I got to check out the Scalebound presentation today which showed off a lot of stuff you could do with Thuban. There was only a little gameplay in the actual presentation but what was shown was pretty convincing. Scalebound is shaping up to be a great game.
The presentation started with a little explanation of the forms Thuban’s going to have. The rex form is the form you see in all the promotional footage, his tank form which can be seen in some co-op segments and his wyvern form was shown at E3 if I’m not mistaken. All the dragons you have seen are all different variations of Thuban. In Thuban’s tank form he is slower and can’t fly but he does more damage, while his rex form can fly and is more of an all-rounder, and the wyvern is the one which is the best in the air with giant wings. This is also reflected in his design as his tank form is bulky and looks heavier while his rex form looks somewhat like a standard European dragon would.
You can change Thuban’s forms by giving him gems at a shrine. Thuban doesn’t just change from one form to another. Instead, Thuban will slowly evolve into a different form. We got to see a sped-up version of this process. The dragon changed from his Tank form to the t-rex version. We saw him starting to slim down and go from a quadrupedal dinosaur to him standing on his hind legs. As the process continued we saw him starting to stand more and more upright, growing wings which grew larger and larger. Thuban’s head also went from being more bulky with small horns to a more sleek head with larger horns. As soon as you see the designs of the forms you can see what kind of statistics it’s going to have. I also like the little touches in detail like his tail growing longer as he is standing more upright in order for him to balance himself better, much like real-life evolution works.
Next, we got to see a few armor options for Thuban too. You can mix and match pieces as you see fit but we got to see full armor sets. All the armors looked really nice and some had vibes of Final Fantasy armor to more traditional armor to even organic looking armor.
After we saw that we got to see Drew taking direct control of his dragon. Drew can control Thuban through a rather awkward looking first person mode. During this mode, Drew can make Thuban do several different things. While doing this Drew has his mind connected with Thuban and the two are fighting as one. This means that Drew can’t move and is incredibly vulnerable. These attacks take quite some time so you have to be absolutely sure that when you use it you are safe. It looked very awkward with Drew’s hand being in the middle of the screen while the camera focusses on Thuban. After all the new mechanics were shown we got to see what was called a combo video.
Now this is not a Devil May Cry or fighting game combo. Instead, like in an RPG, this was the player doing a series of attacks that completely shut down the enemy making sure it could not attack. The battle was in a dark and desolate dungeon. It looked like a showcase area because there really wasn’t anything in it. In the room was Thuban, Drew and an enemy just about Thuban’s size which was a monster baboon. The area was fairly dark and with the dragon’s light emanating from its body while fighting I got serious Pacific Rim vibes(or the battle between King Kong and the T-rex in the Peter Jackson version.) Drew commands Thuban to fight while he goes to the monster and attacks its weak spot on its heel. The creature tumbles over and then the player pins the creature down with his Dragon. When the creature was pinned Drew went to the face and broke a piece of its face exposing its weakness. Then when the creature got up the player suppressed it with Thuban’s fire so Drew can go and attack its rear which, surprise surprise is another weak spot(you know because it’s a baboon.) After all that was done the fight was finished in a way other Platinum games would start their combo videos. Thuban does a cool looking launcher by doing a flip and hitting the monster with its tail almost like a Flash kick. So as you can read the “combo” is not a short string of attacks that you need to time well to do. Instead just like the RPG that this is, it was all about setting stuff up to make sure you can do as much damage as you can. It’s like you fighting a boss in a turn based RPG. De-buffing him, giving him a status ailment, and generally planning your next step to maximize your damage.
E3’s demo left a bad taste in people’s mouths, even the fans of Platinum games were sceptical. I didn’t think the E3 demo was that bad but if people saw what I saw there might have not been that much scepticism. The thing is that this entire demo was incredibly short so releasing it like it was would not have sufficed. So if people wonder why they did not show it it’s just too short. The Gamescom presentation showed me that there are some real RPG elements going on in the game. And while the presentation was fun I feel everyone would have benefitted from seeing some more in-depth RPG stuff or a better look at the villages. I also think that while controlling the dragon works and kind of reminds me of Gigantic drive it looks awkward as hell. I’m still excited for Scalebound and hope these impressions will have helped a few people in making up their mind about the game.
