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COLOGNE, Germany—What is Scalebound? A slick, action-packed Platinum Games (makers of the Bayonetta and Devil May Cry games) combo-fest? A fantasy RPG with dungeons and dragons and magic spells? An epic story-based adventure? Two years after its announcement—and three since development began—I'm still not sure. Heck, I don't think even Microsoft knows.

Scalebound's Gamescom outing is the latest in a long line of short video clips, technical teases, and scripted battles that have been released since E3 2014, where the game was first revealed in spectacular fashion at Microsoft's press conference. Its debut trailer—which introduced a cocky 20-something headphone-wearing hipster named Drew and his hulking great dragon Thuban—drew criticism for the apparent douchbaggery of its lead, but there was no denying the overall appeal. A new Platinum Games title with dragons that fight and breathe fire and four-player co-op? Shut up and take all of my money.

What we know about Scalebound so far is that Drew and Thuban fight alongside each other, rather than with each other, and that it's an open-world game set in "Draconis" with RPG-like elements and real-time combat. The biggest reveal came during Gamescom 2015, when Microsoft dropped a lengthy gameplay trailer showing Drew riding Thuban—complete with light human-to-dragon banter—into battle against a group of heavily armoured soldiers. Cue some sword swinging, crossbow firing, and plenty of random numbers popping up all over the screen. Oh, and a fight against a giant mantis culminating in a fierce fire-breathing attack from Thuban.

Enlarge (credit: Scott K. Johnson)

It’s -30 degrees Celsius, even though the Sun hangs ceaselessly in the sky. Dressed in puffy, insulated suits and gloves thick enough to both hinder dexterity and preserve fingers, a team gamely tilts a drill barrel back to horizontal. With one smooth, firm motion, a two-meter-long cylinder of ice, bursting with history, is pushed free and slides down a temporary work bench.

Disturbed from its long slumber, this ice is destined for laboratories that will liberate whatever secrets it holds. There's only one catch: it’s critical that nothing melts until it travels most of the way around the world.

This is not a futuristic scene from Jupiter’s enigmatic moon Europa, rather it's a recent one from the closest thing you’ll find on Earth—the blank expanse of Antarctica’s interior. While this work was decidedly of this world, it would be extremely unfair to describe it as anything close to easy. Beyond allowing humans to work in the harsh Antarctic environment, how does ice buried by more than a kilometer of other ice at the South Pole end up in a lab 15,000 kilometers away in order to become scientific insight?