Okay, I lied, I didn't delete my Asmodian female and make an Elyos character like I said I would in my last journal entry. Instead I chose to level her up and become a Daeva. Let me tell 'ya, that was interesting even if I didn't know what exactly I was doing.

Imagine this: you've never watched Lord of the Rings trilogy before, since you live in Antarctica. One day you miraculously find a copy in the frozen remains of a dead penguin except it's in a language you can't understand. You watch it anyway and are astounded by the visuals, the action, and the music! How could you not be? They filmed it in New Zealand, one of the most pristine and unique inhabited environments in the whole world, the had top-notch actors and stuntmen, and the visual effects team were pros!

That's pretty much how I feel when playing Aion's Korean CBT3. I'm sorely missing out on the story, but Aion's "everything else" is so polished I can forgive it. The landscapes and soundtrack are amazing, the monster design too. Little details are everywhere and I don't miss a single one, though some of you more "hardcore" people probably will overlook them all. Let me make a little list...

First, this gigantic tree right after the first outpost, it's amazingly beautiful and the music that accompanies it is also. At night it glows. During the short "daytime" the water around it glows too. Judging by the incredible amount of life surrounding it, flora and fauna, I'd say it may be sustaining the local ecosystem all by itself. Detail? This is it, folks. Pay close attention to everything you see and you'll notice these things.

Second, the next zone's (forest) music will inspire you to pick up a banjo or flute and learn how to play it. It sports kangaroo/mountain-goat hybrids and lots of randomly spawned vegetation for you to practice your gathering skills on. Also, more details: ladders leaning up against trees, the same trees oozing fluorescent green sap you see in buckets in other areas (it must serve some purpose), lights hanging from trees, a sign with no names pointing the way on the path over a bridges, a tree growing out of the remains of a ruin, et cetera, et cetera.

The zone after that is more eerie and home to the second bindpoint (or third, if you count the newbie spawn as a bind point) but not a full-fledged town. Here you get more quests and even take on some Asmodian pirates who've made their home on a deathly beautiful "ghost ship". Now you have a choice to make: explore the Mau area (and run into a dead end, like I did) or go to the graveyard area and become a Daeva.

The Mau area reminds me of a oddly spread-out American Indian village (IRL such villages were normally very packed-together, the Mau like open spaces it seems), and contains a "Boss" mob guarding an Abyss gate deep inside a cave. I got all the way to the Abyss gate at level 8 by tagging along with a party I wasn't part of and blasting through a tunnel full of mobs I probably couldn't handle alone in such rapid succession. At the end I watched them take down the big bad mob (he didn't look too hard) but I couldn't follow them through the Abyss gate. I clicked it as hard as I could to no avail, the damn gate wouldn't let a noob like me through. So the Mau area is explorer's dead end at level eight, but there's still quests to complete in there so you shouldn't skip over it if you're going for completion. I recommend giving it a once-over before you head off to the graveyard, since the two areas are connected in a very subtle way that I thought was amazingly well-orchestrated. I'll show you later.

On to the graveyard area to meet my destiny! Just gotta trek past some panther-like cats first and...viola! Blood-red trees! Or are they blood-covered? Either way, remember this vista. It's the entrance to the graveyard area. You'll be seeing something very similar soon. Past this entrance lies a zone full of the most "different" zombies I've ever seen in my life. Most of us have a preconceived notion of what a zombie should look like. NCsoft pretty much threw that all out except for the general "living dead" part. You've gotta see it. Also, I figured out a quest wants you to read the gravestones and fight the ghosts of dead Asmodians that you summon by doing so, which was interesting to say the least.

There's two paths to follow in the graveyard zone. One leads to the Asmodian dude in a crystal who gives you your Daeva quest. The other leads back to the Mau area. If you follow that path until the end you're treated to this sight. See? An identical back door with a white tree instead of red. What are the developers trying to say? This is attention to details.

The second path, like I said, leads you to your past. You've gotta do some chores back in other zones before you can travel back in time, and the chores aren't as cool as gathering water from a pond and bringing it to a talking tree like the Elyos, but it's nothing bad. Just a little trek back (if you don't use your "teleport to bind point" skill) and forth, no big deal. Then the fun starts.

If you're not listening to the music when you enter the Abyss, you're missing the best techno-battle-rock-whatever I've heard in my life. Walk past your NPC comrads cheering your name, "Felicia! Felicia is here!", talk to one of them to activate the scripted flight sequence, and let yourself go to the guitar riff. Land on the rocky explosive fireball excuse for a floating island and kill four Elyos NPCs. That's simple as your past, stronger, self. Wait for the "Boss" Elyos commander to appear and then whip his ***! It's easy at level nine. All to a rockin' tune that's nowhere near the level of annoying the battle music is. If this is anything like the real Abyss I like it already!

But wait, what's this? In a cutscene the Elyos dude whips out a nasty electric combo and sends me sailing! No! This can't be true! Is this really my past? Lame! I was totally winning that battle, NCsoft! Oh well, the dude from the crystal shows up and asks me what I want to be: a Gladiator or a Templar. I pick Templar, because Felicia from Darkstalkers is a good girl who ends up being a nun in some endings (yeah, wtf catgirl-nuns, I know).

Now I'm given the option to go back to the old areas or go to Pandaemonium. Wow, this is a really hard decision...not. Pandaemonium, here I come!

...Alright, loading screen....

And...finished. Here I am! Oh, nice. Waterfall behind me, entrance to the city before me, steep mountains on every side with more waterfalls. Already someone with a cutscene to talk to. Wonder what it's about.

Cutscene starts, guy starts talking to me like he knows me, two guards run up and whip out their blades to attack me but he calls them off and explains who I am. Oops, they bow and go back to their positions. Guess I've got a reputation in this town.

Let's see, he tells me where to go to find the ringleader of this circus. Down and to the right about one block. A little ball of light with wings, a fairy perhaps, guides the way there just for me. That's cool. Ah, there's the main underground administration chamber. Let's just walk in and...what's this? Different music? Oh my. I'm getting goosebumps. That's some powerful stuff, like Daeva's Oratorio but for Asmodians and set to 11 on the scale of awesome. You've gotta hear it.

Now to talk to the leader. Cutscene starts, people are talking to each other about Felicia while she walks by and up to the leader. He says a few words, blesses and "knights" Felicia after she displays the ability to summon wings, and then the cutscene ends. My class skill-trainer/seller now has something for me, a choice between a one-handed sword, two-handed sword, or two-handed spear (I think). I grab the one-hander, I found a magic-infused sheild on the ground way back in level seven and I don't plan on dropping it until I find a better one (and there's skills that use it). The trainer offers me something else, a choice between two free skillbooks. Hmm, I pick the one with a level requirement that I already match. Who knows what skill it'll actually give me?

Alright, I'm in a hurry, business here is done. I'll come back later and check the city out more thoroughly, but for now I want to try out my wings. Let's head somewhere more appropriate to try them out. Back to the teleporter! He askes if I want to go back to my old haunts or new ones. New ones, please! He opens up a person-sized portal in the air and I jump through it. Ah, another loading screen. LONG DISTANCE TELEPORTATION will always do that, but walking from zone to zone is a seamless affair.

Now a new outpost, this one, appears as I jump out of a portal that spontaneously appeared in the air near the ground. A NPC directs me to the town's leader and his assistant who both combined have a total of ten or so quests for me! Yikes! Better get to work! But first I have to fly up and talk to the NPC standing on the gigantic floating rock that threatens to flatten the town if gravity actually meant something in this world. He tells me to fly around and kill the blobs of magic goo that are just floating in the air. I think it's magic floating goo-cruelty and it's 4:40am and I need sleep, so I take one last screenshot before I log out.

Here it is.

Alright, any questions kiddos?

Attached Files