Earlier today Activision announced the sixth game in the Skylanders series, Skylanders Imaginators. It looks like Kaos has discovered the ancient power of Mind Magic and is using it to create an unstoppable army of Doomlanders. Eon is calling for Skylands’ greatest mystic warriors the Senseis to help stop Kaos and his minions. Using the power of your imagination you will be able to create your own Skylanders to battle with the Senseis to help save Skylands yet again.
If you are like me and have kids that love Skylanders, then you have probably been shown a drawing or two of a new Skylander design. I know my kids have come up with countless new Skylanders, complete with their own set of moves. Well now it looks like they will be able to put that imagination to work to come up with Skylanders that they can actually play with in the game.
Here is how the process will work. Players will place a Creation Crystal of one of the ten known Skylander Elements on the portal. Next the player will choose one of 10 battle classes. It is believed that you may need to unlock these in the game somehow before you can use them. The battle classes control what type of attacks your Skylander will be able to use. The ten battle classes are: Knight, Sorcerer, Brawler, Smasher, Ninja, Bazooker, Quickshot, Sentinel, Swashbuckler, and Bowslinger. An extensive character creation system will then allow players to customize almost every aspect of their character. You can choose body parts, clothing, coloring, weapons, abilities, special moves, special effects, catch phrases, and even the pitch of your voice. Imagine an Xbox Avatar creator stuffed with Skylander options. The number of different Skylanders you can create is astronomical which blows away the 256 combinations you could make in Swap Force.
Obviously, due to the extreme customization options you have, the characters you will create will NOT have a toy representation. They will be in game only. Collectors fear not. This is where the Senseis come in. There will be 31 Sensei toy figures to collect. 20 of those will be brand new Skylanders. The other 11 are going to be former villains. That’s right! For those of you who have been wanting villain figures you will now get them, only they won’t be villains anymore. The only two we know about right now is the Golden Queen and Wolfgang. The Golden Queen will come in the Starter Pack with Master King Pen and a Fire Creation Crystal.
If you own any of the 300+ Skylanders that currently exist for the older games, then don’t worry they will all work in Skylanders Imaginators. However, none of them will get new poses or a “Sensei” version. All 20 Sensei characters will be brand new, and the other 11 will be those former villains. The 31 new toy figures will be all we get this year. That’s even less than the 20 SuperChargers and 20 Signature Vehicles that we saw in last years game. I’m sure we’ll get a few “alternate” variants as well. We’ll probably get the typical Halloween, Christmas and Spring versions as well as some Legendaries and probably Nitro versions. But don’t forget about the creation crystals. The creation crystals are very much like the old traps from Trap team. There is one for each of the 10 elements. From my understanding, only one created Skylander will be stored in one at a time. I have not heard if there will be anything like the “Villain Vault” from Trap Team, where you might be able to store multiple created characters in the game and then swap them in and out of the Creation Crystals at your leisure. Still you will probably need one Creation Crystal per Skylander you create and want to take into a level. 
Doing some quick math… if there are 10 elements and 10 different battle classes, then you will need 100 creation crystals if you wanted one created Skylander per element, per battle class available to you to use at any time. Of course if you want to create even more and bring them all into a level at one time, then the number of potential creation crystals needed is limitless. The retail price for a creation crystal will be $9.99 each so that might get quite expensive. Sensei Skylanders will be $14.99 and the Starter Pack will retail for $74.99. There will be a special Dark Edition again sold for $99.99. It will come with Dark versions of Master King Pen, Golden Queen, and Wolfgang, as well as two additional creation crystals Life and Dark. Finally the game will be released October 16th in the US for the Xbox One, Xbox 360, PS4, PS3, and Wii U. Curiously, there was no mention of the 3DS, so that might mean we will get a slightly different game once again on the Nintendo handheld.
Imaginators is an interesting new direction for Skylanders. One must wonder once you can make any type and style of Skylander you want, where can the series go from here? For now though, this is one Skylander family that can’t wait to create some of their most wished for Skylanders!
Check out the official Gameplay Reveal Trailer!
