New World: Aeternum Rewrites An Entire World -

Written by Eric Hauter on 9/11/2024 for PS5  

Sometimes all an aging house needs is a fresh coat of paint to spruce it up again.

I saw an interesting article recently about the waste that goes into worlds created for today's massive RPGs. The thesis of the article was that game companies create these giant, complex, and detailed worlds, use them for one game, and then toss them aside. The article was wondering why more companies didn't reuse the same world, plopping different game mechanics into the existing space to create new experiences. Though Amazon Games didn't quite throw out the baby with the bath water with it's MMORPG New World, it has done an awful lot to retool the game to make it friendly to solo players. And with some very cool new cinematics and story beats, New World: Aeternum now feels like almost - but not quite - a new game set in an existing world. It's a fascinating project, and an interesting pivot for a game that came blasting out of the doors hot as lava, but has cooled a bit over the intervening years. 

I tiptoed into New World: Aeternum with a bit of trepidation. Not that I've thought that playing the game would be a bad experience, quite the opposite, in fact. I am just deeply in touch with my own weaknesses. I have a history of falling deep into MMOs and then having to claw my way back out of them. As the result of several black hole-style excursions into MMOs dating back to O.G. Everquest, I’ve become very particular about choosing when and how to engage with them. I prefer to skim lightly then scurry away, back to games that actually have an ending. The addiction is real, friends.

The newest version of New World already has its hooks in me pretty deeply, but for whatever reason, the desire I play is more akin to what I feel playing something like Fallout than the death clutch that games like WoW place around my neck. Though the game still has MMORPG hooks, there is a more linear - and friendly - line to its progression that I find deeply appealing. Over the past several days, I’ve been playing Aeternum exclusively, engaging with the game and feeling like a rock star during a special press-only open beta early access period. It has been fun and a little weird to wander New World alone, a bit like having someone open an amusement park just for you. I think I’ve only seen another player in-game twice, so I’ve mostly been rampaging around the island like I own the place. It’s fun to walk up to an early-game quest giver and not have thirty people hovering around, firing group invites randomly into my chat.

And while most players won’t have this Taylor Swift-rented-out-Disneyland experience, they will find that New World has been deeply retooled to appeal to solo players. I played through New World: Aeternum through level 20 (though the open beta allows players to reach level 30, I’m saving the last 10 levels to pursue when the public is allowed in). The game now walks an interesting (and very playable) line between an MMO and an action RPG. I found the solo leveling experience to be very streamlined and smooth, with the game introducing new mechanics at a steady clip that allowed me to fiddle around with stuff until I was satisfied that I understood.

I’ve been particularly impressed with New World: Aeternum’s approach to crafting, which is both fun and easy to navigate. Crafting materials are pretty much everywhere in the game, and it takes quite a lot of stuff to over-encumber your character, which encourages my hoarding instincts. The game also opens up a storage unit pretty early on, for those like me that can’t stand to let anything go. The nice thing about the crafting and gathering system in New World is that it is a “learn by doing” system, allowing players to level up and unlock new recipes and skills just by participating in the activity.

For example, I immediately started piling up hides and meat while clearing boars and wolves in early hours of the game. By the time I actually got around to crafting hours later, I had huge stacks of both materials. The game allows you to craft enormous amounts of stuff at once, which turbo rockets you through a ton of crafting levels in a very satisfying way, simultaneously unlocking new recipes. Tanning my hides, for example, pushed me up to something like level 25 leatherworking, which then in turn opened up a few new recipes for me to pursue. The new recipes just pop into the menu, and if you have the right ingredients, you can just keep right on crafting. It is a fun and satisfying system, which also gives a small jolt of general XP at the same time, which helps make it feel like it is contributing to your overall character development.

Questing is similarly friendly and enjoyable. I was able to run through the main quest line in a pretty succinct manner, and after a while I noticed that the game was feeding me a couple of side quests that matched up with most main quests, which pretty much tripled my XP and loot gain for each major story beat.

Aeternum has streamlined New World’s more open-ended character development as well, allowing players to select an “Archetype” during character creation. Though you can still equip and advance your skills with any weapons or armor you please, the game does feed you archetype-appropriate gear during the early hours, which pretty much steers you in the right direction. Out of the seven archetypes (Soldier, Swordbearer, Ranger, Musketeer, Mystic, Occultist, and Destroyer), I chose to be a Mystic, feeling that the class’s healing skills would come in handy during early levelling.

It turns out that this was a wise choice. Though I sometimes found myself in a bit of a tight squeeze, I never did die during my time in-game. The Mystic can attack quite nicely from a distance, and my natural inclination to power level myself above any content I’m currently pursuing ensured that I was laying waste to most enemies before they ever reached me. And for stronger boss types, I was able to kite them quite nicely.

Which leads me to one major point. Though the New World: Aeternum website describes the game as an “action RPG”, fans of Diablo-likes and Souls games should come in with their eyes wide open. Though a lot of work has gone into streamlining the experience for solo players, this is still very much an MMO. You are definitely min/maxing your gear here, and though you have a dodge button, you will not be getting into Black Myth: Wukong style boss battles. Combat is very much in line with what you would expect from an MMO, with enemies making a beeline straight towards your character, and you firing off a series of skills that are on a cooldown timer in a war of attrition. Battles are a matter of damage/heal if needed/see who falls down first/rinse/repeat/watch the numbers go up. If you aren’t into that sort of combat loop, you will not find what you are looking for with New World: Aeternum.

It is also important to note that while New World: Aeternum is specially tuned for solo players, all of the MMORPG stuff is still in the game. You can still group up, run instances, raid, and all the other good social stuff you want to do. It’s just that, in this new version, you can either do that content by yourself if you want, or skip it without repercussion. The game never forces you into a corner where you must find friends or be stopped cold.

I played New World: Aeternum on a PS5, and found that the game worked quite nicely with the DualSense controller. Yes, there is some “use the left stick for your mouse” menu stuff in here, but Amazon Games seems to have found the perfect speed for the cursor; I never felt like it was moving too slow, nor did it zip across the screen like lightning. The rest of the controls are laid out nicely, and I never had any trouble accomplishing what I set out to do. Porting a PC game to controller is never easy; Amazon Games has done an admirable job here. 

I'm excited to finish playing through the main storyline of New World Aeternum. Frankly, this is the first MMO I've ever played where I could even tell you what was happening in the story, but I'm pretty locked in on this one - and it's interesting. I actually want to see what happens. Beyond the story stuff, there is going to be a ton of content in New World: Aeternum when it comes out. I’ve just barely scratched the surface of the surface here – this is a huge game, and its systems run deep. I never even got to the mount content, the arenas, or a ton of other stuff you can mess with in the beta. There is just so much to do; this is, after all, an adaptation of a huge MMO and it’s expansion. Get ready for a big fat banger of a game, y'all. 

If you want to get a feel for what the game is like, the public open beta will run from September 13 at 9 AM PT through September 16 at 9 AM PT, with cross-platform play between PC, PlayStation 5, and Xbox Series X|S. For more information, check the official site here.