Home Gaming Scalebound was originally going to star a little girl controlling dinosaurs

Scalebound was originally going to star a little girl controlling dinosaurs

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Clever-girl

Swords! Sorcery! Dragons! Beats by Dr Dre! Scalebound sounds like a great idea for a game, one that might finally give Xbox the chance to actually sell a few Xbox One consoles in Japan.

And after all, with a pitch that involves going into battle with a dragon that has your back, Scalebound must have been an easy sell from fan favourite developer Platinum Games. It’s the kind of game that director Hideki Kamiya has frequently said is the exact kind of game that he has wanted to make for years now.

But it was also a very different game when it was first pitched.

“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 to Gamespot.

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.

Once The Wonderful 101 was done and dusted, Platinum revisited the Scalebound idea, and revised the pitch. Which he revealed was that Scalebound was originally going to be a Wii game that used motion controls as a little girl controlled dinosaurs.

“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 said.

Scalebound (2)

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. 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.

The key theme here in Kamiya’s game, is still a sense of fun and adventure. That’s what resulted in the shift from dinosaurs to dragons and the lead protagonist swapping genders and adding on a few more years.

“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,” Kamiya explained.

Scalebound (1)

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.

I’m still feeling weird when it comes to Scalebound. Slower, more methodical combat in a Platinum game makes about as much sense as pineapple on a pizza to me. Still, I want to see if they can pull this off. Not the pineapple I mean. Once it’s on, the pizza is fully tainted.

Last Updated: October 1, 2015

25 Comments

  1. It makes sense, little girls love dinosaurs.

    Reply

    • Kromas untamed

      October 1, 2015 at 07:49

      Well dinos are like Bacon.

      everyone loves bacon~

      Reply

      • Alien Emperor Trevor

        October 1, 2015 at 07:53

        Wouldn’t they be more like chicken, technically?

        Reply

        • Kromas untamed

          October 1, 2015 at 07:57

          Yeah … still waiting on chickensaures rex. Just regressing the bastard to facial features is not enough!

          Reply

    • DragonSpirit009

      October 1, 2015 at 10:25

      Little girls like dragons as well.

      Reply

  2. Grand Admiral Chief

    October 1, 2015 at 07:47

    That header cracks me up!!!!

    Header of the week for sure!

    Reply

  3. Kromas untamed

    October 1, 2015 at 07:47

    Bacon Banana and Pineapple on a Pizza is absolute heaven.

    Thick base none of that debonairs crap.

    Reply

    • Grand Admiral Chief

      October 1, 2015 at 07:52

      Thick base sies, so ‘Murican.

      Thin proper Italian base or GITS

      Reply

      • Kromas untamed

        October 1, 2015 at 07:55

        Well if you are going propper Italian then remove everything except tomato and cheese. Cause that is the only Pizza recognized in Italy.

        Reply

        • Grand Admiral Chief

          October 1, 2015 at 07:59

          My daughter loves that one, and I always “help” her eat it 🙂

          Reply

          • Kromas untamed

            October 1, 2015 at 08:03

            Well it came as shock to me a while back. I asked the waitress what pizza she had in broken google translated Italian and all I got was pizza. Apparently the variants pretty much all came from America. At least Crepes in France have variety.

    • Grand Admiral Chief

      October 1, 2015 at 07:53

      Remove the bacon, eat the bacon, throw away the rest of your crap pizza (mebbe salvage the cheese)

      Reply

      • Kromas untamed

        October 1, 2015 at 07:55

        I love all the flavours.

        Reply

        • Grand Admiral Chief

          October 1, 2015 at 07:59

          Bacon, avo, feta

          *fixed

          Reply

          • Kromas untamed

            October 1, 2015 at 08:04

            You like Avo but not banana?

            Oh well I like Avo as well.

          • HairyEwok

            October 1, 2015 at 08:35

            This is very evil. People coming on here now that’s already at work that had no breakfast have to read these comments and suffer.
            http://gifsec.com/wp-content/uploads/GIF/2014/08/Thats-the-evilest-thing-i-can-imagine-GIF.gif?gs=a

          • DragonSpirit009

            October 1, 2015 at 10:26

            I know how you feel. My slice of toast with ham doesn’t seem so special any more.

          • Alien Emperor Trevor

            October 1, 2015 at 08:17

            Bacon, feta and ice cream man? O_o

    • GooseZA

      October 1, 2015 at 10:55

      I have ordered this exact pizza my entire life. Every. Single. Time.

      Why settle for anything less than perfection? I’m not too fussy about the base though.

      Reply

  4. Grand Admiral Chief

    October 1, 2015 at 07:52

    Pineapple on pizza must disappear from existence. That and banana

    Reply

    • Rock789

      October 1, 2015 at 09:11

      **orders admiral a bacon and banana pizza… Waits for the reaction** 😉

      Reply

      • Grand Admiral Chief

        October 1, 2015 at 12:06

        Well, food is food, I’ll just pick the effing nana’s off

        Reply

    • Splooshypooh

      October 1, 2015 at 10:48

      Never a truer word spoken

      Reply

  5. David

    October 1, 2015 at 08:49

    You know, a little girl controlling dragons would’ve been more compelling than a Chris Pratt, Jurassic Park type.

    And don’t tell me it’s unrealistic – it’s a game about flippen dragons.

    Reply

  6. WitWolfy

    October 1, 2015 at 13:34

    I promsid myself I wouldnt get sucked into the hype that is Scalebound.. With my luck if I do it will end up being Evolve meets MGS V…

    Reply

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