At RuneFest this weekend, RuneScape Developers Jagex have announced that the marathon running MMO series has a major new installment in the works. As an animated teaser reveals, a fourth RuneScape is currently in development, the first in the main series to take advantage of the carrier Unreal Engine. And speaking of animation, the news arrived in tandem with Jagex’s entry into the cross-media sphere, tapping popular streamer MoistCr1tikal to bring Gielinor to life.
“We could have kept it behind closed doors for much longer,” Jagex writes, “but in the end it didn’t seem very good to us. RuneScapeor entirely us… We want to rely on the best of the technological development that we have learned Dragonwildsand the best of community co-development that we have learned thanks to RuneScape And Old schooland apply those principles to something new. And of course, as RuneScape play, integrity and constant progression will be at the heart of our design principles.
Jagex says the new game is “still a few years away” but chose to give a sneak peek at its in-person festival in Birmingham. While the spin-off Dragonwilds runs on Unreal Engine 5, the main games used the in-house RuneTek engine, signaling a major upgrade for the charming, low-resolution world. It’s unclear whether this new entry, whose final title is pending, will use Unreal 5 or 6, with the latter expected to debut late next year.
The studio also emphasizes that the new game will also work in tandem with its current iterations. For most online games, this would seem like a lie. But RuneScape is the rare example of multiple concurrent games enjoying regular support from developers and fans. The return Old-School RuneScapebased on a 2007 version of the 2001 game, taking up most of the attention among the three current titles. The biggest question is whether players to want a version with a modern look, since the antiquity seems to be part of the appeal.
The new game wasn’t the only announcement from Jagex, which signaled plans to enter the popular cross-media space with an animated adaptation of RuneScape. The cartoon will be managed by Lyrical, the same studio behind How to blow up a pipeline, Assault and the next Transmitted by blood movie. As Transmitted by bloodLyrical will harness YouTube’s energy by hiring Charlie White, better known as drama columnist MoistCr1tikal, for the project.
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