After going hands-on with New World Aeternum at Summer Game Fest, the fantasy MMO RPG has quickly become one of my most-anticipated games of the year. This may have something to do with the fact that I never had the chance to play the original PC release back in 2021. Still, the heart wants what the heart wants, and I’m happy to report that its blend of MMO, single-player, and deep RPG systems have really resonated with me. And those on console will likely feel the same way, too.
During SGF 2024, I not only had the opportunity to play the game, but I also managed to get some time to sit down and chat with the game’s Director Scot Lane, the Senior Producer Katy Kaszynski, and the Creative Director David Verfaillie. So, without further delay, let’s get started, shall we?
New World Aeternum Interview with Amazon Games
Editor’s Note: The following interview has been lightly edited for clarity.
Dylan Chaundy, The Nerd Stash Editor: I love the look of New World Aeternum, and I’m excited to check it out on console because I didn’t play it when it initially released on PC back in 2021. I didn’t own a gaming PC. For folks like me who have never played the PC version, how optimized is it for console? How was it translating the mouse and keyboard setup to a console controller?
Scot Lane, Game Director: It was one of our internal pillars was to build it for console. Like, it was really important when we brought it to console that it felt like a console game. So we put a ton of work into it. We’ve optimized it for controllers so it not only feels good, but we’ve also added things like aim assist, target lock. You can pick your camera relative or player relative controls depending on what kind of game you’re used to. The virtual cursor in the UI is on our third or fourth iteration of improvements, and we’re constantly tuning it and trying to make that feel good. So I mean, it has been a huge effort. I mean, is there anything I’m missing? [Looks at David]
David Verfaillie, Creative Director: Yeah, I think in a larger sense, bringing it to console, we sort of tried to streamline the experience. Like you got to play the demo. Now we have archetypes that allow you to quickly get in, and the questing is — you know — we’ve really done a good job of, I think, moving the NPCs with you, moving the action so that it all sort of flows naturally and a ton of effort on the storytelling, right? Like adding in those enhanced dialog cameras. You get to be closer to the people you’re speaking to. You get their expression and it draws you more into the story.
Scot Lane: I would just follow up with one more thing is that by making the experience so you can play with tons of people, we still have all the massive battles and all that, but we’re now supporting single-player all the way through in with the storytelling. That was a massive optimization primarily made for console players. PC players, we know a lot of PC players don’t group up, so it’s for them as well. But we thought the console audience would really like that.
Dylan: It definitely speaks to me. And that’s something I noticed as usually MMOs are very multiplayer-focused, and one thing I kind of took away from the demo is like, it feels like a single-player game, and that really, really resonated with me.
Katy Kaszynski, Live Lead and Senior Producer: Yeah, and you can do that all the way to the end. So there’s these repeatable solo trials. You encounter the solo trials throughout the main story quest-line. These are up-leveled endgame versions that you can just solo through. But I think also something that’s interesting and maybe this speaks to you, maybe it doesn’t. But if you did want to ever partake in maybe like a five person expedition, if you wanted to see what that was all about, it is so easy to join a pickup group. You just use our activity finder. One push of the button and you’re put into a queue. And as soon as the group is formed, you’re in. It’s so easy. There’s like no barriers to entry.
Scot Lane: In a lot of single-player RPGs, the game ends when you hit max level or you get to the end of the story, but our end game opens up there. And traditionally the end games are all for group. But not only do we have the solo trials that Katie mentioned, there’s also several zones that we’ve left out of the main story. So if you just want to go explore the world and see new content, you didn’t have to find a lot more to do in that way as well.
Dylan: New World Aeternum has been a huge success on PC. Were there any challenges bringing the MMO RPG to console? Was it challenging getting feature parity with both PC and consoles?
Scot Lane: The biggest challenges are when you have like our dynamic, you know, physical based action combat, which really means — as opposed to me just clicking and hitting like hotkeys — where actually my swing would collide with you. You can duck under projectiles, block, dodge and all that, getting that at scale with hundreds, you know, hundreds of players on the screen at once or battles of 50 v 50. Optimizing that so it runs great on console was a big challenge. Some of the stuff we touched on earlier, like the UI, like it’s got to feel really good. We don’t want it to feel clunky and bad. Just just taking the time to make it feel like a polished console experience has also been a bit of a challenge. It’s hard because you think you’re right and you make modifications and stuff.
Katy Kaszynski: As far as like the challenge of finding parity across PC and console, that was absolutely a challenge. And it’s one that we met head on. And so cross-play is something that we can do now. So that’s ready to go. So that on that day one you’re going to have PC players with PlayStation, players with Xbox players all on the same world, if that’s what they choose.
Scot Lane: You actually probably saw that today when you played because, yeah, we have people back at the office playing.
Dylan: Yeah, I saw someone running around and I was like: I’m pretty sure that’s an online player. So yeah, it’s so cool. This is just a question I had: Will PC players receive New World Aeternum via a free update or will they need to purchase it again?
Katy Kaszynski: Yeah. So if you have the Rise of the Angry Earth DLC, this is all a value add for you. And your journey will just continue with this additional content and these changes. If you want to start a new character on one of the fresh worlds that are coming with the launch on October 15th, then you can do that and you can experience everything from start to finish. If you want to just continue with your main because you have it at max level, you’re ready to go. You can hop right into the raid, hop right into the lawless zone immediately and just start playing and having a good time. If you haven’t played since 2021 and you just have the base game, you can experience some of these upgrades that we’ve done. You can experience the new starting experience and archetypes and things like that. But in order to get like, the full ultimate experience, then you definitely want to purchase the Rise of the Angry Earth DLC. That’ll give you the ultimate experience if you’re on the PC side.
Scot Lane: It was important to us because the PC players have been like really good partners getting to here. So we wanted to make sure that we rewarded them and said, this is a value add on top of the Rise of the Angry Earth and not an extra purchase.
Dylan: New World boasted an eclectic bestiary of monsters and beasts. Will there be any new monsters in New World Aeternum?
David Verfaillie: Yes! I think three awesome ones. You know, we talked a little bit about the radical raid. Yes, it’s a ten person. It’s a full raid experience, and there’s three bosses in it. There’s a nice bit of raid progression. So, those are going to be big.
Katy Kaszynski: And also, in the open world, there’s some new additions that you haven’t seen before, so that’s something to look forward to.
Scot Lane: And also you’ll be able to experience some of our existing bosses differently. So in the current game, some of the bosses you could only experience through a five person expedition, we’re putting in the solo trials. So you’ll get to fight things in the main story quest solo that you previously would have had to be in a group to find.
Dylan: Speaking of new things, will there be any new weapons in New Worlds Aeternum?
David Verfaillie: Unfortunately, not this time around.
Dylan: New World Aeternum is a massively multiplayer online RPG. Its predecessor features up to 3,000 players on a server. Can you confirm how large the servers will be in this new, expanded version of the game?
Katy Kaszynski: We can confirm that we are increasing the number of people that can be on a server. And then we’ve already introduced into our PC audience a phasing so that on the starting beaches and in the starting areas, we can handle a lot more folks, so we can get a ton of people into their worlds quicker, with fewer and shorter queues.
Dylan: As New World Aeternum is ostensibly a brand new release, will there be lots of post-launch support? What’s the roadmap looking like and what can players expect to come in the future?
Scot Lane: Well, they can expect post-launch support for sure. We’re not ready to talk about the roadmap right now. Like we really want to talk about October 15th. That’s the moment launching this. So when we get closer, we’ll come up with a strategy for post-launch communication.
Dylan: What would the team at Amazon Games’ dream project look like? Would you prefer to create a new IP or would a sequel to New World be in the cards?
Scot Lane: I think, uh, one it’s a big team. So depending on who you ask, you might get a different answer. I think for me, I just want to create really awesome, compelling content. And so I think sometimes you just want to be given a box to work in, and then you want to fill it with as much cool stuff as you can. That box could be a new IP, it could be a sequel, it could be a licensed IP, it could be anything. So I don’t think I have a specific answer. I don’t know about you? [Looks at Katy]
Katy Kaszynski: For me personally, I would like to build on Aeternum. I think that it’s a really interesting story and there’s a lot of mysteries that are left to be uncovered. I think there’s a ton of verticality that we can add. There’s a lot of horizontal-like momentum in the world. So yeah, that would be my preference — to build on Aeternum.
David Verfaillie: I agree with you. I think there’s just there’s so much more we could do. Yeah, it is a beautiful IP.
Dylan: Super cool. Well, thank you so much, guys. It’s been an absolute pleasure speaking with you. And I hope everything goes well with your launch. I can’t wait to play more of it. Thanks for your time.
New World Aeternum launches on PlayStation 5, Xbox Series X|S, and PC on October 15.
