The planned Korean online role-playing game Lineage Eternal is officially dead! But instead, a new title called “Project TL” is coming to PC. It is expected to include some content from Lineage Eternal.
Lineage Eternal was once the great hope for the Korean software giant NCSoft. The game was highly praised during its long development period (it was first announced in 2011) in numerous previews and announced features. It was supposed to offer epic sieges, cool action-RPG gameplay like Diablo, and a whole stable of heroes that could be changed at any time.
Lineage Eternal was supposed to be released simultaneously for PC and mobile devices as a kind of hybrid MMORPG.
It all sounded good, but the first betas in South Korea were disappointing. The gameplay was apparently too grindy and not innovative enough, even for Koreans. Therefore, NCSoft first changed the management of the project and later even the entire engine!
Then there was a period of silence, and hardly anyone knew what was to become of Lineage Eternal. Now we know!
Lineage Eternal becomes the new game “Project LT”
At a recently held press event, NCSoft revealed not news about Lineage Eternal. Instead, a new game called Project TL (The Lineage) was announced for PC. This is still a working title. According to NCSoft, it is a new game and despite the previously misleading name, it is the next Lineage.
The “new” game clearly builds on the previous work on Lineage Eternal. It uses the Unreal 4 engine and will retain some of Eternal’s features, but will also get rid of many:
- The game will continue to be an action MMO with dynamic gameplay.
- Destructible and interactable environments remain a feature. You can topple columns and squash monsters with them or tear down walls.
- Massive sieges, a feature from Lineage Eternal, will be present in Project TL.
- The controversial character system with changeable heroes will be completely removed. Instead, you will have a more traditional hero system and build a character from a previous selection of 5 classes.
- There will be dynamic weather effects.
- Gamepad support is expected. The game may also be released for consoles.
Video shows first gameplay and similarities to Lineage Eternal
The progress made on Project TL can be seen in the first video teaser for the game. There, you can see, among other things, cutscenes, powerful heroes, sexy sorceresses, and wild battles. Especially cool: horse fights and an epic siege!
Some of the characters reminiscent of concepts from Lineage Eternal. For example, the elf assassin from the video strongly resembles the assassin from Eternal. And the heavily armored human knight in heavy armor looked quite similar in Eternal. The same goes for the dark sorceress.
A first closed beta of Project TL is slated to begin in 2018.
In the mobile sector, NCSoft is scoring points with the project “Lineage M”, but faces strong competition from the licensed product Lineage 2 Revolution from Netmarble.
