Main cast: Arnold Schwarzenegger (King Aelstrom), Steven Pacey (Scaevola), Gabriel Luna (King Zimah), Arazou (Urda), Dana Haqjoo (Zimah’s Aide), and Carlo Rota (The Sorcerer)
Directors: Dave Wilson, Dominique Boidin, Léon Bérelle, Rémi Kozyra, and Maxime Luère
Wait… Arnold Schwarzegger is actually funny in this one, in the way that makes him appear human! Did they use AI to humanize his lines or something?
New World is Amazon’s very own massive multiplayer online role-playing game or MMORPG, and it’s been a middling game that hemorrhages players on a regular basis. It looks good, but one doesn’t have to play it long to realize a few things.
One, it’s made by people that don’t understand what makes an MMORPG “stick” with players, so there is no long-term content to retain players. Many players get bored very quickly, and they move on either back to World of Warcraft or to some other game, hence the constant hemorrhage.
Two, instead of actually adding “sticky” content, these people reboot the game a few times now but never addressing the key issues of the game with each reboot. Its most recent reboot is mostly a renaming of New World from MMORPG to action RPG, but without doing anything to make it an actual ARPG and adding a trickle of content that should have been there from day one.
Still, I suppose Amazon would insist that Secret Level will have an episode about its own baby, especially since it is paying for the show.
So here it is: New World: The Once and Future King.
King Aelstrom is out to conquer the world with his men, only to have most of his men killed in a freak thunderstorm while at sea. He and his loyal aide Scaevola are washed up at Aethernum, a place where no one truly dies… or leave. No matter, he sets out to conquer this place, by himself if he has to, only to be comically bested at every turn by King Zimah.
Well, folks that play or have played New World will know of Aelstrom and Urda as one of the first few NPCs they would encounter in the game, and this episode serves to explain why Aelstrom is called “the former king”. Indeed, this is a pretty cute episode that has all the right moments of levity and yet never outstays its welcome.
The moral of the episode can be quite cringe in how sentimental it can be, but still, at least this episode presents a coherent story with the right amount of closure, so I’ll take it.
Also, my goodness, the characters here are such an upgrade that one may boot up New World and then feel massive disappointment at how these characters look in that game. King Zimah, which I believe is a character created just for this episode, is a perfect mix of nerdy hot and dangerous hot, while I’m sure Aelstrom would find his way into naughty artworks featuring overly beefy men undergoing various sexual degradation acts.
I’m also bemused by some inadvertent meta elements in this episode, such as how bored King Zimah and his courtiers are because nothing is truly challenging or interesting anymore, just endless days and weeks with no challenge or variety because of how actions have zero to minimal consequences in this place. It’s like a reflection of how many players feel about the game!
Easily the best episode so far, if only because the bar has been set very low.
