Amazon Games has targeted MMO production and publishing in a huge way. Leveraging the pulling power of Twitch to promote its titles, both Lost Ark and New World broke records on Steam and were, for an admittedly short-lived period of time, two of the largest games in the world. Blue Protocol is Amazon’s next offering - the upcoming anime MMORPG has diverse class customization and a smooth action combat system up there with the best in its genre. Developed by Bandai Namco, Amazon Games are handling the publishing of the game in the West following the release of the game in Japan in early 2023. I have no doubt that this will be another massive launch for Amazon.
During a hands-on event in London, I got a chance to play through various areas of the game - including some open-world exploration, the character creator, and a group dungeon. Playing as a Spellweaver, I utilized ice, fire, and various other spells from a slightly overwhelming list of abilities that I had barely a chance to dig into. It was clear from these detailed menus that character customization is going to be a massive part of Blue Protocol - crafting your build with extra modules, gems, and modifications. Mike Zadorojny, franchise lead for Blue Protocol, tells me that crafting a build (specifically your weapon) is a big part of the endgame experience.
Crafting does have elements of RNG, but unlike Lost Ark, this is not determined by a success or failure rate - but rather the affixes on your weapon or enchantments. While Zadorojny is a little vague around what changes they’d made between the Japanese version’s crafting RNG and cosmetic gacha systems, he did suggest that they’d made some “value-based” changes to how the system will work in the West. We could see a balance between New World’s purely cosmetic microtransactions and Lost Ark’s more pay-to-win elements, but we can’t be 100 percent certain on this until we can get a proper look at the full Western version of the game. According to players who’ve already experienced Blue Protocol on the Japanese servers, materials required to craft items can take anywhere between 30 minutes to an hour to acquire, and they are filtered through your everyday tasks in the game.
To step away from the microtransactions for a moment, I enjoyed a lot of the core features. The combat felt great, with clean animations and a dodging mechanic that proved important while dealing with stronger enemies. While the open-world felt quite empty at times, we were only playing with six machines, so there were only five other players running around at the same time. A world boss early on (a simple, level 5 pig) was impossible to kill by myself - but I’m sure that in the full release, there’d be enough players to take it down together. Zadorojny also lets me know that all resource nodes are client-side and that you can’t “steal kills” while grinding open world mobs, though I can imagine farming as a melee character might be difficult if everyone else is ranged.
We didn’t get to see much of the story during our time with the game, but based on a little digging, it’s around 40 hours long and can be completed entirely on your own. In fact, a lot of the content in Blue Protocol can be solo’d, and Zadorojny tells me that the game’s design is based on “seamless” social play, where your “goals align” with players as you encounter them in the open world. Coming from both Lost Ark and New World, where social play was restricted by a lack of a group-finder, this sounds refreshing - although we will have to see how it plays out in real-time.
Lastly, in terms of content parity between Japan and the West, it does take time to localize content. Ultimately, Zadorojny says they’d love content parity between the two versions of the game, but that it wasn’t always possible. What this does mean is that we might have a better idea about Blue Protocoll’s endgame by the time the Western release rolls around in 2024.