There are dragons, and you can ride them. It looks like you’ll be fighting them as well. A one-minute trailer doesn’t reveal much beyond that, but it shows that Jagex is working on something far larger than a routine update patch.
At RuneFest, its yearly convention celebrating everything RuneScape, the studio confirmed that a fourth major RuneScape game is in development. The project’s working title is RS4, and Jagex is making it in Unreal Engine.
More information is coming next year, according to Jagex. Until then, fans only have the trailer, which leaves most of the storytelling to the dragons.
The existing games aren’t going anywhere
Old School RuneScape players with thousands of hours logged don’t need to worry. RS4 won’t replace RuneScape, Old School RuneScape or RuneScape: Dragonwilds. It will run alongside all three.
In Jagex’s words, the studio is “designing RS4 to sit alongside them as an additional way to experience RuneScape and the world of Gielinor.”
That makes sense for a community so loyal to its preferred version of the game. (The original split that gave birth to Old School is something nobody wants to go through again.)
It began as a smaller project
The new MMO is still set in Gielinor, but the story moves forward to the Sixth Age, years after RuneScape: Dragonwilds. Players will begin in Ashenfall, a region first introduced in Dragonwilds, which was Jagex’s first step into open-world survival.
There’s also an interesting backstory. RS4 reportedly started out as a Dragonwilds expansion called Shadows of Ashenfall. As development went on, it began to resemble Jagex’s earlier MMOs more and more, so the studio changed course and made it a standalone release.
Don’t expect to play it soon, though. Jagex hasn’t given a release window and calls it a “hugely ambitious project and the game is still a few years away.”
A show to fill the wait
Jagex also revealed a RuneScape animated series. Lyrical Animation is making the show together with YouTuber MoistCr1TiKaL.
The series is still early in development, and more details are expected next year. That gives RuneScape fans two projects to look forward to, though the one with the dragons won’t arrive for several years.