By: Max Cannon
I've got some bad news if you were looking forward to playing Scalebound. Following a leak that was initially published on Kotaku, Microsoft confirmed to IGN that the Xbox exclusive Scalebound was canceled.
The Rise and Fall of Scalebound
First announced at E3 2014, Scaleboundwas a co-op fighting game designed by Platinum Games. The game seemed reminiscent of the Devil May Cry series and featured a similar looking character that would don headphones while fighting off monsters with his pet dragon. An online presence was going to be central to the game as a later demo showed off a battle where the player teamed up with another boy and his dragon to take down a massive boss.
A Co-op battle from a multiplayer demonstation.Courtesy of Xbox
The game was meant to be an Xbox One console exclusive and had initially planned to release in 2016. However after a rough showing at Gamescom 2015, players began to grow skeptical after seeing the poor performance that was bogging the game down. Towards the end of 2016, there was little heard of Scalebound which convinced gamers that the game had gone dark to focus on its development, but it seems like things were far worse than anticipated as the game was publicly canceled on January 9th, 2017.
Disappointing for sure, but if the game was stagnant I respect the decision to cancel it rather than release a broken game.
Scalebound - Announcement Trailer
The Closest We'll Ever Get To LEGO Halo
While the cancelation of a big budget game was definitely surprising, the leaked footage showing off the canceled Mega Bloks Halo was even more surprising! While Halo was initially released as a violent, M-rated trilogy. In recent years it seems as if Microsoft is planning to make Halo a little more family friendly, especially with the T rated release of Halo 5.
Using a sense of charm that is typically found in the LEGO games, Mega Bloks Halo would put players into the blocky shoes of the Master Chief as he runs through a bright, colorful world. Shooting Covenant and driving vehicles but in a much more accessible way for the younger gamers. Though this sounds like a bad joke, the leaked gameplay actually looked pretty fun. Some of the game is on the unfinished side from the leak but, according to the video, the game was only worked on for a few months.
The Mega Bloks version of Halo takes some strong design elements from the main series.Courtesy of Windows Central
Bonnie Ross, the head of Halo development team 343 Industries, had this to say:
"Over the past few days, footage has recently made the rounds of an exploratory Xbox 360 project we worked on several years ago, known as “Haggar.” Since then, we’ve received a lot of great feedback from the community. Haggar was something we prototyped with our friends at Mega Bloks that focused on the elements of action, exploration and user creativity found within the Halo universe. Haggar had a lot of fun ideas and invention behind it, but ultimately didn’t progress beyond the early prototyping levels that are shown in the recent video. This is just one example of several similar projects we have evaluated throughout the years – a process that we continue exploring on an ongoing basis."
Check out the leaked footage below!
Mega Bloks Halo - Unreleased
Have Your Say!
Would you have wanted to play either game? Would you like to see more variety in the Halo games? Comment below!
