The original pitch for Scalebound, Platinum Games’ upcoming role-playing game that puts you in control of dragons, was much different than the iteration revealed in 2014, according to director Hideki Kamiya.
Kamiya, who came up with the initial ideas for Scalebound when Platinum Games first formed in 2006, has frequently referred to the title as the kind of game he has always wanted to make. Speaking with GameSpot, Kamiya reiterated that this could be called his dream game and shared more details about the original pitch.
“If you look at the long span of it, the first idea [for Scalebound] was when we started the company and were thinking of ideas and games that we want to make,” Kamiya said. “The idea popped up there, but then we made Bayonetta. Then after Bayonetta, we revived the idea and made a prototype but that prototype failed and the game got cancelled. It was put on a backburner for a variety of reasons and we moved on to The Wonderful 101. “
Towards the end of development on The Wonderful 101, the studio began talking about what to do next. Kamiya revived and revised his pitch for Scalebound; the game as we know it today has been in development for about two years. But before that, the game was pitched as title for the Wii using motion controls and featured dinosaurs under the control of a little girl.
“When they first started, the idea was for a Wii game and we wanted to use a Wii remote to do the orders for the dinosaurs,” Kamiya explained. “You were in control of the dinosaurs, you were ordering the dinosaurs around, and they’d do cool things. Then after we made Bayonetta, we started the prototype. The first thing that I made a change to was making it a dragon game.
“We changed the dinosaurs to dragons, but at that point the lead character was even weaker than [current protagonist] Drew is in the context of Scalebound,” he continued. “She was actually a little girl who was with these dragons. As we were making this prototype, I realized that I didn’t want to just be watching the fight, I wanted to be more participatory in the fight. And I started talking with the staff about how maybe we should change this to be a swordsman or someone a little bit older. This was when the prototype got put on the backburner, so to speak, and the project was halted. Then we made The Wonderful 101.”
Kamiya reiterated that he wants players to have an adventurous world to run around in, necessitating the more active dragons and the more aggressive, proactive character Drew–far different from a young child controlling the creatures and being a passive part of their struggle.
“The most fun for me is building out the dragon and then building the enemies of the dragon that’s going to fight and you see them start fighting on the screen and seeing those battles play out,” he said. “That’s really what we wanted to do with the game from a core play perspective and being able to execute on that has been a lot of fun for me.”
Scalebound is set to launch for Xbox One in late 2016.
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