Keiji Inafune is a busy man these days. In addition to working on his highly anticipated Mighty No. 9 and also his involvement on last year’s well intentioned action misfire Yaiba: Ninja Gaiden Z, Microsoft announced at E3 this year that he and his development studio Comcept USA, along with Aramture Studio (Metroid Prime 3: Corruption), are working on a new IPcalled ReCode, which will be exclusive to Xbox One. The premiere trailer shows a girl named Jewel and her robotic dog companion braving the elements in a barren desert wasteland that was clearly once the domain of humans but is now sandswept and fading. Jewel, bites off a bit more than she can chew when she finds a cave with an old, inactive robot and she and her pal are cornered by mechanized killers. The dog sacrifices itself to save her after a brief battle but she’s able to preserve her companion’s core and put it into the nearby robot. The game’s story will be about how Jewel goes on a quest to get the dog’s core into the right body, and the last shot of the trailer shows her standing beside an array of robotic companions, indicating that the core will end up inside many types of forms with different advantages and abilities. The game is scheduled to launch sometime in 2016. Here’s the premiere trailer, in case you haven’t seen it yet.
Gamesbeat sat down with Inafune and Mark Pacini of Aramture to talk about ReCore, both the concept and their hopes for the game. During the interview, Inafune discussed the origins of the game, revealing that he’d discussed a collaborative venture with Aramtture that never materialized back when he was working for Capcom. What they talked about at the time was the basic premise of ReCore, which only ever reached the planning stages. After leaving Capcom and forming Comcept, Inafune again spoke with Aramture and upon learning that they were trying to work on something for Microsoft, Inafune suggested they pick up where they left off so many years ago and present their idea it to the Xbox One manufacturer. And so, ReCore became a Microsoft exclusive. Inafune said that the long standing difficulties in eastern and western developers collaborating wasn’t an obstacle because he’d spoken with Aramture before and since the groundwork had been laid a long time ago, it was easy to transition into their current project.
Inafune went on to explain that the game has an existential tone amidst the harsh dystopian setting, stating that Jewel questions how the world changed into what it is and, more importantly, whether or not she is the last living human. If fhat’s the case, how can her species hope to carry on? When asked about Jewel being a female protagonist, Mark Pacini of Aramture made it abundantly clear that making Jewel a woman was solely about how well she worked as a character in the setting. Quoting the article directly:
Jewel just fit the story we were trying to tell. There wasn’t anything more intentional than that. She fit in the world that we were trying to create and the story we wanted to tell, that struggle for humanity. It made sense for us very early in development to have a woman as the protagonist.
Inafune and Pacini both talked about how the game is a culmination of their life’s influences as creators and there is nothing specific, in terms of any existing movies or games, that inspired this project. They also said that part of the game’s appeal to Microsoft was its potential to be multicultural, adding that it’s a little bit anime and a little bit western and doesn’t really fall into any specific cultural buckets by design. They talked about the emotional resonance of the game without getting too specifics, saying that the ability to transfer the dog’s core, or soul, into other robots was going to tie heavily into the sentimental aspects of Recore’s story. They offered no details on whether or not the dog would be playable. It’s not outside the realm of consideration, but whether or not they actually allow him to be a controllable character will depend on a number of factors, one of those being fan interest in the idea. You can read the entire interview here.
ReCore is scheduled to launch in 2016 for the Microsoft Xbox One. The game is a collaborative effort between Comcept USA and Aramture Studio and will be published by Microsoft. No launch date has been confirmed yet.
