Digimon Survive is the newest upcoming game in the long-running series and it promises to take a darker direction from previous games. Given the recent success of the Digimon Story games, Digimon Survive continues to build on a narrative-driven experience and features gameplay where player decisions can have major consequences for the story.
Although the finer details of Digimon Survive have yet to be revealed, it's been confirmed that the Digivolutions will be affected by player choices. As a result, fans have been wondering whether SkullGreymon will make an appearance in the game. In previous Digimon games and the anime series, SkullGreymon has typically appeared as a dark Digivolution of Greymon and acted as a temporary antagonist. With branching plot points potentially containing bad endings, it wouldn't be surprising to see SkullGreymon make an appearance in Digimon Sruvive.
SkullGreymon's Previous Appearances
Over the years, SkullGreymon has appeared in numerous Digimon games and different seasons of the anime series. While SkullGreymon is a Dark Digivolution of Greymon, it typically doesn't appear as a villain in the series. Instead, in the original Digimon Adventure anime, SkullGreymon is a result of Tai recklessly trying to force his Agumon to digivolve. The SkullGreymon has no control over its actions and cannot tell the difference between friend or foe until it eventually exhausts itself. Though Digimon aren't explicitly good or evil by nature, they have certain dispositions in different branches of their evolutions.
In the games this idea is expanded further as the Digivolutions for Digimon usually fall into three categories: Vaccine, Data, and Virus. Each of these attributes serve to categorize the personalities of Digimon. Vaccine Digimon typically have a strong sense of justice and want to fight evil while Virus Digimon typically thirst for domination and can quickly turn violent. Data Digimon is more of a neutral middle ground as they are typically concerned with only themselves. Though these personalities are obviously not set in stone, they offer a way for Digimon to have different personalities and motivations through branching evolution paths. Importantly, this concept of branching evolution paths might be important in the story of Digimon Survive.
The Potential Role of Attributes in Digimon Survive
Although the details of Digimon Survive are scarce, there is confirmation that certain plot points will have an effect on Digivolutions. Stories with branching paths will often have multiple endings and it's likely that Digimon Survive will have something similar. If that's the case, then SkullGreymon could be a perfect fit if it makes an appearance in the game. As the protagonist's partner Digimon is Agumon, its typical evolution chain features Vaccine Digimon like Greymon, MetalGreymon, and WarGreymon. However, there are certain evolution paths where Agumon will deviate to Virus Digimon like SkullGreymon.
As a result, featuring SkullGreymon in Digimon Survive could make for an interesting element of the storytelling and player decisions. A bad ending could result in Agumon digivolving into SkullGreymon and losing control like it did in the original anime series. Although there hasn't been confirmation that Digimon Survive will feature SkullGreymon, it seems like a perfect candidate for the branching narrative mechanic and it wouldn't be surprising to see its inclusion in the final game.
Digimon Survive is currently in development for PC, PlayStation 4, Nintendo Switch, and Xbox One.