Astral Chain could mark a new era for PlatinumGames

You almost always know what you will get with a Platinum game. With very few exceptions, titles made during the developer's ten-year history are action games built on cinematic rhythm, focusing on highly technical input and very little out-of-combat stuff. That's why Astral Chain

It's so surprising. Yes, the exclusivity of Switch is primarily an action game, but it is a very different game. nice action game for Platinum. Where the likes of Bayonetta or The Wonderful 101 flourish in the fight against player prowess, Astral Chain is more interested in movement and positioning. Controlling two characters at once, not to mention the use of the title string that binds them, turns the game's fight into a dance more than a punch; less fury, more elegance.

Perhaps most surprisingly, Astral Chain is not an action game at all, exchanging violence for exploration sections that encompass everything from riddles of logic to phantasmagorical visual conversations to satisfying sections of the game. police investigation, which allow you to gather evidence together solutions to a case. I think someone at Platinum is as much a fan of Ace Attorney as Devil May Cry.

The astral chain is absolutely pretty

This person might well be Takahisa Taura, a new director for Platinum, promoted after his great job as a game designer on Nier: Automata (a game that also withstood the Platinum trend in his freer and weirdo narration systems). -RPG). As I talk to her at Gamescom, it becomes clear that Taura is far less interested in recreating the fame of her business, perhaps trying to make her famous for something new.

"I did not really want to be trapped in what platinum games have done up to now," he explains (through a translator) of his design philosophy . "I really wanted to challenge myself by creating something unique." For a new director working in a studio built almost entirely on the design ideals of its founders, it is a remarkably candid mission statement.

As if to double that, it relies on unlikely sources to make this unique design work. I ask what was the origin of the two controllable characters simultaneously, hoping that the answer will look like a team fighting game or the joy of Bayonetta 2's cooperation. I was wrong. "I like a lot the games in which you summon a second character and fight, go on an adventure. For example, Pokemon. "Yes, your chained interdimensional demon buddy was partially based on Squirtle. "I love the franchise very much. So when developing this game, I wanted to follow a similar concept. "

Even less expected, some mechanisms come entirely from the theme, not the other way around – a change of style not only in Platinum, but also in its usual systemic approach, which favors the creation of games. Take this investigative mechanic: "Once we had decided to set up police forces, that 's done naturally. So, the main character is a policeman, so there will be incidents around him, and if there are any incidents, the policeman must naturally investigate what happened and try to find the cause . […] At the Platinum Games, we have never created such a game before, so we had a lot of fun understanding this concept. It was a very good challenge. "

All this discussion of new ideas does not mean that Astral Chain is a rejection of the Platinum story. All you need to do is play a little bit to see the brands of the previous games here: The Wonderful 101 pen-shaped formations resonate by manipulating your chain to bind or bounce your enemies; Metal Gear Rising: Revengeance's precision sword traits are recreated wholesale with the special abilities of your sword legion; Even taking control of a legion with a trigger seems strangely similar to a demo behind closed doors that I had seen on the late late Scalebound (Taura tells me it's a "complete coincidence", but I'm not not yet quite sure).

Astral Chain feels more like an experience in which Platinum could go next, rather than what it could have been all this time. For me, Taura uses its own channel to pull the company in a new direction. The next obvious question is "why?" Taura's answer is clear:

"Developing games takes a lot of time, so you really invest in them. Doing things we did before is going to be boring [when working on one thing] for a long time. So, rather than following a corporate direction, it's more than just personal, I just want to entertain while working. "

The developers of PlatinumGames

Platinum has already told us that he prefers to support new directors with good ideas, rather than just going through a team of leaders, and Taura is proof of that philosophy at work. You only have to look at the critics to see that it was the right decision to allow him to turn his non-traditional vision into reality. The question that remains is whether it was an isolated case. It seems unlikely that Bayonetta 3 is too far from the established format, but with Babylon's Fall (a second collaboration with Square Enix after the success of Nier) and another unpublished intellectual property still unknown, it will be fascinating to see if this is the beginning of a new era of Platinum games, and more specifically of a new definition of what can be a platinum game.

I ask Taura if he expects to remain a Platinum administrator, if we could see more action from him. He is a little less frank on this point: "In the end, I am an office worker, so I do not know what could happen in the future." But he ends up on what could be interpreted as a hint, a whisper that the Platinum game version might persist longer than its debut: "At the moment, I hope that people will appreciate Astral Chain with my direction." I used to say that I knew what I was going to get Platinum Game. Now, I hope to love what I do not like.