Kotaku have updated their website with a couple of Project Draco screenshots, provided to them by the Japanese gaming website Famitsu. The screenshots appear to be taken from the trailer (or are very similar).
Also, the Japanese gaming news website Andriasang have reportedly spoken to Yukio Futatsugi regarding the development of Project Draco. The following information is provided on their blog:
Futatsugi, director of Panzer Dragoon and Phantom Dust, is working on the tentatively titled Project Draco to be published by Microsoft in 2011. Draco is a 3D flight shooting game. Players use Kinect to communicate with a dragon, raising it and making it learn skills, with the hopes of deepening your bond with the creature. In the game’s online mode, you can fly through the skies with your friends.
For their work on Kinect, Futatsugi and his staff are taking care to ensure that players can enjoy themselves for lengthy periods without betting tired. They’re paying attention to such things as the length of a single map and the frequency of enemy attacks. Explained Futatsugi, Project Draco is not a party type game where everyone enjoys themselves for brief periods, but is rather the type of game into which players sink their teeth. Because of this, they’re developing the game to keep players from being tired while still delivering a control scheme that delivers a direct feel of movement.
As a sales point for the game, he said, “Don’t you want to be able to actually experience the feeling of communicating with a dragon and riding it into battle? I do.”
Reports so far indicate that some Kinect launch titles suffer from control issues, so it’s a relief to know that Futatsugi and the team are placing a great deal of attention on the way the player interacts with Kinect. It sounds like the team are really focusing on the bond between the dragon and rider this time, and the promise of a game that requires extended play periods suggests that it will be more than a mere rail shooter. As a Panzer Dragoon fan, I await more news with eager anticipation.