PUBG publisher Krafton has revealed the first visual concept trailer for its unannounced RPG based on the acclaimed Korean novel The Bird That Drinks Tears by Yeongdo Lee. It's described as an epic-scale mature fantasy akin to The Witcher 3, and will be powered by Unreal Engine 5.
Krafton's new game has a working title - Project Windless - but this new trailer lacks a launch window and the exact name. Regardless, we get a cinematic glimpse at Krafton's newest game's world, featuring talking disembodied heads, ghosts fighting in the woods, and a grizzled protagonist at the centre of it all.
That's Kagan Draka, also known as the Nhaga Slayer, who happens to be a monster hunter just like Geralt of Rivia. The footage also offers a brief look at Unreal Engine 5-powered visuals, including a taste of this conflicted world and its unique characters.
The clip was inspired by the concept art of design director Iain McCaig, who has worked on Star Wars and Marvel movies, among his other projects. The team has spent over two years creating the overall aesthetics for the game's environments and its inhabitants. The prime focus is "to expand the epic scale of "The Bird That Drinks Tears" into the gaming world."
What's most intriguing here is that you probably won't find any western-inspired fantasy creatures like elves, dwarfs, and orcs, as all living beings in the novel are inspired by East Asian folklore, including the Nhaga we saw in the trailer. Despite this, the Korean team looks up to The Witcher 3 - which was based on the novels of the same name by Polish author Andrzej Sapkowski - aiming to offer its own vision of a dark fantasy monster slayer.
As for the next Witcher game, it's already in development at CDPR, the project will also use Unreal Engine 5 instead of the studio's own REDengine previously used in The Witcher 3 and Cyberpunk 2077. The upcoming title will kick off a new saga that will include "more than one game."