Aion 2 – A Prequel to Aion is in the Works

I recently did a video on Lineage 2M – NCSoft’s latest new mobile MMORPG. I’m pretty excited because it actually looks pretty good and it takes advantage of their brand new Purple platform – a platform that allows for mobile cross-play compatibility.
That’s a huge step in terms of allowing PC players and mobile players to play games together.
However, in deciding to make Lineage 2M their priority, several other games that were in production, namely Blade & Soul 2 and Aion 2 have been pushed back. I’ll be doing a video on Blade & Soul 2 in the near future but right now Aion 2 is what I wanna talk about.
Aion 2, not whatever Aion: Legion was. I played Aion: Legion and.. regardless of what people say, it felt nothing like an Aion game.

Aion 2 was announced back at G-Star 2018 – over an entire year ago. And I know that mobile games don’t have nearly as lengthy a development cycle as PC games, so we should be pretty far along by this point.
Which is good news, considering Aion 2, much like Lineage 2M actually looks like it could be a solid title. Aion 2 specifically takes place almost a millennium before its PC predecessor, Aion: The Tower of Eternity.
The game features a brand new PvP system in the form of dimensional cracks, allowing players from various servers to engage with one another in large-scale PvP.
No word on what form gliding or flying will take in-game as of the information we’ve been given thus far but they did reveal that they are removing the gliding constraints that exist in Aion.
NCSoft didn’t go too deeply into detail as to exactly what they meant – maybe something like Perfect World Mobile, I’m not sure, but they wanted to make gliding a more integral part of combat.
“Creating a three-dimensional battle system” is the goal with flight – and that’s.. I dunno.
Aerial PvP was one of the core parts of doing battle in the Abyss, and I had a ton of good times engaging in aerial PvP with other players. They mentioned they wanted to remove gliding restraints – but made no mention of flight itself.
If they opted to remove flight, or at least gliding.. I dunno. It wouldn’t be an Aion game to me.
And with the state that Aion for PC is currently in, I feel like we need some positivity in the form of the Aion IP.

When asked to elaborate on what the game would offer, NCSoft stated that Aion 2 would actually introduce features into the game which were unable to be realized in the original PC iteration due to limitations at the time of development.
This time, with the technology at their disposal, they feel like it’ll be possible to fully achieve their vision. In their words, “it will no longer be a dream.”

As I’m sure you’re aware, the basic premise of Aion is that there are two opposing factions: Both the Elyos and the Asmodians.
They’ve been at war for however long – I’m not entirely sure as I don’t recall that ever being addressed, and you get to choose between one of the two factions when beginning the game.
Since Aion 2 is set 900 years before the beginning of the PC game, NCSoft have removed the opposing-faction theme, instead allowing players to play as whatever they like and do battle with whomever they want to.
This means that you’ll find Elyos vs Elyos and Asmodian vs Asmodian out in the world. Not only are they removing factions – but they’re also claiming to have done away with – and I quote – “class segmentation.”
This means that there are no basic classes, instead, players are able to wield various different weapons without restrictions. I know that this is good in theory, but removing class identity isn’t the way to improve on the game.
People like choosing their class, people like being able to identify other players’ class. Class identity is an integral part of an MMO and this is just an all together strange move.
Additionally, NCSoft have made bold claims that the combat itself will be completely different to its predecessor as well, stating “there will be a new battle system that did not exist in the old Aion.”
Does that mean that it’s just going to have the basic combat system present in most mobile MMOs churned out these days? I guess we’ll need to wait and see from additional footage that they supply in the future, but I’m a little disconcerted with that info, honestly.

NCSoft are aiming high – exactly what they’ll be capable of achieving remains to be seen, though.
See, Aion is a great quality MMO. Yes, it has its issues, nobody can argue otherwise.
But back years ago the game was probably one of the best MMOs on the market. It catered to the ArcheAge crowd – players that were interested in open-world PvP while still having the freedom to PvE as they wanted.
Over time things changed, but that’s how these things go. MMOs – and even games – evolve, not always for the better.

I’m left curious of the supposed additional features they plan on adding to Aion 2, however.
I know that certain aspects of the game are going to be required to be altered – that makes sense. It is going to be on mobile devices after all and mobile MMOs are quite different to PC MMOs both aesthetically and mechanically.
So my hope is that their goal isn’t to put the majority of their effort into Lineage 2M due to the anticipated success of the game and leave both Aion 2 and Blade & Soul 2 underdeveloped.

The engine Aion 2 is being developed on is currently unknown – I’m guessing Unreal Engine 4 since that seems to be the default these days but the trailer itself looks damn good.

And that’s everything we know right now. I’m kinda excited and kinda on the fence.