Amazon Games announced New World: Aeternum at Summer Game Fest, which will herald several new changes to the MMORPG. We had the opportunity to sit down and chat with Game Director Scott Lane, Senior Producer Katie Kaczynski, and Creative Director David Verfaillie to discuss some of these changes, which includes the shift towards more action oriented combat, adjustments made to even out play between console and PC, and new content.
Confusion has been surrounding New World: Aeternum since its announcement at Summer Game Fest 2024. Given the sparse amount of information provided, players have taken to the official Steam page for New World and the comments sections of various outlets, the official Discord or Reddit to voice their concerns. The major concern about New World: Aeternum focused primarily on a shift in gameplay, with the fear that Amazon Games will transform the MMORPG into something more akin to an Action RPG with light MMO or social elements. Talking with us at Summer Game Fest, Scott Lane, Game Director of New World, spoke to some of these concerns.
“In this day and age, I find it very hard to pigeonhole into any genre — I feel like every game out there is crossing. We’re still going to have all of our MMO features. But we’re talking about all of the new things we’re bringing in, like more Action RPG stuff, solo gameplay, and the enhanced dialogue system.” He said. “We’re not taking anything away from the game. These are just things we decided to focus on for our conversation.”
Senior Producer on New World, Katie Kaczynski, shared that large-scale battles would still be a big part of New World. “We’re still going to have those large-scale battles, and the PvP area will also be one of those large-scale areas. There will still be that same level of multiplayer and lots of people playing at the same time.”
Lane went on to speak about the reason Amazon Games chose to incorporate more solo elements into New World, though the team reassured me that no multiplayer content would be removed or that multiplayer content would be discouraged through this update. He mentioned that the reason for including solo-friendly content was at the request of the players. “What players don’t realize is that there is a large percentage of people that want solo content.” He said. “You know the saying “Alone in a crowd,” [New World] is a place to see people, and they’re around when you need them. Personally, I am one of those players that sometimes just wants to play alone and doesn’t want to feel obligated to anything. But we think it will appeal to a lot of players.”
However, Lane stressed that alongside the inclusion of solo content, one of the biggest things coming to New World through Aeternum was more group content. “We have the ten-person raid, then we have the Free Fall PvP zone, which is a direct answer to our players asking for more PvP content.”
Creative Director of New World David Verfaillie added that Aeternum will allow players to play on the scale they want, whether it be through solo content or more intense large-scale group raids.
“That applies to our PvE content as well.” He went on to say. “You can do solo instances now, and solo trials. You can do five-person expeditions, or you can do them with ten. We’re trying to attract a wider group, but we are bringing the game to more casual players too.”
In terms of courting a new audience and making the experience more friendly to new players, Kaczynski jumped in to elaborate on the new introduction New World will have for those looking to jump in for the first time or even returning to the game after an extended period of time away.
“This is a different starting experience for sure. But we’re not looking to take anything away.” She said, “You’ll still be classless, even if you start with an Archetype. Let’s say you choose Sword Bearer, you’re going to start with a greatsword, and you’ll still have your blunderbuss. But you’ll still be picking up weapons throughout your experience. Your weapon is your class in Aeternum, which is the same in New World. You’ll have a lot of player agency to do what you want, and we’re not taking that away.”
She went on to say that it was the team’s intent to make the experience better overall. Instead of players having to build skills and then find weapons, you now start with a handful of your choosing. This was meant to help players better understand their individual Archetypes and what skills they could acquire through their weapons earlier on. That doesn’t mean players can’t deviate from whatever weapons they’ve picked up, as Kaczynski mentioned earlier.
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In terms of crossplay functionality, the team strived hard to make sure it was properly implemented before the October release of New World: Aeternum. Verfaillie went on to elaborate on how integral this was in getting right. “We’ve made sure that the playing field is equal, right? We’ve added aim assist for the controller to help out since it’s a little less precise than mouse and keyboard.” That said, New World: Aeternum will not feature cross-save, meaning that your progress will not be transferable between the PC and console versions of the game.
But Lane chimed in to elaborate on the more action-focused shift that New World will be taking through Aeternum. “We wanted to make it feel like a proper console Action RPG.” He said. “We thought console players would like that, and we moved forward with a lot of feedback from our PC audience as well.” In terms of the camera being closer to the player character, the team thought it would help add a better connection to the NPCs and various important story characters players will experience throughout the game. Lane also mentioned that the development team was focused on making the game more approachable as well. This included some changes to the crafting system, which previously required players to find settlements with crafting stations of a specific tier. Instead, the ability to craft is now tied to your skill over individual stations.
Overall, the team stressed that much of what has been done for Aeternum was done with player feedback in mind and that nothing would be removed to make these changes happen. Players who had housing will still keep their houses, and content won’t be removed from the game in favor of these changes. All three developers expressed excitement over the console release, all excited for an entirely new demographic of players to experience New World for the very first time.
“We love the lore, we love the story,” Lane said. “All these systems we're putting in, we think they're going to appeal to PlayStation and Xbox players, so we're really excited to get them and invite them into that experience.”
