Mabinogi, the long-running MMORPG that celebrated its 19th year this year, has recently dropped more details about their transformative leap with the Mabinogi Eternity Project. The project, as described by game director Min Kyung-hoon, is an ambitious endeavor to rejuvenate the game while retaining its classic essence. The team aims to communicate regularly with the Millesians (the game's community), sharing the challenges and advancements they encounter during this extensive overhaul.
A key slogan for the project, "Classic but Classy," encapsulates the vision of merging Mabinogi's traditional elements with the modern aesthetics and technology provided by Unreal Engine 5. The team intends to strike a balance between preserving the game's core identity while infusing it with technical upgrades that will aid in revitalizing the game's fundamental “fantasy life” experience.
The project is currently in the "prototyping" phase, which involves a comprehensive redesign of the server architecture, game mechanics, and content, all adapted to the new engine. This process is complex, given the need to migrate and improve existing data, scripts, and in-game elements. There team has also requested new creative proposals and has even gone so far as to hire on new team members to fulfill their vision of the project.
The project involves moving beyond the limitations of the old Pleione engine, addressing issues like physics on outfits, texture customization, and light reflections. Despite these technical advancements, the team is mindful of retaining the "Mabinogi style" – which is their own unique anime-like visual representation, which is an evolution of what the game has been known for over the past 19 years.
We previously highlighted the game's transition to Unreal Engine 5 back in June, suggesting that a significant graphical and performance improvement overhaul was on the way. However, details have been fairly scarce, and up until this point there were few updates on whether the project was still on the docket. Luckily, with the inclusion of several videos, it looks like theres plenty of conceptual visuals to show off, in lieu of actual gameplay.
As Mabinogi embarks on this journey towards Eternity, the team seems committed to bringing players into the fold with consistent progress updates. Most importantly to the team at Nexon, they don’t want to completely reinvent the game from the ground up. "If we set about 'improving' things without establishing a clear direction for ourselves,we might lose the heart and soul of Mabinogi." The team states. Hopefully for fans of Mabinogi the Eternity project will deliver on revitalizing the game in more ways than just the visual. We look forward to more information related to the UE5 overhauls in 2024.
