Neverness to Everness’ Gamescom trailer makes me fear for the final product

As I am sure we all know, Gamescom kicked off yesterday to a tepid reception, I think it is fair to say. The best thing we saw was Yoshi-P. What we also saw was a gameplay trailer for Neverness to Everness, the latest in a long line of anime open-world gachas.

Whilst this video wasn’t that long, it did show off one big new addition: cars. Or at least some cinematics of racing. There was nothing that looked like actual gameplay to me, but it seems like there will be something for petrol heads. Whilst this should be exciting, it has me feeling quite the opposite.

Another wanabe Genshin Impact that will likely fail

We have seen a lot of these open-world anime clones trying to dethrone Genshin Impact, but nothing has achieved that yet. For me, the one that had the most potential was Wuthering Waves. I adored it, but unfortunately, I played it on launch and ran out of content fast.

That is the biggest problem with these gachas: not much to keep you engaged between updates. I unfortunately have the attention span of a squirrel in an acorn field. Neverness to Everness seem to be trying to combat any draught by stuffing in mechanics of every type, and that worries me.

We are being promised the chance to decorate our own apartments, run our own businesses, and now the opportunity to hit the roads of high-octane races. On the face of it, it sounds amazing, right? But I worry they are stretching themselves too thin with all these ideas.

Hotta Studio need to create their fully-fledged open world, and they need to put a unique spin on combat, which is where their development focus should be. Not making these little minigames that will no doubt be just surface-level activities that you get bored with in five minutes. All this new racing video makes me do is fear Neverness to Everness will be a watered-down product with multiple shallow activities, instead of a threat to the Genshin supremacy.