Vorlage: MPOGD

July 14, 2007
E3 2007 - Aion Preview

By Staci Krause

Aion is a beautiful game coming to us from NCSoft's Seoul office. Although it's being developed primarily in Korea, with just some localization and writing staff coming from the U.S. offices, they are planning on a worldwide release. Set in the world of Atria, a world shattered in two, it has beautiful graphics very reminiscent of the style of artwork we've come to love in the Final Fantasy games. Players can choose from two playable sides, Elyos and Asmodeon. This isn't a choice between good or evil, however, just a choice about perspective.

The build we viewed focused on Elyos, the beautiful and lush half of the planet. It is this way because it received most of the light, whereas Asmodeon only gets about 20% light, which they told us means its fauna and flora have adapted and there's a more surreal and florescent quality to its art. What we saw of Elyos certainly shows the team knows a thing or two about creating a beautiful world, so we can only imagine that Asmodeon will be as beautiful, if in a different way. There is a third world inhabited by the Balour, a dragon like race, that will impact the way the game proceeds.

At level ten, players discover they have lost their memory and have to recover part of it. To do this, we had to bring a bottle of water to a tree. The tree wasn't just any tree, though, it is reminiscent of an Ent. This quest line gives players their wings - yes wings, as they become Daevas, a very spiritual thing. Players will be able to fly once this quest is complete. They also pick a further specialization of their class at this point.

To make flight be a truly special thing, there are a lot of skills and activities that can't be done by flying. There will be areas where freeform flight is possible and some skills will only be usable in flight and some only on the ground. Combat will be possible in the air as well. There are trade skills in the game. Harvesting will take place both on the ground and in the air, and there will be a diverse amount of customization possible of armor and clothing.

They tout this game as a PvPvE experience (player versus player versus enemy). The Balour will be an NPC race that will help balance the PvP aspect, as the inhabitants of Elyos and Asmodeon (which players will choose between upon character creation) fight in a middle space between their two halves of the world. If too many players support Elyos, the Balour will ally with the players from Asmodeon. Although typically players have an edge over NPCs in combat, the developers spoke about the Balour as being highly intelligent.

There's no release date yet and they are being pretty secretive on a lot of the details, but so far, it looks like it will appeal to a broad base looking for a beautiful world with a lot of depth, a great story and some interesting twists to the MMO formula.