Hands-on with Amazon Studios’ New World suggest that the megacorp’s first credible game should have what it takes to be a contender amongst the top MMOs.
Considering its status as part of one of the world’s highest-profile companies, Amazon Games (formerly Amazon Game Studios) has maintained a surprisingly low profile since it was established in 2012. Which makes New World a very big deal indeed: it’s the mega-company’s first truly ambitious game for the PC: a full-blown MMO that aims to take on the likes of Final Fantasy XIV, Elder Scrolls Online and World of Warcraft.
New World has now entered a beta phase – to an initially challenging response, when a bug caused it to “brick” nVidia RTX 3090 graphics cards. Full, review-style assessments of new MMOs are notoriously tricky and unreliable; such games, by definition, are constantly being updated, and are liable to change radically even after any official launch. But we managed to participate in a hands-on preview event before New World entered its beta programme, involving roughly two hours of gameplay: enough to form some (pretty favourable) general impressions.
Not radical, but a contender
Typically for a preview, what we experienced was the very start of the game – essentially its onboarding phase, followed by a tantalising taste of subsequent questing. First up was a pretty simple and standard character creator, enabling you to choose from and customise various facial options, change skin colour and hair, add tattoos, alter general body shape and so on. Once we were happy and had named our character, we jumped in.
Back-story-wise, you’re on a ship sailing to a legendary island called Aeternum, supposed to be a land of riches and potential loot, but are shipwrecked on its shores, so your first experience of Aeternum takes place on its beaches, surrounded by a graveyard of wrecked ships. The general vibe is pirate-era Middle Ages, and there’s an undercurrent of dark magic: you soon begin to encounter zombie-like, hostile fellow shipwreckees, and wildlife (at one point, we killed and cooked a turkey).
A helpful NPC standing around a campfire on the beach explained that Aeternum was in the grip of a form of corruption, spawning a number of hostile races called The Ancients, The Corrupted, The Lost and The Angry Earth. The early phases of the game we experienced didn’t give a vast amount of insight into its lore, but the developers did in the preamble to the hands-on session: clearly that will be extensive and, hopefully, distinctive.
Responsive action combat
Initial tutorial-style missions established the overall gameplay, which felt very promising indeed. The combat system, in particular, seemed logical and accessible. New World is a proper action game, so you’re given a light and a heavy attack, plus a block, assigned to different mouse buttons. On the PC’s keyboard, you could also execute a sidestep-evade, which we tended to employ rather than blocking.
Timing was key when taking on enemies: the heavy attacks, for example, took a while to charge. We also acquired some more sophisticated moves as we started to level up, such as 360-degree whirling attack, handy when facing more than one enemy. Overall, the combat system felt satisfyingly responsive and pretty intuitive. New World eschews class systems in favour of a weapon-familiarity system which brings perks as your affinity with each weapon increases. A sensible approach, in our book, which, for example, encouraged us to experiment with a musket-like gun, whose long reload time rendered it less useful than a sword, especially when beset by some of the local wildlife.
New World’s combat gave the impression that it would be well suited to being mapped onto a controller, but the developers, in a Q&A after the hands-on, confirmed that for the moment at least, the game is only playable via a keyboard and mouse. They did, however, say that they would consider adding it: the beta programme should provide ample opportunity for players to request it.
Crafting and a mini-dungeon
The tutorial quests set by the beach-bound NPC involved visiting various shipwrecks, collecting objects and fending off hostiles, but also introduced the game’s crafting system which, typically for an MMO, occupied a key position.
Resources were notably abundant in New World, but various types required the crafting of specific implements before you could collect them – a pick to collect stone, for example, an axe to chop trees or a sickle to reap herbs. As with the combat system, crafting in New World was simple and intuitive, and when we had satisfied the NPC by performing various fetch-and-carry missions and beginning to level up (New World will have a level-60 cap at launch) we were sent on a more challenging dungeon-style mission in a nearby cave.
Pausing to spend some of our XP on upping attributes from a pretty typical selection – the core ones being Strength, Intelligence, Dexterity, Focus and Constitution – we were now deemed ready to make our way to the nearest village, where we would acquire a much more representative impression of what playing New World should be like when it launches.
Village life, guilds, house ownership
That village, Windsward Hamlet, continued New World’s notable trend of containing much of what you would expect to find in an MMO. Including an inn where we could rest, a village elder who set us a further set of tutorial-like missions and various guilds we could join. One aspect that should attract players to New World was the ability to purchase a house, which could operate as a store for gear and also accommodate trophies that would bring permanent buffs. Although after just two hours’ play, we had nothing like the required amount of money to get on the virtual property ladder.
The village also housed the likes of a smelter and a forge. As our allotted tie with New World ran out, we were just about able to enact a mission in the surrounding area which hinted at another key mechanic in the game. Essentially an exercise in resource-gathering, it would enable the village’s inhabitants to add fortification against any impending attack. In New World, sieges will loom large.
A variety of PvE and PvP activities
Prior to our hands-on, various members of the New World development team had talked us through various higher-level aspects of the game that we wouldn’t be able to experience during the hands-on.
When it’s fully up and running, New World will support a number of PvE and PvP activities. PvE activities will include Expeditions, essentially dungeon raids enacted by groups of five and Invasions, large-scale sieges triggered when Corruption builds up and hordes of NPCs attempt to invade your territory.
A mode called Outpost Rush will mix PvE and PvP. It will become available during the endgame, and pit teams of 20 players against each other as they compete to control three outposts on the map. And another PvP mode will be simply entitled War, pitching groups of 50 players against each other, again in siege-type situations, with one team designated to attack and the other to defend.
Can New World hit a nerve?
It’s tough to predict whether any new MMO will turn out to be a hit, especially from launch; nowadays, for example, Final Fantasy XIV is fantastically successful, but when it was originally launched, it was a such a buggy disaster that Square Enix had to take it down for months and completely remodel it.
And then you have to factor in the different tastes of those who habitually play MMOs. However, we enjoyed our first taste of New World, with its combat system, in particular, impressing. Its general vibe was pretty enticing, too – not a million miles away from games like The Elder Scrolls or The Witcher, with a bit of fantasy mixed in to leaven the depiction of daily life in the Middle Ages.
Mechanically, too, it appeared to have all the right ingredients in place – we liked the weapon-affinity system, and the Attributes tree was less complex and more relatable than those of many RPGs. Possibilities for crafting, resource-gathering and the like were clearly huge, and Amazon Studios was adamant that New World can accommodate those who might want play as traders, say. Although we didn’t get to explore much of it, we saw plenty of evidence that the map is huge.
If you’re a fan of action-RPGs, you should find it reassuringly familiar – it didn’t appear to concern itself with springing wild surprises, which may be a plus or minus point, depending on your tastes. However, it also felt like it was very well put together, with all its systems nicely fettled and plenty of polish in evidence.
Amazon Studios took pains to point out that it has been in development for years, with a pretty sizeable team, and much input from a burgeoning community of players; our short but pretty sweet hands-on session gave credence to such claims. Patches should sort the reported RTX 3090 issues, hopefully sooner rather than later.
If New World sounds attractive – and we believe it stands a great chance of catching the collective imagination of those who enjoy a good MMO – you can jump into the beta right now. Business model-wise, it eschews a subscription in favour of a $39.99 flat fee, although it will support microtransactions for cosmetic items. And if you’d rather let others do the dirty work of helping to iron out any kinks during the beta programme, you still shouldn’t have to wait too long: it’s scheduled to be released on August 31.
