Perfect World Entertainment and Cryptic Studios (Neverwinter, Star Trek Online) announced today that they’re working on a brand new “AAA RPG” based on Magic: The Gathering. It’s being developed from the ground up for “both PC and console.”
We’ll learn more details about the game, including the title, at a later date, but for now, the teaser description hints at what to expect:
The world’s most popular strategy card game, Magic: The Gathering transforms players into Planeswalkers, powerful mages who can travel between planes, cast spells and summon mythical creatures. The beloved trading card game has over 20 million fans across more than 70 countries, and is available in 11 languages. Perfect World Entertainment and Cryptic Studios’ new RPG will allow fans of the game to fully immerse themselves in the Multiverse, the rich fantasy world in which Magic: The Gathering takes place.
Perfect World Entertainment CEO Bryan Huang said, “It’s Magic: The Gathering like you’ve never experienced before. We are ecstatic about the direction of the game Cryptic has been shaping. It’s always been a dream of ours to bring Magic’s Planeswalkers to a modern RPG.”
Cryptic Studios CEO Stephen D’Angelo added, “Everything from the graphics to the gameplay is being targeted for a truly unique AAA game. We’re thrilled to provide Magic fans with an opportunity to explore the game’s worlds and characters through an entirely new lens. Get ready to embark on a brand new journey.”
In Games Industry’s interview with D’Angelo, they call the new Magic: The Gathering game an MMORPG. D’Angelo then talked about how their title will be about the Magic world and fiction, not the card game:
My intent is to go forward with a Magic game that is not about the card game. It’s about jumping into the world and the fiction of Magic: The Gathering. Look at Neverwinter. D&D is a pen-and-paper game where people make up characters on paper and tell stories. We took Neverwinter and we didn’t copy the rules from the pen-and-paper game, how a strength stat works and so on. We instead created an excellent video game that captured the feeling of that world, of Forgotten Realms… In the Magic game, our goal is to let people be a Planeswalker, just like it says right there on the back of every package they ever print: ‘You are a Planeswalker.’
If you’re wondering about Magic Duels, a Magic game from Stainless Games that was supposed to come to PS4 in late 2015, it was cancelled in August 2016.
[Source: Games Industry, Game Informer]
