As we know, there are only two genres of video game: ones that let you pet the dog and ones that don’t. Thankfully, for many of you, Astral Chain is going to be very much in the former camp.
Before we get into that, we’re going to have to backtrack a little, because Astral Chain is a heck of a prospect to think about. In the midst of all the hype for Nintendo Switch exclusives like Fire Emblem: Three Houses, Animal Crossing: New Horizons,and Luigi’s Mansion 3 (the latter of which is launching on October 31, as it darn well should), the Nintendo-published Astral Chain is a bit of an outlier. It definitely shouldn’t be, though.
This fascinating-looking action extravaganza was first unveiled back in the February 13th Nintendo Direct. It’s got the futuristic vibes of Metal Gear Rising: Revengeance and the high-octane action of… more Metal Gear Rising: Revengeance, with a healthy dose of Bayonetta thrown into the mix. None of which is any surprise, of course, as PlatinumGames is responsible for all of these titles.
In Astral Chain, players take the role of a police officer, in a dystopian, futuristic world where humanity is under threat from dimension-hopping creatures dubbed Chimeras. Your task force’s secret weapon against this threat is the Legion, a tamed and controllable version of Chimera. Literally controllable: you’ve got two characters to control at once, here.
Much like your monstrous foes themselves, the Legion take a range of different forms, all of which add fascinating wrinkles to what promises to be a super-deep action experience. Still, there’s no time to get hung up on all of that now. The important thing is, release is only a month away, and it’s time to start asking the questions that really matter.
Well, really, it’s more time for Astral Chain director Takahisa Taura to head off on an adorable tangent and answer the question nobody actually asked, but totally wanted the answer to. In an interview with Miketendo 64, Taura was asked which Legion was his favorite. His response?
“This is a bit personal, but from the time I was young, we always had a dog in the house. So, when I was making the game, I started becoming attached to the Beast Legion. Actually, if you use the action button while you’re standing next to the Beast Legion in the game, you can pet him.”
Yes, friends, you can indeed pet the dog. Take that, Fire Emblem: Three Houses. You may have been a huge sales success, but can the player pet the dogs and cats found around the Garegg Mach monastery? They cannot. Astral Chain: 1, Fire Emblem: 0.