Leading into next weeks G-Star 2017 gaming conference in Busan, South Korea, Bluehole unveiled Ascent: Infinite Realm (A:IR for short). Formerly codenamed Project W, Bluehole’s newest MMO (in partnership with Kakao) is a sci-fi/steampunk themed game which the two companies hope to have out in beta in the first half of 2018 (Kakao Games invested an undisclosed amount for the exclusive publishings right in South Korea and the NA/EU region).
The games flying mounts and vehicles are a core part of the realm versus realm PvP combat in addition to ground based mechs and anti-air artillery where the maps will affect the strategies involved (again, this draws on Bluehole’s utilization of MOBA based concepts in some of their battleground designs in TERA which their former subsidiary studio Bluehole Ginno, also ended up utilizing in Devilian’s 20v20 battleground/guild wars design).
The game draws on TERA for some of its game play and graphical aesthetics. The trailer unfortunately shows some extreme FPS lag during some combat scenes which leads me to believe they were already deep into development with Unreal Engine 3 (which allowed them to quickly reuse/modify assets from TERA). I know this game is currently in development but long time TERA players know how poorly optimized that game has been (not to mention how buggy PUBG is). I guess time will tell if they put some effort into that part (frankly not holding my breath).
I’m expecting the actual combat to be on par with TERA’s excellent action combat system though. Besides the Lineage Eternal reboot (Project TL) and Lost Ark, this title is one of those that I am looking forward to. It remains to also be seen if the verticality in this title is of the same level in ArcheAge (which is still my favorite in terms of flight and exploration of the environment).
Kakao will be publishing this in the west (no word yet on what sort of time delay will be involved between the Korean version and the NA/EU version).
More information is available on their teaser site (available in English version already).
