ASTRAL CHAIN is set to release August 30th, 2019.
As part of a police special task force, it’s up to you to fight against mysterious, alien-like creatures who have invaded the world.
In the Ark, a multi-cultural city in the near future, disaster strikes when gates to another dimension suddenly appear! Dangerous creatures begin to emerge, attacking the people and polluting the land, and normal police forces are unable to compete with them. To stand up against these threats, a brand new, special police unit known as Neuron is formed.
Choose between two playable characters – one male, one female – on your adventure. The character you don’t choose also appears as your younger twin, and a fellow member of Neuron.
In order to resist the creatures, humanity developed a special weapon: the Legion. The Legion acts as your partner, and helps with your investigations. However, it’s in battle where the Legion shows its real ability…
Work together with the Legion and use all sorts of combat styles to fight your enemies. You could both attack the same enemy simultaneously, target different opponents, or send your Legion on the offensive while you support it with items. Use this synergetic action system to battle and explore together!
Making his directorial debut and known for his work as the game designer on NieR:Automata, Takahisa Taura is responsible for the concept and planning of ASTRAL CHAIN. Hideki Kamiya, creator of the Bayonetta™ series, is in charge of supervision. The character design is by manga artist Masakazu Katsura, creator of ZETMAN and Video Girl Ai.
IMPRESSIONS
Platinum Games’ relationship with Nintendo seems to extend beyond just Bayonetta, announcing ASTRAL CHAIN for the Nintendo Switch. The fact we have so many people from familiar franchises working on this — Hideki Kamiya (creator of Devil May Cry and Bayonetta) supervising, Masakazu Katsura (ZETMAN, WINGMAN) as the character designer, and Takahisa Taura (NieR:Automata, MAX ANARCHY) as director — gets me excited already!
From the beginning, it looks to me like you can either transform certain enemies/allied robots (or maybe they are robots meant for this reason?) into your police partner “The Legion”. Seems you are connected to them by a “chain” (maybe this is why it is called “ASTRAL CHAIN“?) and can will them to do actions separately, in tandem, or special attacks. This also seems to allow you to summon them from thin air, as seen in one of the clips. Moreover, this seems entirely separate than the robotic companion you are seen riding due to the fact the “chain” was not connected to them.
Combat looks like something Platinum Games would do; it is fast, it is fluid, and seems like it is well thought out in how it will be executed. Something else I have noticed is what seems to be “stealth takedowns”, in the form of wrapping someone in chains if you get the drop onto them (hope stealth areas are not annoying in this game), with suspicious enemies having a question mark (?) over their heads. Seems like some environments are also destructible for the purpose of causing big damage.
Something else is that it seems your character (working in tandem with their twin), are probably experiments. The monologue by one of the woman shows that she knows quite a bit about those two, and discovering the truth behind why you were born, the reason you have to fight the monstrosities that appear, and the end goal of their joint creators is probably going to be the story for this game. Will have to guess!
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