I finally had some time to edit and review my long interview with the CEOs on Skylanders Swap Force and discovered that some interesting new facts emerged.
The next generation versions of Swap Force have still yet to be revealed, but we did get a comment on what to expect this time around:
The PS4 and Xbox One technology allows us to bring the feel of an animated feature in a Skylanders way.
With the industry moving on to the Wii U and next generation machines it can sometimes leave the current generation behind too fast for families. Happily then, Skylanders Swap Force is continuing to support the Wii version impressively running on the same engine as the Xbox One and PS4 games.
Beenox has been able to use the alchemy engine to power all the versions of Swap Force. They have take over all the gameplay, toy compatibility and levels and systems and make that all available on the Wii.
Of course, the Wii is a 480p system so it’s not a High Definition system so to speak, and so graphics wise it will have that type of outlook, gameplay wise it will be very very close to everything else.
A nice new feature this year offers an additional layer of complexity to the attacks. Not only do you need to press the right button to access a particular ability, but timing it correctly will offer a power boost. This takes Swap Force fighting into an almost Rhythm Action play-style.
Learnable skill based attacks like Starstrike’s energy ball that can be reflected to grow it in size.
You do it with rhythm and so it’s a nice way to get into her moves and defeat enemies quicker.
Male-Only Swap Force Characters
Although there is still scope for female Swap Force characters, currently they all seem to be male. I asked Guha and Karthik Bala about this while they were demonstrating the game. Although Karthik suggested they were gender neutral in some cases, it is hard to talk about them without using the male vernacular.
It’s a little bit open to interpretation I see [Free Ranger] as a he.
Although they wouldn’t be drawn on specifics about reposed Giants appearing for Swap Force, it seemed from the interview that these may be an option at some point.
Right now we are not talking about reposed or series 3 Giants characters.
Although Swap Force supports all the previous Skylanders characters from Giants and Spyro’s Adventure, the Adventure Packs are not supported. There will be new Adventure Packs for Swap Force, however.
