Platinum's Upcoming Game Will "Turn the Action Genre on its Head"

We reported way back last year that Platinum Games was working on a “formless” new IP. It was sort of an off-mention at a Japanese event, so we didn’t think much of it beyond merely reporting that it existed, but now it seems we’re just that little bit closer to figuring out exactly what they’re going on about. Specifically, designer Hideki Kamiya has gone on record as saying that whatever this “formless” IP is, it will apparently, and I quote, “turn the action genre on its head."

He said this when speaking at Japanese indie game conference BitSummit and elaborated to say that while he enjoys their current reputation as a high-octane combo-based game creators, he lamented that was the only thing people seemed to know about his studio, and that it was never their “goal” to be seen in such a way; quite the contrary, their design philosophy was just to create something fun, and they happened to gravitate towards combo-based action. But this game will supposedly be bucking that trend, although how it exactly plans to do that is still a closely-guarded secret. So much so, in fact, that a majority of their own staff doesn’t even know what the game is. Which means either a small, chosen group of developers are working on it behind closed doors, or… it hasn’t even started development yet.

Both would be likely. The studio is fairly busy right now, and still has plans to self-publish two other games beyond this mysterious IP that they were talking about. So while it’s possible one of those unknown games is the one they’ve been talking about, I would be inclined to believe this is a separate, third project. After all, it would be weird if they spoke so excitedly of just one project but ignored the one that’s possibly its twin.

We’re still a long way from figuring out the truth. But consider this your yearly reminder, I guess.