‘Astral Chain’ Is A Detective Game

Although it has looked great in every trailer we’ve seen so far, Astral Chain is underselling itself as just your typical action game.

In Astral Chain you play as a police officer and that’s more than just a quick backstory for your character and the cause for you to be doing so much fighting. You’ll actually be investigating crime scenes and doing some level detective work in the game, which looks like it’ll break up the frantic action quite well.

During the games live demo during the Nintendo Treehouse Live at E3, PlatinumGames showed off the first half hour of the game which included a training centre in your Police Station, player customisation including different skin colours — although disappointingly, no options for gender fluid or trans characters — as well as the games detective work.

Using a scanning ‘detective vision’ mechanic the player is seen finding a clue and takes it down as a note in their Police book. Later they use their Legion — the beings you fight alongside, tethered with you in the game — to spy on a conversation that leads them to another clue that is quickly jotted down as a keyword in their notebook. Using the clues the player finds, they report back to their superior officer before using their Legion to follow tracks to find the monster that caused the incident they’d been investigating.

It’s really cool to see these elements in a game that has already shown how epic its action portions will be

You can watch the full gameplay video below and be sure to let us know if you’re picking up Astral Chain when it release’s for Nintendo Switch on August 30th.