AquaNox 2: Revelation Preview

If there’s a center of the Aquanox underwater world, you are now welcome to visit a place that is farthest from. This is going to be the essential premise of AquaNox 2: Revelation. You should all bear in mind the game is neither a sequel nor a mere add-on to the original Aquanox game. Even though it was expected to be an expansion disk, later it evolved into a stand-alone project (hence you won’t be required to possess a copy of the original Aquanox game in order to play this one). After almost eight moths of development, JoWood Productions and Massive Development seemed to be pleased with the way things are progressing.

Murky depths of the sea make my blood boil.

And so does this concept art!

The general idea of the AquaNox 2: Revelation project is to allow players to explore a completely different corner of the huge Aquanox underworld. Consequently, new undersea landscapes were added where you’ll get to discover many mysteries that were buried beneath the surface of the ocean for ages. There’s a portion of the story revealed on the official web site (http://www.aquanox-revelation.com/), but otherwise the developers wish to remain cautious in revealing the plot so as not to spoil the fun for you guys. However, it was uncovered that the game won’t have so much epic stuff going on. Instead of that AquaNox 2: Revelation focuses on an individual story that went on during your past adventures with Emerald "Dead-Eye" Flint. Now your new character, William Drake, will receive about 30 separate tasks to finish (which incidentally is the same amount of missions as in the previous game).

Although the game is going to be darker and more realistic than Aquanox, the gameplay will remain the same in its essence. What’s commending is that Massive Development managed to slightly improve certain gameplay aspects, while upholding the fundamentals of the previous title. The main addition to the game is the so-called bonus target, which players can hope to encounter in every mission assignment. According to the developers, bonus targets are going to prolong the game somewhat and will surely enhance its replayability.

Most of their energy and time the developers have invested into AI improvement. Contrary to the battles and skirmishes in Aquanox, here players are going to have to deal with a much different variety of enemies, who are smaller in numbers, but particularly lethal in one-on-one dogfights. They are agile and well-versed in tactical approaches throughout combat, and you can be sure they’ll be tough enough for any gamer. Also, some never-before-seen enemies will be there to compete against, such as the guards and snipers.

As William Drake you’re gonna get the opportunity to use a wide range of sub-ships. So far, two submarine vessels were revealed: The "Salty Dog" and "Mighty Maggie." Both vessels differ in endurance, weapon selection, and speed. Depending on the nature of a specified mission, you’re going to have to choose a ship that befits a nasty-ass sub aqua pilot like yourself.

One of the things I distinctly remember about Aquanox is that the visuals were absolutely splendid; after all, it was one of the first games optimized for GeForce 3 graphic cards. The variety of colorful and highly-detailed textures made objects in the environment look great both from a distance and up close. The models of the futuristic underwater vessels were spiced up with a huge number of polys and were meticulously designed, creating an impressive sci-fi look. This all worked pretty well due to the powers of Massive Development’s Krass engine. This time around the developers decided not to modify the engine since it pretty much delivered the potential they were after. What they meant to do in AquaNox 2: Revelation is supplement the Krass engine with a few new features so that they can portray the complex submerged settings of the game. Their priority is to expand the already well-known places of the old Aquanox and give players a chance to go deeper into uncharted territories. Currently the engine can handle ship models and background objects that have close to 10,000 polys. Plants located on the seabed are now greatly surpassing the number we saw in the last game - to be more accurate, 30 times the amount presented in Aquanox.

Unfortunately, the first Aquanox game had a few snags. Most of the gamers haven’t been completely satisfied with interface and map appearance, which is why Massive Development settled on reconstructing the GUI. The re-designed interface now offers the user a more straightforward approach, thanks to which orientation and navigation through the worlds of Aquanox will be a cinch.

The sound team working on the game plans to increase the quality of sound effects and put in a choice of brand new music themes. Tracks will be diverse, offering orchestral music themes, while on other occasions the melodies will shift to heavy sounds, a-la "Limp Bizkit" and "Linkin Park."

That’s all for now folks. JoWood Productions has clarified that the game will most probably arrive this autumn. Also, you should note that Aquanox was one of the Germany’s best-selling games last year, which can certainly portend reasonable success of AquaNox 2: Revelation. Hm, as a wise person once said: "Difficult to see the future is..."