{"id":69403,"date":"2026-07-09T22:00:00","date_gmt":"2026-07-09T13:00:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/automaton-media.com\/en\/?p=69403"},"modified":"2026-07-09T18:10:16","modified_gmt":"2026-07-09T09:10:16","slug":"each-ability-feels-like-it-could-have-been-the-central-mechanic-of-its-own-game-we-ask-a-fellow-developer-what-makes-nte-neverness-to-everne","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/automaton-media.com\/en\/game-development\/each-ability-feels-like-it-could-have-been-the-central-mechanic-of-its-own-game-we-ask-a-fellow-developer-what-makes-nte-neverness-to-everne\/","title":{"rendered":"\u201cEach ability\u00a0feels like it could have been the central mechanic of\u00a0its\u00a0own game.\u201d\u00a0We ask a fellow developer what makes\u00a0NTE:\u00a0Neverness\u00a0to\u00a0Everness\u00a0so\u00a0impressive\u00a0"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

Earlier this year, Perfect World Games released NTE: Neverness to Everness<\/strong> (hereafter NTE), a free-to-play open-world action RPG where players track down and contain supernatural “Anomalies” scattered across an urban setting. The game comes with a colorful cast of playable characters who, beyond differing appearances and stats, offer unique abilities like gravity manipulation or skill copying, fundamentally changing the way combat and exploration play out. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

The title has also attracted attention for its vast cityscapes built in Unreal Engine 5 and reality-warping Anomaly scenes. Hoping to learn more about what makes NTE impressive from a technical point of view, AUTOMATON Japan recently spoke with Masahiko Nakamura, technical artist and head of Indie-us Games, a studio specializing in Unreal Engine development. In this installment, we focus on the technical ingenuity behind NTE\u2019s character abilities and visual effects. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u2014I believe one of NTE’s stand-out features is its unique character abilities, but was there anything that stood out to you technically in this respect?<\/strong> <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Nakamura:<\/strong> 
The signature abilities of the featured characters so far, such as Nanally’s gravity manipulation, Xun’s time stop, and Lacrimosa’s copy ability, have really stood out to me. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

I think these are the kind of core mechanics that, in any other game, would be considered the \u201cselling point\u201d which the whole game is built upon. And yet, in NTE, they\u2019re all introduced as individual abilities of specific characters. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

What\u2019s more, not only are features like these difficult to implement, but they also come with extremely high debugging costs. For example, Nanally\u2019s gravity control isn\u2019t particularly extraordinary in itself, given that Unreal Engine already has a Custom Gravity feature, but NTE’s world is packed with objects, and players have a great deal of freedom to move around. Once you start changing the direction of gravity in that kind of environment, it’s impossible to predict what all could happen. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

\n