‘Scalebound’: Next Year, Come For Dragons, Stay For Combat

One of my most anticipated games of 2016 is one called Scalebound. This game is being made by the amazing team at Platinum Games, creators of my choice of game of the year for 2014, Bayonetta 2. In Scalebound we take control of Drew, accompanied by his dragon named Thuban in order to explore this new world. Unlike most games developed by Platinum, this one focuses more on graphics and the role-playing element of the game instead of just action.

While you will fight human-sized enemies using different weapons like shield and swords, lances, bow and arrow, and even a great sword, you will also take on huge monsters. This game seems to be a mix of aspects used in other games. The combo system reminds me of Devil May Cry games — the good ones, not DmC — mixing fast hits and combo strings. Drew even has Dante’s signature stinger sword thrust attack.

You are able to climb up monsters and attack them similar to Shadow of the Colossus, and Monster Hunter 4. The combat in all reminds me of Dragon’s Dogma, and that’s not a bad thing. Also you can command your AI-assisted dragon to attack enemies as well. Thuban will either stomp the ground, uses it’s dragon breathe, or even let out a spinning jump tail kick that’d make Guile of Street Fighter proud.

Another thing to note is that both Drew and Thuban are customizable. Drew can be altered to fit a look of the player’s choice, and Thuban can even be customized, such as giving the dragon some armor, changing fire breath to ice breathe, or who knows, maybe changing Thuban into a whole new style of dragon. We don’t know much of customization options as of yet, but I am sure it’ll be talked about soon

This game looks phenomenal and probably one of the best games at Gamescon this Fall. Even though it was pre alpha gameplay that will only get better over the development time, it looked well worth the wait. The gameplay demo showed so much in under ten minutes, even ending with a teaser of things to come, like showing this huge hydra monster and showcasing four-player co-op play — hopefully meaning there will be even bigger monsters in this game to take on.

I am really looking forward to getting my hands at this game. Hopefully it’ll be at PAX East next year. Scalebound will be releasing late 2016 exclusively for the Xbox One, so expect to see a lot of this game over this course of the coming year.