Trivia / Astral Chain

• Creator-Driven Successor:
  • In a way, the game can be considered an indirect revival of the cancelled Scalebound, with both being Platinum-developed games published by a first-party hardware developer as an intended system exclusive (Scalebound being published by Microsoft for the Xbox One, Astral Chain being published by Nintendo for the Switch), and both using the same basic concept of controlling both the player character and a connected Puppet Fighter who assists in combat (Scalebound allowed you to control a giant dragon, while Astral Chain allows you to use different Legion).
  • It also borrows elements from another Platinum game, Transformers: Devastation. Both are cel-shaded action games that use a highscore-based grading system rather than one requiring the best time, no damage, and best combo that previous Platinum games used. Both also have a finisher at the end of a combo that can only be activated by pressing a button when a light flashes. The Legion Skills are also based off the cooldown-based abilities in Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles: Mutants in Manhattan.
  • Blade Mode from Metal Gear Rising: Revengeance makes a return here through the Sword Legion. Sadly, you can't slice whatever you want into itty-bitty pieces.
  • The game has also been considered a successor of Chaos Legion, another Capcom hack-and-slash game that also revolves around the player summoning various Legions at the player's beck and call during combat.
• Fandom Nod: The normal and hard difficulty levels are named Pt Standard and Pt Ultimate, openly acknowledging what players expect from PlatinumGames.
• God Never Said That: It's commonly stated that the director said that Astral Chain is the first in a planned trilogy. The original statement was mistranslated; the correct translation being about how in his head, he's thinking of how he could expand it into a trilogy or more. While it could start a trilogy, it's not known as of right now as to whether or not it will become one.
• No Port For You: Like with Bayonetta 2 and Bayonetta 3, don't expect the game to come to any non-Nintendo consoles, as Nintendo funded and published the game. And unlike the Bayonetta sequels, Astral Chain is an IP fully owned by Nintendo.
• Promoted Fanboy: Game director Takahisa Taura is a massive fan of Masakazu Katsura, particularly his work Zetman, and was excited to work with him for this game.
• Playing Against Type: Brianna Knickerbocker is most well known for playing soft, quiet, and/or nice girls. Female Akira Howard on the other hand is a much harder-toned Broken Ace.
• What Could Have Been:
  • Astral Chain started development as a fantasy game where the player character had magic abilities. Nintendo's input during development had the team realize that there had been a large influx of fantasy-themed games over time, causing them to pivot towards Cyberpunk instead to make the game stand out, looking at works such as Appleseed and Ghost in the Shell for inspiration.
  • There were many forms of Legions that didn't make it into the final game, including gorilla-, winged-, ghost- and snake-based Legions among dozens of unused forms, However the team eventually decided to narrow it down and streamline it to the five Legion forms in the final game, though many of the unused forms did end up being used in the final game as chimera enemies.
  • The game was originally planned to have the main characters be triplets, before the team decided to downsize it to them being twins.

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