Last week you will remember (I hope!) Zoey’s post about our trip to Brighton to look at NCSoft’s newest creation. I looked at the whole experience from a slightly more technical perspective, so hopefully with both parts of the Aion story, you will be able to get a really good view of what it’s all about, and if that doesn’t get you, our enthusiasm and utter love for Aion should!

What first took me in with Aion was the stunning graphics, I admit it, the prospect of running something THAT beautiful on my PC, and well it is enough to make any RPG fan go weak at the knees! But then when talking to the team I realised they really had made this with the fan in mind.
It is not going to need a beast of a PC to play it on like many found with Crysis, oh no, it’s a DirectX 9 game, meaning realistically any PC from the last 2 or 3 years should cope fine with it and you would still be able to happily immerse yourself in the breathtaking views.

The best way to see these amazing views is a great feature the game has, where characters are able to fly around (admittedly your time is limited) and reach places you wouldn’t normally be able to. All characters have that ability and there is just so much you can do with it and buffs that you pick up along the way can even add to your time in the air, meaning you really can survey the lay of land, and just try and take it all in.

I think it is an important feature to have and it has given even more for the design teams to play with, making every inch of the game glitter in other-worldly goodness. Even the darker levels as you delve further in are just amazing and Zoey was quite right in saying that you should enjoy this game on a good monitor! (It’s out Q1 2009 so start asking Santa now).

Another thing I love about Aion is the general game physics, I know that is a little on the geeky side, but it really makes me twitch when battles aren’t visible and dying has no real impact on your character. With Aion it really does, you can’t just walk off after dying and continue on your merry way. You have to rest, and it is these little details that I love.

It has not been put together quickly, so much time and effort has been put into this, and that is really apparent when you speak to the team at NCSoft. They love it, they have grown so attached to their own test characters that it was really hard to ask them “can we see what happens if you die”… but of course we did anyway!

With the design team in mind I was interested to know where the inspiration for Aion came from. I mean it feels very similar (at least for me) to some of the amazing visuals you would get with Magic the Gathering or Dungeons and Dragons, but I was amazed to find out that all the Korean team behind it actually drew none of their inspiration from these; I even got told some of them wouldn’t know what I was on about!

So it’s pure brilliance to think that all of this, the depth, the atmosphere, the back-story has come from somewhere brand new, and I think this will give Aion a definite edge.

I know since WoW came out, a lot of the MMORPG’s that followed it have claimed to be “the next thing to take over from WoW” but I really honestly do think this might be it.
So much thought, effort and passion has gone into making this game that it will feel like an experience personalised to you and this is all aided by the amount you are able to put into your character.

We both got a great deal out of the experience, and I wanted to thank everyone there that day for being extra brilliant and giving us way more time with the game than we originally thought we would have and thanks to Ready Up for sending us there, we had a fantastic day with what will be a truly epic game.