Today Nexon released a new video of its work-in-progress Mabinogi Eternity, which aims to convert the graphics of the ancient but popular MMORPG with Unreal Engine 5.
The video focuses on one of the game’s classic locations, the city of Dunbarton, which players will be very familiar with.
We get to see a full-fledged comparison with the visuals that have been radically refreshed, while still retaining the style and cartoony feeling and palette of the location.
The complexity of the models has been increased considerably, and the vegetation feels much more natural. The previously naked textures of the ground have now been covered in grass and flowers.
You can watch the video below.
If you’re unfamiliar with Mabinogi, it originally launched all the way in 2004 and it recently celebrated its 20th anniversary. Western gamers managed to get a taste only four years later, with the North American servers opening in 2008.
The game had 20 million registered players as of 2021 and is still going strong despite its currently dated visuals, so it’s not surprising that Nexon is investing in an overhaul to keep the interest alive.
The Mabinogi Eternity project was announced a while ago and doesn’t have a release date yet. If you want to see more than just environments, you can also check out a trailer released a month ago, showing the new character models.
Mabinogi is free-to-play with optional microtransactions and is currently available for PC.
Nexon is currently working on several games that have been presented at G-Star in Korea, including Project Overkill, The First Berserker: Khazan, and Gensei Online.