Astral Chain 2's development appears to have been chaotic so far
, by Thibaut
Back in August 2019, the Switch got the exclusive Astral Chain by PlatinumGames. This was an action game in which the player took on the role of a futuristic policeman who hunted down chimeras, terrible creatures from another dimension.
This new IP was extremely well received by gamers and critics alike. In fact, it was so succesful, that there were plans of sequel. According to rumors that ha e surfaced this week, development began in early 2021, but quickly ran into a number of problems.
With the people involved in the game working on other projects in parallel, the first six months saw no progress. PlatinumGames was also going through a difficult period when it came to finances, with budgets cut at all levels. Fortunately, in 2022, Hideki Kamiya took the reigns of development, and by then progress had been made. The team working on this Astral Chain 2 was virtually the same as that of the first game then.
Nintendo soon sent one of its representatives at PlatinumGames, and conflicts arose over the direction that Astral Chain 2 was going to. This led to Kamiya's departure and a total reboot of the project, this time directly for Switch 2.
Prior to this reboot, the game was already planned to be a direct sequel to the first episode, with an almost unchanged cast of characters. The villain's name was Maxwell, and the choces the player made was to change the direction of the story via a branching system. Coop was also in the cards.
Last but not least, because of the aforementioned disagreements, Nintendo reportedly threatened PlatinumGames with taking over the game and give it to another studio. As a result, Astral Chain 2 could look very different today.
Source: reddit.com