PlatinumGames unveiled a new multiplayer gameplay trailer for their upcoming action RPG game, Scalebound. While it doesn’t answer questions about the game’s story and premise, it does have a giant enemy crab.
Little is still known about Scalebound. Your character is named Drew, and he rides a dragon named Thuban. Somehow, you are the only hope of the world of Draconis, a world plagued by huge monsters. And I mean HUGE monsters, of the Monster Hunter variety, monsters that Drew and Thuban have to slay together.
That Monster Hunter vibe combines with the Devil May Cry vibe Drew gives off to feel like a mishmash of other games’ better ideas. And when I say Devil May Cry vibe, I mean the main character might as well be named Danté. From his headphones to his attitude, he’s a match!
Much of that can be attributed to the game’s director, Hideki Kamiya, who worked at Capcom during Devil May Cry’s formative years. It was his vision for how dragons can work in concert with humans that drove him to create this game. In the game Thuban is not just a mountable pet; he is somehow bonded to Drew, acting independently from him but linked by the same health bar. It seems like an intereting mechanic.
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Very little of that was present during the gameplay demo, however. The main focus of the demo was the cooperative multiplayer fighting. In it, four heroes, dragons in tow, face off against a giant enemy crab. (Insert Genji 2 joke here.) The combat, both mounted and unmounted, looks good. Drew’s melee attacks have PlatinumGames’ signature spectacle fighter look to them and seem to pack a good punch. He can also attack from range, using either his bow & arrow or magic. When mounted, Thuban handles the damage-dealing with flame attacks.
The only cooperative bits between Drew and Thuban came towards the end. Drew and his co-op companions fired their arrows at the giant crab while their dragons fired their fireballs at the monster’s weak point. In another moment, Drew tells Thuban to use his tail to launch him towards the beast, and Thuban complies. It would be very interesting to see more of how they cooperate to take on other foes.
Graphically, the game is impressive. Details abound on the giant monster as well as in the environment. The dragons themselves are beautiful, and there seems to be a fair amount of variety in the dragon models. The character models have a fair amount of detail as well, although Drew occasionally has a blank grin on his face, as if he’s permanently set to the “disgruntled but amused” setting.
I do have some questions about the gameplay. It’s multiplayer, because there are four heroes on screen, but only one person was onstage playing the game. And there was a lot of over-scripting in the demo, especially at the beginning when the other three players join in. Maybe I’m just too used to the kind of trickery Ubisoft likes to play (and I’ll eventually get on their asses about it), but something about this gameplay demo smells staged.
Either way, the game is due out exclusively for Xbox One and Windows 10 in 2017.
