Exclusive: First gameplay and details from Phantom Dust’s HD re-release

The 2004 original Xbox game Phantom Dust always felt slightly ahead of its time. A unique hybrid of collectible card game and third-person fighting game, Phantom Dust featured gorgeous graphics, a world that felt unlike any other and robust online multiplayer in an era where such a thing was rare.

After Microsoft put a 2014 project to reboot Phantom Dust on hold, it said little about the property until E3 2016, when it dropped the surprise announcement that a re-release of the original game was coming to Xbox One and PC this year. Yet until now, we had little idea what exactly that remaster would look like, beyond one screenshot tweeted by Xbox head Phil Spencer early last month.

So what’s new in this release of the game? We spoke to Adam Isgreen, creative director for Microsoft Studios, to find out exactly what’s changed.

“The biggest thing is moving [Phantom Dust] to 16:9 and moving to native resolution. So what that basically means is that if you’re playing on Xbox One, you’re running at 1080p so the game is going to render at 1080p; if you’re on a PC and you’re playing at 4K resolution, the game will render its assets at 4K,” Isgreen said. “So basically, if you put it in a window, the resolution will be the window size. So we’ve been able to actually take full advantage of whatever you’re playing on and render Phantom Dust correctly at that resolution.”

Code Mystics/Microsoft Studios

According to Isgreen, there’s a reason last year’s announcement was so light on details: The team simply didn’t know what it would be able to pull off.

“The biggest challenge that we faced in bringing Phantom Dust back was when we recovered the archives from Japan for the original project, there was no final source code,” Isgreen said. “So everything that we’ve been able to do in this version of Phantom Dust has been through reverse-engineering the binaries, and actually hacking and cracking the code back open again in order to make the improvements and changes that we have.

“This is one of the reasons why, when we started talking about Phantom Dust and people were like ‘What’s the resolution of the game? Is it 16:9? Is it 4:3?’ the reason was ... we didn’t actually know what we were gonna be able to do because we didn’t have the source,” Isgreen said.

Code Mystics/Microsoft Studios

Another huge change: The card data for every single one of Phantom Dust’s skills is now stored on Microsoft’s side, allowing the company to rapidly push out patches and tweak the game’s balance in real time — something that would’ve been impossible in 2004.

“The really cool thing is that on the data side, we can do anything,” said Isgreen. “The great thing is, we’ve moved all of the card data up into the cloud, so on [a] daily basis I could completely rebalance the game right now,” said Isgreen.

In addition, the team has also made changes to Phantom Dust’s single-player story progression — specifically, the fact that the game’s first few hours previously prevented players from getting right into the game’s core deck-building mechanic.

“If you fail three times on any mission while you’re playing the campaign, you can skip it,” said Isgreen. “You still get your rewards, and we’re OK with that. There are some achievements that are tied to not skipping and doing challenging things, so if people just want to experience the wonderful story of Phantom Dust, that’s definitely one way they can do it.”

Code Mystics/Microsoft Studios

On top of that, Microsoft is introducing downloadable content — free and paid — to ease that ramp for newcomers. “There’s a free DLC download you can do the minute you start the game that gives you a whole bunch of skills and an arsenal case so you can jump right into multiplayer with a nice assortment of cards that you can build decks from,” said Isgreen. “We’ve also got a whole bunch of accelerants that are in the game on the multiplayer side, so if you want all of the skills immediately, for a couple bucks, you can get all of the skills.”

Isgreen is quick to point out that the team has not altered the original game’s progression to push players towards paid DLC.

“We haven’t changed anything about the way that the original game worked; we’ve just added this as a convenience thing,” Isgreen said. “So if people want to grind and they want to play exactly like they did when the original game came out, that is all in place. Everything about how the game works and functions is there. We really wanted to allow people to jump into multiplayer and play immediately.”

For more, watch our full interview with Isgreen, featuring over 19 minutes of gameplay from the HD re-release. Below, check out a gallery of concept art for the original game.