Most significant changes to Aion
One of the most significant changes to Aion in version 2.5 is the major update to the game’s graphic engine. For those of you who felt their jaws drop when watching the Aion “Visions” trailer, version 2.5 will bring the game one step closer to that “vision” for the game, and you can expect Aion’s graphical fidelity to look just like it did in the “Visions” trailer, though Sean did emphasize that these changes will not be mandatory for players, so those of you who running the game on your toasters can be at ease. Think of the graphics update as being similar to City of Heroes’ “Ultra Mode”, you’ll be able to turn it on if your system can handle it, but you don’t have to run it if your system isn’t quite up to par.
I asked Sean if the changes would permeate to the game’s already robust character create system, and this provoked a pretty excited answer to the affirmative. Characters will be much more expressive and lifelike, perhaps even creepily lifelike. Sean went as far to say that while Aion currently offers players hundreds of millions of options with the existing system, they are confident they have added “hundreds of millions upon hundreds of millions of options” more with the changes coming to character create.