Blizzard Announces They’re Working On A New AAA Fantasy Survival Game Set in An All-New Universe
In a surprising reveal this morning, Blizzard has just announced that its working on a new game set in an all-new universe never-seen before. Blizzard’s last new game was Overwatch back in 2016, a completely new universe with rich characters and lore that was built around an arena shooter. Since then, the company has released no new games but only remasters of classic titles from before.
Not much is known about this game as it has somehow not leaked so far, giving a rarely-seen opportunity to Blizzard to announce its own project before leakers do it for them. Regardless, this new game is in early-development right now so don’t expect it to release anytime soon. Though, studio boss Mike Ybarra has tweeted that he has played many hours of the game already, suggesting it is ready in a playable state so perhaps Blizzard is already far in development of this title.
I’ve played many hours of this project with the team and I’m incredibly excited about the teams vision and the brand-new world it presents for players to immerse themselves in together. Join us to help make it a reality! https://t.co/pLhijX2Li9
— Mike Ybarra (@Qwik) January 25, 2022
But, along with the announcement also came several job listings to hire new talent for this project which means that the game is not that far in development after all. Blizzard is hiring on all fronts including art, design and engineering for this new survival game. However, this all comes amidst horrible allegations of workplace harassment, abuse, and discrimination with several employees protesting, unionizing or outright leaving the company, basically giving not the best impression that Blizzard is where you should come to work. Which makes it extra difficult to run to the company and become a part of the team for this new game.
Details on the game that shall not be named
That’s because it’s so new that it doesn’t have a name yet. What we do do know is that it’s a new IP with a brand new universe so expect new worlds, characters, stories and all that jazz. This will be Blizzard’s first-ever survival game since the company has largely focused on MMOs and RPGs up until now. The blog post announcing this game also mentioned that it would be cross-platform and will release on both PC and consoles. We even got two pieces of concept art showing off the game in its early form.
It looks like the game is set in a hybrid environment that uses both futuristic and ancient elements to construct the world, using a utopia as the foundation with technology added on top. This type of world-building is extremely common in games and Horizon: Zero Dawn is the most recent major game that adapted it. In the pictures above, it can be clearly seen that the world itself looks very typical survival RPG stuff with a hint of modernization stemming from the kids’ clothes and the bicycle in the first concept art.
This news comes a week after Microsoft‘s $70 billion acquisition of Activision Blizzard which means that this is technically the first new Activision Blizzard game under Microsoft. Apart from this new title, Blizzard already has two games in the oven: Overwatch 2 and Diablo IV that are set to release soon. So, with that, now Blizzard is working on three new seemingly massive games at the same time that should all release relatively soon. Here’s hoping we don’t have to wait another five years for this survival fantasy.
