South Korean developer and publisher NCSoft has announced LLL, a new title it’s referring to as a “trailblazer project”.
The game is an open-world MMO third-person shooter which is coming to consoles and PC in 2024.
LLL’s project leader Jaehyun Bae describes it as an “alternate history science fiction project […] where an event in the past changed the world as we know it”.
The first gameplay footage was also revealed, and can be seen here:
LLL features a 30 square kilometer open world where a post-apocalyptic Seoul, a 10th century Byzantine Empire and the 23rd century “coexist in one timeline”.
In an interview on NCSoft’s own website, Bae calls the game “a vast open world in which more than 30km of land area is seamlessly connected to a single environment”.
In a separate developer video discussing LLL, Bae says the game’s storyline is based on two “what if” questions.
“The first question is one that’s commonly featured in other science fiction stories,” he explains: “If technology were to advance without limitations, would what it means to be human also change?
“The second question is, what if multiple groups at starkly different levels of technological advancement were to encounter each other?
“In LLL, humans, mutants and powerful demons from different eras and different levels of technological progress meet on a single stage. What would happen in such a world?”
NCSoft is best known for its range of MMC RPGs such as Guild Wars and Lineage. As such, the publisher acknowledges that LLL could be seen as an unusual step.
“I believe many will be surprised or find it interesting that NC is shipping a shooting game,” Bae says. “There will also be some who doubt our ability to do it right.
“There are already many successful blockbuster shooting games. However, we wanted to create a new genre that is completely different from the recently popular Looter Shooter or Battle Royale.
“We want to create a new market that is exclusive to NC with a new IP that incorporates the keywords ‘Shooter’, ‘MMO’, and ‘Open World’.”
LLL is just one of a number of NCSoft projects currently in the works. Last week it was reported that Sony and NCSoft have struck a deal to create a Horizon MMORPG.
According to news site MTN, the game – currently known as Project H – will be developed by the South Korean company and target the global market as part of Sony’s push into live service games.
