![]() but yeah, I mean, a lot of people were like, we want the great sword", Verfaille tells me. ![]() "I think the only thing I hear more is we want mounts. For instance, I could do this big uppercut swing which empowered my next hits, then activate a defensive stab which topped up some of my health as a bonus.įan desire played a clear part in bringing the greatsword to the game, as well as just being a cool opportunity to mix things up a bit. You're able to stick points into both aggressive and defensive trees, then swap between these styles on the fly when you're chopping enemies to pieces. It's a honkin' great thing whose main gimmick – other than hitting extremely hard – is letting you mix-and-match between two different fighting stances: offensive and defensive. While the expansion's cool new locations offset much of the monotony of the quests, the greatsword also put in some work too. Where New World's base areas were nice and all, with their woods and mountains, the Brimstone Sands seem like an exciting jaunt into an exotic land that's really upped the bar. And bouncing between quests, I invaded little caverns tucked away on the fringes of the desert, or stumbled into little oases populated by cutesy armadillos and magical stags. Look up to the sky and you might catch a glimpse of a hovering mega-structure, a bit like the sci-fi Toblerones you'd catch in Destiny 2's Egyptian-inspired Curse Of Osiris DLC. There was a great sense of scale when traversing scorpion-ridden sands and beelining towards an enormous acropolis carved out of colossal blocks. The early portions of Brimstone Sands I explored were beautiful spaces, not at all hindered by the constraints of, well, lots of sand. And perhaps I simply hadn't reached the good stuff. I suppose that's a bit harsh from me, as I can't expect New World to chuck out its easily completed MMO bread and butter for the involved caviar on toast of complicated RPG quests. There was one quest where I did a spot of clambering up a stone structure to get to a chest, but it was a fairly simple affair. I helped some NPCs gather insignias by entering a stronghold filled with reanimated roman skeletons and gathered flowers from some cacti – the usual kind of thing, you know. When it comes to Brimstone Sands' questing, I didn't notice much of a change from previous offerings. They've also introduced quest hubs throughout, as well as plenty of two-way portals so there's less backtracking in general, and it's much easier to get around. "Now there's puzzles, there's wave events, there's traversals just to keep it more interesting," he explains. Verfaille says that the expansion's second big goal is to introduce quest variety in both "the levels one through 25 experience", as well as throughout the new expansion area. ![]() He calls it a "linear path" and a more "streamlined experience", which they were comfortable implementing because there's a lot more endgame now than when it first launched. New World's creative director David Verfaille tells me that the expansion's early game re-think eliminates the disjointed faff of running between various areas to speed up the journey to endgame. ![]() The titular Brimstone Sands is simultaneously lovely on the eye, an endgame area, and not an example of how they're remixing the early game. Maybe, just maybe, it could bring me back into the fold, but my early impressions are a touch mixed. It adds a great big desert area, an all-new greatsword weapon, and attempts to revise the early game experience for new players. It's a shame, as I like New World's vibes-based levelling as a whole, which gives you XP for cracking on with whatever takes your fancy, be that killing things or doing carpentry.Įnter Brimstone Sands, which hits the PTR on the 1st September. Ultimately, I struggled to find the time to grind out the levels required to participate in the cool PVE or PVP stuff, as the level gate is less generous than my past flames Final Fantasy XIV or World Of Warcraft. Alice Bee thought it was a fresh, swashbuckling MMO in her review-in-progress and I was certainly taken by its early build, which had more in common with Valheim than it did World Of Warcraft.īut I fell off the game not long into its release, and earlier than I did other MMOs. Maybe.?Īmazon Games' MMO New World threw itself into saturated waters last year, stirring up a feeding frenzy of players desperate to get their hands on a shiny new timesink. One year on, is it everything the game needs to satisfy long-time fans and attract newcomers? Yes! Well. I got hands-on with the expansion's first hour or so and had a chat with the game's creative director about it all. ![]() New World is getting its first major expansion in the form of Brimstone Sands, an arid endgame location for players to contest that comes bundled with a bunch of early game streamlining, and a brand-new weapon, too. ![]()
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