The new MMO from several World of Warcraft veterans could have an art style inspired by Arcane, Persona, and Spider-Man: Across the Spider-Verse.
The very tantalizing tease comes from Greg Street, who was a WoW veteran, but has since departed to set up his own studio called Fantastic Pixel Castle. Street's current project at the new studio, an MMO codenamed Ghost, is currently trying to nail down its art style, according to the developer's tweet below.
We are working on Ghost’s art style across a lot of vectors and one of the things I want us to explore is magic that breaks the overall art style in order to feel otherworldy. Looking for suggestions for games, especially obscure ones, that visually depict magic this way.December 9, 2023
To do this, Street's team is turning to shows like Arcane, movies like Spider-Man: Across the Spider-Verse, and games like Persona 5 for inspiration. Street is specifically looking for examples "where magic can be stylized even if the game/show itself is not."
If that's Street's focus point, we'd say his inspirations are bang on the money. All three inspirations feature stylized impact points, whether it's the 'Bang!' when an enemy gets hit by an attack in Persona 5, or the comic-book style effect of Miles Morales punching a foe in Spider-Man.
Before your imagination runs wild, Street clarifies to his Twitter following that he's deliberately looking for inspirations for Ghost's magic, and not characters. "It may be worth saying that Ghost's overall character models and environment art are unlikely to be hyper stylized or gritty realistic on either end," the designer tweeted. "But magic is magic and doesn't have to follow rules."
Still, it's pretty exciting news for those looking forward to whatever Ghost actually ends up being. The thought of a huge-scale MMO that has Persona-like magical effects lighting up its a world is a pretty damn good sell.
Elsewhere, Street recently said that Ghost players should expect difficulty spikes. The reasoning behind this thinking is that Street believes RPG are more fun when they're a "little difficult," and this goes "doubly true for MMOs."
Read up on our guide to the best MMORPGs if you're looking for a huge time sink while awaiting Ghost.
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