So this one had me diving in to the rabbit hole of Uncharted Waters, a Japanese game series from Koei Tecmo Games set in the 15th and 17th century Age of Sail time period. As seen from the preceding link, the game has had a long and storied history, spanning back from the NES days all the way to the still operational Uncharted Waters Online. Now, as the series enters its 30th anniversary, a new MMO is in development called Uncharted Waters Origin, which will head in to closed beta testing later this year according to reports from MMO Culture.
Uncharted Waters Origin comes by way of LINE Games and is being developed by studio Motif, a dev studio made up of former vets from Nexon, XLGAMES and Netmarble. The game stands to be pretty sizeable, with promise of over 200 ports to explore, over 1,000 NPC characters to meet, about 4,000 discoveries to be made, and over 1,000 cultural items to claim. The game is being made in Unreal Engine 4, and features music from composer Yoko Kanno of Cowboy Bebop and Ghost in the Shell fame, who incidentally scored Uncharted Waters Online.
As for a release, LINE Games is eyeballing a purported global launch on mobile and Steam some time in 2021, which represents a bit of a delay as the game was originally eyeballing a 2020 release date. Still, a closed beta on the game’s 30th anniversary is pretty good.
