Customise and control your dragon in Scalebound

When we saw Scalebound during Microsoft's E3 conference the player was only controlling the headphone-wearing teenager Drew, while the dragon Thuban was entirely AI controlled. It turns out this won't be the case in the final game.

Platinum Games has just unveiled that you can take direct control of the dragon in battle. When you aren't in control of him, he'll be controlled by the A.I. This is because they can merge their consciousness through what's called Dragon Link. When this ability is activated, the camera will remain on Drew, though pull back a bit so you can se Thuban. Drew won't be able to move while you're fighting as Thuban, so Platinum said that this move should be used very strategically.

Dragon Link is very basic at the start, but can be upgraded by levelling up Drew or customising Thuban. You'll earn gems by defeating enemies, and these can be used to customise Thuban at dragon shrines spread around the world. Your fire-breathing friend can morph between three base dragon types; The balanced two-legged Rex type, a tank-like type that's slow and powerful, or the incredibly fast Wyvern that excels at air combat. When at dragon shrines you can morph and customise these different types into your favourite blend, interchanging different qualities from each breed. These changes won't just affect your dragon's stats, but also its appearance. Thuban has five different slots that can be equipped with different attack buffs. As some of these have elemental effect they are also capable of changing his appearance. For example: equipping a ice buff to the tail will make it into a ice tail.

Additionally, your dragon can also wear armour. Unlike skill upgrades and buff parts requires gems, armour requires regular currency earned by defeating enemies, completing missions and so forth. Armour can be equipped on five parts of Thuban, and will break down after sustaining too much damage.

With such a wide variety of customisation options Platinum hopes that every player will be able to create a dragon that perfectly fits their playstyle. This will hopefully make for some quite diverse and entertaining cross-plattform multiplayer matches when Scalebound launches on PC and Xbox One early next year.