Billy Hatcher Reboot: Empire of the Sun

Billy Hatcher Reboot: Empire of the Sun is a reboot of Billy Hatcher and the Giant Egg. It takes an approach similar to Jak 2 and 3, having both action-platforming and vehicle combat. 
It takes a darker and edgier tone, being set in a war-torn world inhabited by anthropomorphic animals where humans never existed and mammals and birds war against each other for the control of the world, and it changes the origin of Billy Hatcher from a kid sent to another world to a mutant supersoldier created by an empire of birds.
It also has a special hybrid of fantasy and cyberpunk aesthetic called "Chickenpunk", AKA what the world would have been had birds invented things such as flying battleships and the internet. It's the only game where you play as a chicken samurai blasting monstrous beasts with rockets.
== Setting ==
The game is set in the new constructed world of Zoochikyuu, AKA Earth where humans never existed. 
The power system of this setting revolves heavily around the themes of land/strength, sea/magic and sky/technology. Mammals (Earth Lords) have superpowers called Gaia Bushido, AKA powerful martial arts which allow them to manipulate the earth, similar to earthbending in Avatar. Fish (Sea Lords) have superpowers called Tsunami Mysticism, AKA magic which allows them to control water and shape it into constructs or heal people with its power or even predict the future. Birds (Chicken/Sky Lords) have no superpower except for their natural flight, however their royal family (actual chickens) can generate solar flames by crowing, which are used for nuclear fusion reactors that have given the chickens extremely advanced technology: the Sky Lords have invented things such as the internet, combat mecha, chemical weapons, laser weapons, and genetic engineering, while Earth Lords and Sea Lords have mostly medieval-esque civilizations. 
In the clouds above Zoochikyu are the floating Toristan Islands (corresponding to our Japan (the main island, which we call Honshu, is known as Huehnerstall, literally meaning "Lord Huhn's rest"), which was sent to the sky by an event known as the Great Rising). Toristan is inhabited by descendants of the dinosaurs who have developed wings to fly in the sky, the Sky Lords, also known as Chicken because their royal family is made of gallinaceous creatures directly descended from the great T-Rex king Huhn: all birds are united under a single great empire, with Rapax Generals (birds of prey) serving an emperor who is a rooster whose crowing calls solar flames (nuclear fusion plasma). Chickens are a great empire, inspired by feudal Japan, ruled by a powerful priestly caste and having a monotheist worship of the sun (personified as a phoenix called Amanohomura) as a deity which created the world. They are weak physically, but have extremely high technology including the internet and laser weapons, and in war they use heavily-sophisticated vehicles and mecha to compensate for their physical frailty. Most Sky Lords, minus the spies called Yoru no Tsubasa (owls, who are genetically modified to resist the night) need to be under UV light: at night, they instantly fall asleep and turn into crystal eggs, which is a problem since Emperor Leonhardt wants to turn the world into perpetual night so that only mammals can survive and birds cannot thrive. 
Meanwhile, the land is ruled by the mammals known as Earth Lords (or "Cats", since the most elite race of Earth Lords are felines), with most non-mammalian lifeforms being treated as slaves to the Earth Lords: the most important of which is the Great Union of Trigaea, comprising the three tribes of felines, canines and bears, ruled by a king who is a lion, Emperor Leonhardt. Trigaea's inhabitants are notorious for being the strongest in Gaia Bushido, and the most respected warlords in the world. 
In the past, Zoochikyuu was ruled by Dinosaurs, reptilian beasts that developed extremely high technology. Lord Huhn, a T-Rex, used technology by dinosaur scientists to lift the Toristan Islands in the sky and protected them with a barrier so that neither the ancestors of the Cats nor the meteor that extinguished the Dinosaurs could destroy Toristan. Descendants of Dinosaurs are the Chicken, who, however, developed a condition which causes them to enter a cryptobiological state, being covered by crystalline plaques and going into hibernation unless UV light shines over them. 
== Plot ==
Billy Hatcher is awakened from a capsule by Katsuhiro Hibari AKA the Alouette, a lark and the president of the scientific department of the Sky Lords. The Alouette tells Billy his purpose as a special anti-mammal soldier and puts him through a test. Prince Sora, a chicken with his feathers dyed black, who's the leader of the warmongering faction of the empire (the Sunbloods), is watching the test, eager to send his new mutant assassin to attack the Trigaea. Sora congratulates Billy for his ability, then decides to send him to Earth on a mission to assassinate the leaders of Trigaea, as his spies the Yoru no Tsubasa (owls and other nocturnal birds, explained as being immune to the crystallization disease that affects chickens as they're descendants of lost biotechnology experiments by the Dinosaurs: on the other hand, owl skin melts when they're exposed to UV light itself, requiring them to use anti-light raid suits). 
== Trivia ==
* Billy is still silent in this reboot, but it's because he's been created as a superweapon and literally doesn't have emotions programmed into him.
* The plural of chicken is chickens, but the plural of Chicken (as in the civilization of birds) is Chicken (to sound like a German "-en" plural or the singular name of a nation, or to emphasize how different from real chickens do Chicken behave). 
** The term "chickens" is used to mean the individual species the royal family of the Chicken belongs to, while Chicken describes the entire nation of birds descended from the Dinosaurs. So you don't call hawks or owls "chickens" but you do refer to a hawk or an owl as Chicken. In some languages such as Italian, the plural of Pollo (Chicken) is the regular "Polli" (Chickens) while Chicken Empire is called with an adjective form, such as "Impero Pollaio" in Italian. 
** Real chickens don't form fascist empires in the sky with hawks as their militia and larks as cyberpunk scientists. Usually, real birds can prey on each other, unlike what this game shows with the birds being dictatorial yet a completely unified empire who only war and prey on mammals and non-bird creatures.
** Animals that turn into glass, like the Chickens do in this game, really exist... but are tardigrades, not birds. Real chickens do instantly fall asleep when there's no UV light, but they don't turn into crystal. 
** Some birds such as owls can be nocturnal because there really existed nocturnal dinosaurs, not because they're lab-created mutants by ancient dinosaur science. Also, UV light isn't fatal to real owls. 
* While in Billy Hatcher's original continuity the chickens' enemies were crows (which have terrible night vision) it's instead mammals such as canids, felines and ursines that are the villains in this continuity because they do see better at night and to push a bird vs feline narrative.
** IRL mammalian predators kill chickens at night when the chicken falls asleep but the mammal does not. Also, crows are birds, so they are supposed to be part of the Chicken Empire rather than its enemies representing the night. Though the reboot version of Dark Corvo is a minor antagonist because crows are part of an imperial faction that doesn't want to genocide mammals, and the Sunbloods want total war against mammals. 
Category:Games