Last week, we reported on NetEase officially revealing Project Mugen’s real name as Ananta. At the time, we had assumed, as we believe many others did, that this was NetEase’s take on a gacha style RPG, like miHoYo’s Genshin Impact and Zenless Zone Zero. As it turns out, NetEase was trying harder than that.
As reported by Gematsu, NetEase and developer Naked Rain have released their real official announcement trailer for Ananta, and the developers definitely wanted us to know that they’re making a completely different animal. For one, some clips from this trailer look like they were cribbed from the Grand Theft Auto 6 trailer.
Given the huge differences between the two games, though, this doesn’t look like plagiarism or laziness, as much as it is very on-the-nose, tongue-in-cheek, parody. Ananta’s Nova City looks nothing like Vice City, and that’s what makes this attempt to invite those comparisons genuinely funny. There’s a silly Spider-Man reference in there too, if you want to check.
But it doesn’t stop there. To quote the official description:
“In ANANTA, players take on the role of an elite Agent within the A.C.D. (Anti-Chaos Directorate) embarking on an exhilarating adventure through a world that breaks all the rules. Nova City has plunged into Chaos, from spooky paranormal phenomena to toilets racing through traffic in the streets, the game promises to offer a unique blend of humor, adventure, and mystery.
Players will meet a variety of interesting characters, jump into exciting combat, solve challenges and safeguard the balance by overcoming threats to humanity, all while enjoying unparalleled freedom to traverse and discover Nova City on a journey to find out who you really are.”
Developer Naked Rain cites a variety of locations and the combat system, just like what miHoYo’s games have. But the Ananta trailer also promises a lot of side activities, which evoke more comparisons to Yakuza/Like A Dragon than anything else. So far, its implied you can travel in different ways, including what appears to be a hovercraft Segway, take a trip to the beach, party in a rave, play basketball, and most exciting of all, go to the gym.
If nothing else, we’re thankful Naked Rain didn’t use any aggressive descriptors like post-apocalyptic or cyberpunk for Ananta. We’re going to risk our reputations here and wager that we can describe this game as science fiction parody, since it isn’t trying to follow anyone’s rules too hard. This trailer makes the game look so much fun it’s certainly a shame we can’t just drop $ 60 to have the whole thing in a disc or cartridge, but it just might be enticing enough to get some gamers into gacha for the first time.
Well, we’ll see if it can deliver on what it promises, but in the meantime, you can marvel at this very well made Ananta announce trailer below.
