ArcheAge 2 Confirmed, Will Use Unreal Engine 5 And Offer More "Density"

XLGames has confirmed that a sequel to ArcheAge is in development, and Jake Song revealed some of the details behind its design to Korean news sources earlier this week. MMOCulture summarized the English translations of that information, and while the game is still in its very early stages, there should be enough meat to them for fans to sink their teeth into.

About the only hard-wired, set-in-stone fact at this time is that the game will use Unreal Engine 5. Other than that, the dev team of 40 to 50 is still "developing prototypes, discussing key features, and testing basic gameplay." Song admitted that feature creep lengthened the development time of ArcheAge, so he's looking for the sequel to have more "density" -- although the "freedom" of the original game is a guiding principle that he still wants to emulate.

On the drawing board but in the too-soon-to-really-talk-about phase are housing, sea warfare, and "cars and ships with physics simulation." ArcheAge 2 will take place in the same world as the original but in a "different time in a parallel dimension." Given the game's early state of development, I'd estimate that we're at least a few years from seeing it released in Korea, with additional time required before it makes its way to North America and Europe.

As for the payment model and monetization? Nothing was said on that front, and given how the original's free-to-play implementation was, shall we say, less than well-received, I'd think the sequel could go either way. At the very least, given how pre-orders went down the first time, you would think that excitement for similar packages for ArcheAge 2 would be a little muted, at least until XLGames and its western publisher can demonstrate that they can keep their promises.