumptions. And I think that’s a big part of what makes fighting in this game fun.
At the very end of the video, Drew and Thuban are confronted with a massive enemy. After a brief moment of panic, other human players (along with their dragon companions) appear, thus announcing online co-op (up to four players). Kamiya remained tight lipped about this, saying only that there will be many instances where this feature is going to be useful.
There are many scenarios in which having multiple players in this world would create exciting and fun combat situations.
Scalebound's current release window is Holiday 2016. Keep following Wccftech to follow its development.
About the author: With over two decades of experience in gaming journalism, Alessio Palumbo has led the gaming vertical at Wccftech since August 2015. He started working at a young age for Italian websites like Everyeye.it, Gamestar.it, Nextgame.it, and Multiplayer.it before kickstarting the indie English-language publication Worlds Factory as its founder and Editor in Chief. In the last decade, he has coordinated the overall output of Wccftech's gaming section, managed PR relations, assigned reviews, produced daily news coverage, edited gaming content as needed, and delivered game reviews. Arguably, his trademark content is the long series of exclusive developer interviews that have been cited by Wikipedia and by the biggest news media and gaming publications. His passion for technology also makes him knowledgeable when it comes to gaming hardware and tech. His favorite genres include RPGs, MMORPGs, and action/adventure games.
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