Guild Wars publisher NCSoft has announced Project LLL, a mashup of the open-world, MMO, and third-person shooter genres that follows sci-fi themes of alternative history.
In an interview that accompanies the reveal, project lead Seeder Jaehyun Bae reveals that the team wanted to forge a new genre that stands apart from looter shooters and battle royales. "We want to create a new market that is exclusive to NC with a new IP that incorporates the keywords 'shooter,' 'MMO,' and 'open world'," he says. "We are developing a project that combines different play styles and elements from NC's previous games, and we are very excited to share a sneak peek with our community."
How open is Project LLL's world exactly? Bae shares that "more than 30km of land area" will be "seamlessly connected to a single environment". The upcoming game is also being built in Unreal Engine.
As for the story, Bae shares that Project LLL will be a sci-fi game that falls under a sub-genre of alternative history. History progresses differently in the game due to a particular event Bae doesn't elaborate on, though we know LLL takes place in a version of Seoul where the 10th-century Byzantine Empire and the 23rd-century are all blended together in the same lore.
The Project LLL team is taking plenty of inspiration elsewhere, too, as Bae cites Blade Runner, Total Recall, and The Man in the High Castle as inspirations for tackling themes of technology, human justice, and alternate history. When it comes to lore, novels such as Foundation, Dune, and Philip K. Dick's work provide plenty of food for thought.
In a separate developer video, Bae adds that the story is based on two "what if" questions. The first is a very cyberpunk quandary over what would happen to humanity if technology progressed without limits. The second question poses "what if multiple groups at starkly different levels of technological advancement were to encounter each other?"
NCSoft plans to release Project LLL in 2024, and you can catch a glimpse of the gameplay above.
Meanwhile, a Horizon MMO is reportedly in the works between Sony and South Korean studio NCSoft.
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