I always had mixed feelings about the original New World. I first played it when it launched in 2021 and got to experience the full mix of genuinely enjoyable gameplay, questionable server issues, and quests that repeated the same few objectives throughout most of my playthrough. Even with all that said, I still dedicated over 400 hours to it, and I enjoyed the pace change from more traditional MMOs.
Fast forward to 2024, Amazon Games announced a rerelease for this moderately successful MMO named New World: Aeternum. Since I’d been away from the community for a while, I had no idea what to expect going into it, and I’ll admit to feeling some slight pessimism initially. Nonetheless, I looked forward to accepting and hopping into the Open Beta’s early access weekend.
Fortunately, while it had a couple of mishaps here and there, New World: Aeternum did a great job at adding refreshing and interesting changes without turning it into a messy mish-mash of random features. I’ll admit it: I’m hooked again, even if this revamped version has its ups and downs.
I was even more pleasantly surprised when I learned that this is a free, fresh-start rerelease for anyone who already owns New World. While it seems mostly intended for those with the Rise of the Angry Earth expansion, anyone with the base game will also see a good chunk of Aeternum’s changes. At the very least, I was happy to hear that, outside of losing our original characters and servers, we would all get the chance to experience New World: Aeternum regardless of whether we had the expansion. Despite some pessimism at first, this was a positive thought I kept in mind as I was playing the open beta.
A rough start
I won’t harp on my first few minutes of tackling New World: Aeternum’s servers too much, especially since this was a beta test, but I still felt it was worth mentioning as someone who has firsthand experience with New World 1.0’s launch. While I didn’t encounter long queues or crashes like in the latter, minor error hiccups occurred, with a real possibility of them resurfacing later. Admittedly, this much is par for the course for live-service game launches and is ultimately up to personal discretion, but the parallels it drew to New World’s 2021 launch lingered in my mind for some time.
That is until I finally entered the game and immediately experienced some new changes within the first few minutes. Any bad taste in my mouth at that point vanished instantly in favor of curiosity and intrigue. Wanting to see what other new features I’d discover, I dove in eagerly and forgot about my initial sour attitude going into this. Instead, it was replaced with fascination and optimism, albeit some skepticism that lingered even a couple of hours into my playthrough.
A few changes make all the difference
New World: Aeternum starts us off in a familiar setting, introducing us to Father Russo, Captain Thorpe, and crewmates on a pirate ship before diving into the game’s character creator. Immediately, I recognize two massive changes: the polish of New World’s new cutscenes and the revamped character menu. Rather than just designing your appearance and figuring out your weapons later, the game introduces you to archetypes, which are basically traditional character classes that impact your starting stats, weapons, and armor. Afterwards, you go into appearance and name-changing as usual.
I’ve always liked having a character class in games, especially MMOs, even if New World’s original open-ended approach was more interesting to start. Since archetypes affect both your weapons and trade skills, giving you a 50-level boost to various skills, I’m left feeling curious about how it’ll impact early and mid-game skilling, particularly once the trading post gets involved.
From this point onward, my optimism grew, and I suddenly felt genuinely eager to keep playing to see what other changes there were. By this moment, I had the game open for about ten minutes, and five of those were figuring out a weird server bug. Since I used a sword and shield during my first playthrough of New World, I entered New World: Aeternum as a ranger, giving my character a bow and spear to spice things up. There’s a musketeer option, too, but I never really liked the feel of guns in the original and wanted to stick to something more familiar.
My unexpected feelings of intrigue and curiosity continued as I witnessed more of the game’s cutscenes and, later, the tutorial. Although my memories of the original New World’s tutorial were a little foggy due to how long it’s been since I’ve seen this, I immediately recognized the stark contrast in the setup, our protagonist’s background, and the sequence of events that happen in it. We’re no longer just a random person who stumbled into a corrupted plane of existence and were forced to fight random enemies for reasons we’d barely pay attention to.
Instead, New World: Aeternum lays everything out through fascinating storytelling, a plot that actually makes sense, and surprisingly entertaining cutscenes that I enjoyed from beginning to end. We are a pirate who was part of the ship’s crew, with Father Russo and Captain Thorpe’s situations laid out in detail in front of us. I won’t spoil what happens, but let’s just say it makes more sense than whatever happened in the original New World. Even the tutorial and your usual ol’ learning of the game’s controls make sense now as you actively fight against the now-corrupted crew and have to fight your way out of the mess before your character dies.
Every change that New World: Aeternum introduces builds itself up to be a worthwhile successor to its original form even within its first few minutes. These feelings flourished as I played the game and noticed major and subtle quality-of-life changes, character interaction changes, and quest tweaks that made New World feel alive and refreshing. As time went on, though, I noticed that while there were plenty of differences, there were just as many similarities that were difficult to miss.
Something feels a little familiar
After leaving the vastly improved tutorial that shocked me beyond belief, I finally entered New World’s main map. From the get-go, I was expecting a completely different game from what I experienced over two years ago. Instead, there were numerous similarities, and I noticed this almost immediately. Sure, the quest themselves are different, and there’s enough changes that I wouldn’t call New World: Aeternum identical to its original. Nonetheless, I wouldn’t quite call it a day-and-night difference between the two versions.
One of the first places I checked was my weapons and skills. After all, I eventually got pretty involved in fine-tuning my builds so I could get more involved in expeditions in the original. Although I didn’t expect a complete revamp, I wasn’t anticipating the skills and buffs to be almost identical. I don’t mind this, as that means I won’t have to use too much brain power to come up with completely new builds from scratch, but I was hoping there’d be a few noteworthy changes.
The map and area names are also quite similar, with some level differences and quest-specific changes, as is the general mission structure. I’ve always enjoyed New World’s quests despite most of them telling you to kill enemies and find items, and New World: Aeternum is no different. There’s just something about seeing how your actions directly impact the world around you and the liveliness of the character’s interactions with you that make generic quests feel worthwhile. You may not get vastly different mission structures in Aeternum, but you will get more interesting versions of what already existed.
The last main similarity I noticed immediately is the combat. While New World: Aeternum’s feels much more polished and fluid than in its predecessor, it’s still the same at its core. Trust me, I’m happy that I won’t have to learn a completely new fighting style, but there are certainly opportunities to add some flair to combat, enemy types, and even basic movement that you won’t see in this new version. The enemies themselves are also mostly the same, aside from some quest-related bosses.
Unfortunately, I didn’t quite find an opportunity to try out PvP during this part of the open beta, but I’m definitely looking forward to it in the future. I had a whole basket of issues with it in the original version of New World, but with how much smoother combat feels now, I’m optimistic that there’s been some noticeable improvement.
Despite these similarities, there are a bunch of changes that make New World: Aeternum interesting. NPC dialogue was completely reworked, several new quests feature some pretty fun objectives and boss battles, and most of the characters actually serve a purpose beyond just spouting exposition and dialogue that goes in one ear and out the other. There are enough changes in Aeternum to make the experience feel fresh and exciting while still staying familiar enough that someone who hasn’t played for a while can get back into the swing of things without getting overwhelmed.
The world is old, but the experience is new
Although this might sound like I got bored or disinterested in Aeternum quickly, I still managed to fly through a good chunk of the open beta’s content without even thinking about the time. If New World: Aeternum is so similar to the original, why was I able to play so much of it again without feeling bored?
Surprise. This feeling of surprise over witnessing how different yet familiar New World: Aeternum feels and how these changes are enough to revitalize my desire to replay it all over again. The original New World served as a valuable lesson for Amazon Games, and Aeternum’s changes reflect this in every way.
New World: Aeternum also seems to be geared towards a few specific audiences. If you were on the fence about the original, Aeternum might be just what you need to try this game out. If you already enjoyed New World but just got a little tired of it, there’s enough new content to enjoy that’ll make the experience feel fresh. For anyone looking for a direct sequel, though, you won’t find that here, and that’s completely okay. If you’re me, you’ll feel overall content with the direction Aeternum is moving toward but still step forward cautiously in case the late-game experience goes awry or any drastic changes occur later down the line.
New World: Aeternum‘s open beta will run from September 13 to 16 on Xbox Series X/S, PS5, and PC via Steam. Its full release is planned for October 15, 2024.
Published: Sep 11, 2024 11:00 am