NetEase Connect 2021 Summary

NetEase, the Chinese publisher behind a whole bunch of mobile games including Onmyoji have had their first ever (in English) worldwide NetEase Connect, and here’s what they talked about.

After half an hour of the same few trailers over and over, for Infinite Lagrange, Identity V, and LifeAfter, we were introduced to Daniel and Esra from IGN Japan. They started things off by talking up NetEase Games and how they liked some of NetEase’s licensed games. Eventually, thankfully, they kicked into the first trailer.

Unfortunately, it was Infinite Lagrange again. However, it was an expanded trailer compared to the one we’d just been watching on repeat. Nevertheless, it was still just a black & white cinematic, not showing off the gameplay itself. At least it had a different voice actor. It ended saying that it would release in 2021, though it is already available in Europe.

Daniel and Esra “bantered” a bit (it was painful to watch and completely inorganic) before talking about Onmyoji: The World. We were treated to a cinematic trailer for this RPG spin-off to Onmyoji, which sees you fighting yokai. It introduced us to some of the characters involved, rather than just a general world overview, as we saw marionetes attacking the king, which was fun!

Next up was Frostpunk: Mobile, a mobile entry to the Frostpunk franchise. Weirdly, other places call it Frostpunk: Rise of City, so I’m not 100% certain on the proper title. We heard from Luo Chao AKA Charles, the product manager for the game. He spoke about the snow technology which they have created, as a trailer showed some people moving through the deep snow clearing a path and the snow around a building melting. The game will see you making hard choices, such as who to save, as well as how to expand your city. Deploy workers, make laws, explore the world, save animals, and survive disasters such as tornadoes! Jakub Stokalski, of 11 bit studios the developer behind Frostpunk, then talked about how he’s happy to be working with NetEase but didn’t really go into anything more. No release date was given.

Then we saw a bit from Vikingard, but it was basically an animatic with fewer moving parts than Infinite Lagrange had. It was only a few seconds long, so the only information we were given was by Daniel and Esra. There will be a lot to do, including invading places, setting up a village, dealing with the laws… They also specifically mentioned holding weddings not once, but three times. There will be a soft launch in June.

A bit of a longer trailer, Lost Light showed off a short cinematic (with a jagged framerate) before showing some gameplay. It is a looter-shooter, or looter-sneaker if you prefer to keep hidden, with a player-driven economy. They didn’t really explain that bit. The voiceover explained that the weapons and equipment are based on real things, as it’s set in the near future, and you can customise your weaponry. They wanted to go for a somewhat realistic war experience, with survival elements. If you get shot enough to be downed, you can send out a distress signal, which will let other players find you to either help you, or finish you off and take your stuff. If they help you, it will form a temporary squad, so you can team up for a while. Lost Light is currently in soft launch in some areas.

Then we were shown the one game that I was interested in seeing more of: Racing Master. Sure, I’m not a racing game fan, I just wanted more information on the NetEase-Codemasters cooperation. There was a cinematic trailer which showed some of the great looking cars - from what we’ve seen so far it could have been in-engine to be absolutely fair. Then we had product manager Bo Zhang talking over some gameplay, followed by Toby Evan-Jones and Clive Moody from Codemasters, who talked about the cooperation a little. Racing Master runs on Codemasters’ EGO engine, as well as Unreal Engine 4, and to smooth things along people from NetEase visited the Codemasters offices, and visa-versa. They plan to have a testing phase at some point this year, but didn’t give an estimated timeframe.

Next up was a highlight reel from the recent beta of Naraka: Bladepoint, a 64 player battle royale. There wasn’t any new information, they just went over how the beta had over 1 million players, and explained that it’s a melee battle royale with magic powers. It’s coming this Summer.

Then we heard about an update to EVE Echoes, called Exploration. It was a trailer that showed nothing, but hinted that there’s a storyline behind it.

The next trailer was for another game that’s out already Identity V, a 4-v-1 survival game like Dead by Daylight. The trailer was only a teaser, and I was glad when Daniel and Esra explained afterwards - it was for a Death Note crossover event! It will bring new stuff to do, as well as allow you to wear costumes from those characters. They also talked about how NetEase is making some esports events around this game, but I was super distracted by the stale chemistry between the two, while Daniel pretended to write Esra’s name in an actual Death Note journal.

Having recently celebrated its second anniversary for worldwide players, we heard about LifeAfter next. Xiao Chen, lead producer, talked over some cinematic footage and stills of the game, talking numbers. LifeAfter has had over 200 million players, they have built this much road, added this many letter boxes, etc… The numbers went past too quickly for me to write them all down, I’ll admit. Then Chen talked about how Year 3 had a big update to make the world more realistic, and teased an expansion called Reborn, hinting that it will bring a new enemy type. Then to finish things off, after saying how realistic things in the game were, he told us about the new Kong vs. Godzilla event, running in-game right now. Since the game has had crossovers with Resident Evil, Ghost in the Shell and Attack on Titan before, long time players likely wouldn’t have been as surprised as I was.

Following that was a short trailer for Astracraft and its Ride to Arms update. It’s a game where you create mecha and vehicles, and work together with friends to blow up your enemies. I’m not sure how much of the trailer was new, however, as it didn’t tell me what was already in the game.

The penultimate trailer showed off Badlanders, an upcoming looter-shooter with first and third-person modes. The trailer went out of its way to emphasise the money-making aspect of things. It will see you entering a map, killing and looting people, then escaping with the loot to sell. It wasn’t clear whether these were other players, or not. The idea is to sell what you get to other players using the in-game auction house. There is a beta test available now.

Finishing things off was Project: Ragnarok, billed as a strategy mmorpg based on Norse lore (obviously). However, the footage shown appeared to be third-person action rather than strategy? There was a warning saying that the footage shown wasn’t the final product, but then Daniel and Esra talked about how they liked the look of being able to ride a troll into battle. They also said that there are PvP and PvE raids, a guild system, and that it will be free-to-play and cross-platform across PC, iOS and Android.

And then things finished, cutting off Daniel and Esra while they said that was it.