Fantasy MMORPGs are a tricky thing to report one’s impressions on. Here is a genre of game whose very design is intended to be epic and time-consuming, providing players with dozens upon dozens of hours of large, suitably “massive” tasks like exploring a sprawling new game world, battling and questing your way through a rich, overarching storyline, and gradually improving a character from a mewling babe to an unstoppable killing machine. It’s probably unfair to judge such an experience based on half an hour of gameplay. Still, when NCsoft invited GameCyte to come and try the latest version of Aion (pronounced “ion”), their upcoming MMORPG, we sat down with some pre-made characters and experienced a healthy CryEngine-powered dose of what three years of development had wrought.
The full name of the game is Aion: Tower of Eternity. The latter portion of the title has to do with the story behind the game’s two-sided world, which is an inside-out planet which has been nearly ripped in half by an ancient cataclysm. Imagine, if you will, a typical spherical world, except everyone lives on the inside, and nearly the entire center portion is now missing except for a single connecting central structure — the aforementioned tower. The entire thing rather resembles an apple core. Of course, now even the tower is on its way out, shattered into largely unusable fragments, keeping the two halves of the world separate. Needless to say, there’s a civilization that inhabits each half, and they each blame eachother for wrecking the tower. So, obviously, it’s best to express this blame by killing every member of the opposite side, providing Aion with constant PvP opportunities. You can cast your lot with the Elyos, the fair-skinned folk who live on the lush, bright half of the world that gets most of the sunlight, or you can roll with the Asmodians, a darker people who look like some seriously dedicated R.A. Salvatore fans. Oh, and both races can fly, calling broad wings out of their shoulders with a single command.
Right away, the flight-based elements of Aion’s world make themselves apparent. NCsoft is calling the feature the “Strategic Flight System,” and their claim that the game was designed around it from day one looks to be fairly true. The world is a great deal more vertical than some MMO players may be used to, including enemy placement and combat, area navigation, and even NPC locations. Players are going to have to get used to looking up in order to stay on top of their objectives. On the other hand, just because flight is possible, that doesn’t mean it’s omnipresent; one will not be flying non-stop or conducting leisurely conversations in mid-air à la Second Life. The flight mechanics are genuinely strategic, tied to an extremely limited timer which represents your wings’ endurance. Once it’s out, your wings are done, so you’d damn well better be on (or close above) solid ground. Furthermore, once you’ve landed, it takes a while to build back up — if you take off right away, you’ll only get back in the air for 10 seconds or so. NCsoft told us they want players to “Think before they fly.” I’m going to like this system; it keeps flight from being too great a crutch, forcing players to keep their limits in mind and use their powers of flight when it truly counts — say, for an unexpected assault from above, or a last-ditch speedy getaway. We were also told that characters’ wings would be customizable, like other in-game gear: A different set of wings might allow for longer flight, or faster aerial movement, and so forth.
Customizable equipment, on the whole, will go a long way towards Aion’s promise of “Unlimited Customization.” We had a chance to sample the character creation sequence, which was very reminiscent of Age of Conan, providing players with literally dozens of facial and body sliders, allowing for the alteration of everything from the shape of one’s gut to the bridge of their nose. In addition, characters can be dolled up with different hairstyles, tattoos, and so forth. The look of one’s equipment, though, has a few additions to it as well, allowing one to maintain a personalized appearance even as one’s gear levels up and gets replaced: players will be able to pay an NPC to combine their equipment in look and function, so if you really like the way your +1 polearm looks, you can take that +5 polearm and change its model to look like the old one.
Aion’s game world is all rendered with the original CryEngine from CryTek. Players can expect a lot of sprawling landscapes, with an increased emphasis on tall mountains and multi-tiered forest areas, thanks to the flight abilities. Accompanied by some fairly excellent compositions by music designer Yang Bang Ean (AKA Ryo Kunihiko), the smooth graphics will provide for some impressive locales. I had a chance to fly out and get my first look at the destroyed Tower of Enternity, stretching up into the sky, which was fairly breathtaking. I have to admit, though, while the game was never anything less than pretty to look at, a great deal of the landscapes and textures were on the simple side — the sort of easy-but-effective and colorful locales you might expect to see in a non-CryTek MMO, like WoW.
This brings me to the overall feel of the title, a curious exercise in game design which is likely to be a point of contention for many players who are considering Aion. Admittedly, I got (mostly) out of regular MMORPG playing a few years ago, back when my life was largely consumed with industry mainstays like World of Warcraft and City of Heroes. Still, when I sat down to try Aion, the experience was instantly familiar: A standard WSAD/mouse control scheme, a handy 1-9 combat toolbar, a broad and colorful city full of wandering NPCs with quest icons over their heads, paid flying transportation between geographically disparate areas, and thoroughly typical objectives to the tune of “Go to nearby area X, kill a collection of monster Y, and bring me back a handful of loot item Z.” Flight or no, pretty graphics or no, extremely cool giant floating tower wreckage or no, my initial impression was unmistakable — this game appeared to be adhering to pretty much every accepted MMO cliche and convention in the book. I pointed this out to my tour guide, but he simply nodded, informing me that this formula was entirely intentional.
When I asked about the inevitable WoW comparisons, NCsoft’s Chris Hager was remarkably candid, admitting immediately that “Aion doesn’t introduce anything radically new. What I think it does is polish things from other MMOs.” He pointed out several examples to me of accepted MMO standards that Aion was taking one step further: The CryTek-powered graphics. The addition of a third NPC faction, the Balaur, to the raging Elyos/Asmodian war — what NCsoft is calling “PvPvE.” The addition of strategic flight. The addition of on-the-fly chained moves to the combat system. Again, he explained, “I don’t think it introduces anything dramatically new, but it definitely increases on what’s already been built.”
It’s definitely a new way of entering the oversaturated MMORPG market. Frequently, newcomers to the field will try and handle the unstoppable presence of WoW by asserting that their game is different enough that there’s room for both titles. Aion, on the other hand, seems to be taking the opposite route: the game is similar to WoW because WoW is a good game, and its millions of players will be able to quickly and comfortably slip right in to Aion — and once they’re there, they’ll find a number of vast improvements.
More than anything else, though, NCsoft is hoping that what gamers will appreciate — or, more accurately, what they won’t notice at all — is the thorough and uncompromising globalization efforts. Our hosts told us that they were keenly aware of the negative stigma attached to Korean MMOs by American gamers, and they have spared no effort in making sure Aion doesn’t fall prey to the usual low standards of localization. My hosts explained to me that their process involved more than simple translations; Aion has undergone what the team calls “Culturalization.” The American developers have gone through each quest again and again, making sure the dialogue flows correctly, tweaking certain story elements to appeal to the cultural identity of the target market. For example, a quest might mirror a popular fairy tale from Korean folklore, but American gamers would likely miss the references — so our version of the quest will play out entirely differently, appealing directly to stories from our specific heritage. “If we’ve done our job right, nobody will even mention that we did it,” said the team.
Half an hour was far too short a time to fully get to know Aion, but I enjoyed what I saw. There’s still a great deal to learn — NCsoft has yet to divulge the system specs, the subscription model, or even a release date more specific than “2009.” But the game is in a pretty solid state, and its familiar design makes it extremely accessible to MMO veterans. Of course, utilizing a design so similar to Blizzard’s behemoth will put Aion in the unenviable position of direct competition with WoW, which is kind of a shame — there’s clearly a lot of work that’s gone into this flight of fancy (with fancy flying), and it deserves a fighting chance.
Aion: Tower of Eternity is scheduled for release on the PC in 2009. Stay tuned for more detailed gameplay impressions!
August 15th, 2008 at 8:18 am
I tend to think that even if some pets and pevees are inspired in WoW to ease the learning curve once you enter the world, the Abyss makes it completely different to WoW in endgame terms, and more like L2 (sieges, open world pvp, raids in open world that require competition, etc.).
Nice read.