Scalebound design was in the works for years, had two cancelled prototypes

The design ideas for Xbox One exclusive Scalebound have been kicking around since 2006. In fact, the game saw a couple of prototypes that never saw release.

Scalebound director Hideki Kamiya has revealed that before the game became the way we know it today, it went through a number of prototypes and they were all shelved. The first one is even as old as the first Bayonetta.

One of these few prototypes, and perhaps the most different from what we have today, came at the end of The Wonderful 101's development.

"When they first started, the idea was for a Wii game and we wanted to use a Wii remote to do the orders for the dinosaurs," Kamiya told Gamespot.

"You were in control of the dinosaurs, you were ordering the dinosaurs around, and they'd do cool things. Then after we made Bayonetta, we started the prototype. The first thing that I made a change to was making it a dragon game.

"We changed the dinosaurs to dragons, but at that point the lead character was even weaker than [current protagonist] Drew is in the context of Scalebound. She was actually a little girl who was with these dragons."

Kamiya goes on to say that it was this moment that made him want to be able to participate in the action, and suggested that the character should be able to use swords. Which, as you can probably attest, is very similar to the final vision.

Scalebound is due for release holiday 2016.