World of Warships Legends brings 2015 PC naval warfare game World of Warships to consoles. We sat with two developers from Wargaming at Gamescom 2018 for a hands-off demo of an early build of the console version.
The development team, led by Danny Volkov, is working on Legends with the consoles gaming experience in mind. The result – smaller 9 vs. 9 naval battles instead of the 12 vs. 12 ones on the PC version. They take place on smaller maps and closer starting positions.
With these changes World of Warships: Legends will offer us action-packed battles that are faster and tighter than those in the PC version.
Although World of Warships Legends uses the same graphics engine as the PC version, it features some vast improvements over the original version. Visual effects like the reflections of light on the metal hull of the battleships, the water and more will noticeably look better in WoWS Legends.
As with the majority of online games, cross-play between the different consoles is not available at the moment. There is no technology barrier preventing cross-play feature, or so claim the game dev team, which leaves us with a big clue about the real reason why this feature is absent.
The ships in Legends can only be scaled up to Tier 7, while the legendary vessels will become available later on (no specific date was mentioned). Aircraft Carriers are also missing from WoWS Legends, and the dev team says there is still work to be done before enabling them on the console version. The in-game currency earned from battles will be used to upgrade your ship and for buying modifications.
Aside from ships, at the beginning of each battle, you’ll be able to assign a commander whom you’ll be fighting alongside with. There will be six different commanders to choose from for each fleet, all based on real historical figures. Each will have a unique perk set, giving you some advantage in the battlefield. Commanders can be upgraded to unlock new abilities, and the devs recommend players to have more than one commander upgraded at all times. That way, they will be able to utilize different perks for different situations.
At first, the game will only have USA and Japan fleets with battles taking place in the Pacific ocean. The German fleet will be added later on and with it new European maps.
The HUD gets a complete overhaul in World of Warships Legends, enabling better gaming experience for the console players. Aim assist was also added, and once your cannons are locked on an enemy ship you get an auto zoom effect, and the trigger sensitivity is automatically reduced to give you better aim.
At launch, Legend will have the same content available as its PC counterpart. Some of the ships will go through small modifications for a better fit for the consoles game experience, but these will arrive later on. Currently, the game’s PC version remains the same, and none of the changes we saw in Legends will affect it.
World of Warships Legends is at the closed alpha stage, running only on the Xbox One at the moment. PlayStation 4 Alpha should start around September.
The dates for public alphas or betas are still unknown, and there’s no way to sign in to any future tests on the game’s website. We will keep you updated as soon as they become available.
World of Warships Legends is planned for release somewhere along 2019.
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