Recently NCSoft revealed some details of their mysterious work in progress known only as Project M.  The game is confirmed to be a MMORPG called Blade & Soul, but the system that will support the game is the topic of some speculation. 

An amazing video was released to the public displaying the game’s graphics.  To be honest, judging from the quality of the graphics, they could never be for the XBox 360.  That leaves PC or PS3, or possibly both.  A recent interview with NCSoft’s president Chris Chung seems to suggest that the game will appear on the PS3.

Gon Race	Blade & Soul’s character designer is the famed Hyung-tae Kim, who also designed for the PS2 game Magna Carta.  His style is characterized by… healthy looking women in tight clothes.
Jin Race	According to a recent press release there will be 4 races.  So far the confirmed races (according to the press release and video) are Jin and Gon.  Jin are basically human, Gon are human-like characters with white hair which tend to be more tall and muscular.  There also seems to be a small rabbit-eared race in the art at the top of this article.

Each Race will have 2 jobclasses, right now we only know of about three.  The Jin appears to have both a standard swordfighter, as well as a class which has levitating blades that surround the character.  For Gon I only noticed the jobclass which uses metallic fists to fight.

The game appears to feature PVP, standard MMO monster hunting, and parties of up to three people.  PVP battles seem very intense, and focus on martial arts, which is what the designers intended.  The complexity of PVP battles seems to further suggest that the game will be for PS3 rather than PC.

Some Intense PVPing

Other features worth mentioning are how players can run swiftly across walls–a really cool feature that will make for some interesting gameplay elements.

I was also quite shocked to see that when a player is hit with an especially strong attack, they are knocked back quite a bit.  It also seems that players can take advantage of when a player is knocked down.  Perhaps this means okizeme will affect combat like in fighting games.

If you frequent my blog you’ll notice that this is the first time I have talked at length about an MMORPG.  That’s just how exciting I think this game is.  If I could shed off all the responsibilities of a normal life, I might consider signing up for Blade and Soul once it’s released.