Brace Yourselves For A Long Read
Hideki Kamiya, I love this guy, but he can be a real wild card around things. Yes, he makes brilliant games, and uphold standards unlike most of AAA gaming studio do. The issue lies with how he's tackling the Scalebound revival. I wish this game would just stop coming around online, because the name-dropping has been nothing false alarms occasionally.
And right now, there are serious talks about how Microsoft and Platinum are reconsidering the project's current demise and I mean, yeah, Kamiya did say he was interested in doing so, but the project didn't die because Microsoft just cut off ties abruptly and just shook their hands off it. There's more to the story here.
Every single news outlet is going all out just to bring this to light. Like the second coming that we don't probably need. But, I am considering the good aspects that could come out of this. If there's a generation that Platinum could really flex at, it could be in the new Series X console. Provided, Kamiya has revised and decided to do actually better than what he had going for early on.
I mean, look at this chad, does he look like he can do any wrong? He made Devil May Cry, Bayonetta, Viewtiful Joe, and Okami. He's kind of the golden goose of Japanese games, starting all the way with RE2. However, he isn't impervious to having faults. Scalebound was a massively ambitious project in all ways, and he wanted to go further with Microsoft backing him up.
What I will talk about here are the setbacks, the situation around the early developments of SC, and how things can improve from here. That if they are really serious about the project, they will give the Xbox platform its best hack'n'slash exclusive
Scalebound was conceptualized back in 2006, but with the focus of making Bayonetta, they shelved it for a few years. Till 2014 with the announcement that Microsoft will be publishing as an exclusive for the Xbox One. A fancy CGI trailer was shown, highlighting all the PlatinumGames personality traits and charms. So yeah, that amazed people enough to get their excitement really pumped.
The big issue was the waiting game. This game was being developed since 2013, and they were working around a number of issues, regarding gameplay design, getting the co-op to work, having it run well on a system weaker than the PS4, and finally making a Kamiya game all noteworthy.
All of this at the height of the 8th gen console era, where the PS4 was dominating, and the XB1 lagging behind because of its lack of good exclusives, and the aforementioned lack of hardware power. Yeah, not stretching that one bit, this was a stressful time for any owners, because the constant meme of Microsoft not having good exclusives became a thing still around even today.
But Platinum's issues lied elsewhere, they were gameplay trailers of both the single-player, and the online co-op. Showing the scope of what kind of game they've been wanting to make. In hindsight, they looked rough, like, keen observations would tell anyone that this doesn't look like a good hack'n'slash in any form. Also, this was Kamiya's biggest project, his last game before was for the Wii U called the Wonderful 101.
This was also the time the studio struggled, like a lot, financially. They had 3 big commercial successful games to their name: Metal Gear Rising: Revengeance, Bayonetta, and NieR: Automata. They made more great games, but these 3 are the ones that sold the most. Not only that, they were contract games, and that money didn't stick around for long.
One would question as to how they were working on several projects, the answer was staff size. They made NieR with Yoko Taro as the director, while Scalebound was still in the rough development phase at the time. And not going so well, much to the chagrin of Kamiya. Then 2017 came around, two things happened; NieR Automata got released, and Scalebound got cancelled.
Backlash was swift, everybody got tired and fed up with the nonsense, and voiced their concerns around the no-exclusive issue incessantly. The fingers pointed at the obvious guilty party being Microsoft. But PlatinumGames cleared the air, by saying that both ends have made mistakes. Enough in words to assuage the fire of the public scrutiny.
And yeah, they weren't far off. One ex-developer leaked info, citing that development was hitting multiple brick walls, especially to do with Kamiya's vision of the game. They were oppositions from the team, while also struggling with the lack of power from the console. A myriad of factors, like all of that, all culminated in the game's cancellation.
Circa 2020, PlatinumGames have stumbled onto a few opportunities, involving investment and increase in projects alongside adding more talents to work on their games. They were going bigger than they were, this however, involved a number of sad facts; they were making deals with both Tencent and Square Enix. Of which required them to work on games, one that kind of questioned the studio's integrity overall.
Babylon's Fall came out, and it was poorly received across everywhere, a number of mobile games have also come out with the same reception. I mean, they've done licensed games for Activision regarding Transformers, and Korra, nothing new. But it felt like they were selling their souls to the devil, partially to make such shoddy games for quick buck.
On the flip side, Atsushi Inaba finally became the CEO, with full control over the company he found, and that they managed to open another satellite studio named PlatinumGames FUKUOKA. Bayonetta 3, after waiting for so long, finally got released to a welcoming reception, albeit with some controversies. And here we are with Scalebound revival.
Microsoft went around buying studios left and right, and then decided to buy companies too. First Bethesda, then came Activision Blizzard. Inaba even joked a bit that he was willing to let them have PlatinumGames too, provided certain conditions followed. Some indication if not, that they are open to partner with Microsoft in the foreseeable future.
Kamiya expressed interest in revisiting the project somewhere in the end of 2021, and he went further by expressing he was serious about it last year. The interesting part about this rumor mill right now, "Nick 'Shpeshal' Baker" from XboxEra podcast, who gave the info, had numerous sources. Even confirming that they've been still talking about it for years, as well right after cancellation.
So, here's me projecting what they can do, and what's possible. I think they need to rework the core gameplay and the co-op features on a fundamental level. But the scope that Kamiya had for Scalebound is more than feasible now with the Xbox Series X console. And I also hope, Kamiya doesn't phone it in. This means everything to a lot of us who stuck around for Xbox. Even if Microsoft now has so many games coming, revisiting this should be about what you offer to the best of your abilities, as well as what's achievable. And uh, no pressure since so many good hack'n'slash games have come out lately, even from Team Ninja themselves. They could work find many ways around the challenges now. But that also depends if they confirm on their side or not.
Thanks for reading this, if you did, leave a comment and let me know what you think
