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Neverness To Everness - Special Livestream Breakdown

433 View2025-06-25

NTE had recently hosted a special livestream for its upcoming closed beta test showcasing all the new things in it. The whole thing is nearly 50 minutes long so I'll be putting all the things they announced in here in a nice and simple form.

Starting of with:

Visual Upgrade Showcase

First area

Second area

Third area

Fourth area

Fifth area

Sixth (and the last) area

They've also specified that they added a bunch of stores like furniture stores, gift shops etc. Then they also said this:

"Through the use of technologies like Lumen Global Illumination..." and I'll cut them off there, because one thing we do know about Lumen is that it causes a big dip in performance when compared to traditional lighting methods. While it makes sense in games like Fortnite where every building is destructible, it makes no sense in this sort of game. So what does this mean? Well, you can't expect amazing performance for the graphics they'll be giving you. Should it be running well maxed out on a GTX 1080ti? Yes. But sadly because of Lumen (and probably other Unreal Engine 5 technologies) it's simply not gonna do so. This is also ignoring the visual "artifacts" caused by those kinds of technologies, but more on that near the end of the post.

Next up they've added some more districts to explore in this CBT, starting off with:

As the subtitles say, the New Herland District. They specify that it is full of headquarters of many companies. It is Hethereau's most prestigious financial center. Its sparked the most profitable and competitive anomaly hunter market.

Next up we have:

The Miguel District. It has the city's biggest scenery of nature and the tallest landmark buildings, which is why it is called the tourist paradise and the top place that citizens spend their weekends in.

Then they talk about the sightseeing routes in these new districts, where they show

the Nautili Tunnel where the player gets to enjoy the incredible underwater scenery.

Then they show the

Midas Arc Workshop where the player can purchase many types of Arcs and learn about the development and evolution of portable Arcs.

Lastly they talk about the

Private collection hall of the city's wealthiest family which displays their collection of anomaly treasures.

As for the Miguel District, they show the:

Hethereau's Skytower, and the

Caltrop Lake, which actually has nothing to do with caltrops.

Next up they talk about how all of this is amazing for people who love to take pictures which follows up into them showing off the new snowy weather.

This actually has a cool transition effect if it was raining prior to this, where the rain on the ground freezes into ice and snow. We can also see that the player and the NPCs leave (inaccurate) footprints when walking on the snow. Why does it leave a single and continuous mark as if we're a single wheel vehicle? No idea, but it just does. Additionally, driving a vehicle in this weather adds snow particle effects to the road but also affects the handling of vehicles, and it affects NPC behavior (sadly they didn't give any examples of that).

The snowy weather is triggered by some anomalies, or the player can just switch the weather to be snowy at any time once they unlock it by completing certain quests, even when as the developers say, it's "the middle of summer!".

They at the end also mention how they can see the snow build up on the roads, but I personally couldn't see it myself.

Next up they mention a lighting and rendering overhaul of the characters, but I really couldn't notice much of a difference, so I'll only put one comparison in here.

I should also probably mention it here that it appears that the amount of fan service is at least on par with a game like Zenless Zone Zero. If you don't know what that term means, it's essentially things like jiggle physics, etc.

Anyway, they specify that they improved the material effects on characters for fabrics, leather and metals, and that they overall increased the polygon count for the models AKA the amount of detail. The hair of the characters also now has more hair strands and details and a better sense of depth under lighting. They overall say that: "we also iterated on how characters perform under different light sources, and you will see how characters change under various lighting conditions.".

Next up they say that they have updated the look of some characters, but they don't give a side by side comparison this time so I'll skip out on actually showing it as most players aren't gonna see a major enough difference unless they see the changes side by side.

They also talk about the new characters:

Starting with Merula and they're a witch that has partially appeared in the previous technical test.

Then we have Hotori, the owner of Eibon. She has an undisclosed history. People who saw her before called her the Witch of Time so the developers focused on the concept of time when designing them. She uses an umbrella as her weapon, and her attribute is Cosmos. They are a close range character. Her ultimate attack not only changes her moveset, but also freezes everything around her, like a time freeze state, and also releases all recorded time segments which will be explained later. Using her skill deals damage to the enemy but also consumes her special time gauge. This will record all entry attacks dealt by teammates and the time segments of the skill. The developers also show that the time freeze effect has a special interaction when it's raining or snowing, where it will add "frozen" water droplets or snow flakes in the air, and release them making them drop to the ground once the effect runs out.

I know it's hard to show the water droplets being frozen with a still image, but trust me, they sure are not moving.

Continuing, we have Baicang, who is the captain of ETD-4 from the Bureau of Anomaly Control. Usually, he's laid-back and talkative, but reliable when it matters. His character attribute is Incantation. His Esper is an incantation power similar to Power Words, so he's designed around launguage and text elements. He uses martial arts combined with his Esper for mid-ranged attacks. His basic attacks can trigger different branching attacks and hitting enemies will generate Power Words. His skill also triggers different skill branches based on different inputs before casting which generates different Power Words. When he uses his ultimate, he turns the surrounding area into his domain which executes enemies with low health instantly. Previously generated Power Words will trigger effects in the domain based on the meaning of those words. Because he's the captain of ETD-4, when other ETD-4 members are active he will appear at certain moments to provide support in the battle.

Next up we have Hathor who is a member of Sterry Express. Her character attribute is Lakshana. Because her Esper is Lakshana, she's more skilled at martial arts than Espers of other attributes. The developers describe her moveset as agile, yet powerful. Her Skills and Critical Dodge attacks will provide her the buff "Express Delivery Power" when they hit enemies. Her ultimate uses her Esper to create thorns growing out of her body into her favorite motorcycle to hit the enemy with one big attack (who the heck came up with this????). After the ultimate she enters the "Emergency Delivery" state to attack (didn't explain what it does tho).

After this they explain that they have improved the combat controls, character animations (such as remaking some skills), monster attack detection, camera logic and scheduling adjustments. They also added Critical Dodge counterattacks and a Parry Attack mechanism which stops the enemy's attack and increases the energy needed for Fade In attacks

Next up they talk about how the animation for the player creation for this test are complete, and that the player can now choose the gender of the main character. Additionally, the "New Helios" incident mentioned in the previous technical test which is tied to the main character's story is now gonna be clearly explained.

Now onto the next chapter (and the one I really love), they've added a way to get the car of just an ordinary driving citizen, kinda how in GTA you can walk up to any car and throw out the person out of it. Unlike GTA though, here you politely ask the driver to give you the car.

Yeah I'm not kidding. You just walk up to the car, ask for the car, and they give you it without a fight. It's absurd(-ly funny). They also explain that the players do this with Mint's authority, and not everybody's gonna be cool with that. What happens then I feel like is best described by the developers themselves:

"So what happens if you get turned down for a requisition?"

"You can just rob them... I mean, you can just forcefully requisition it."

If you do this, attack other citizens, drive recklessly, use sidewalks as roads, shoplift and so on you will raise your Wanted level which is explained down below.

It has a scale of 3 stars. The first star causes police to spawn who just shoot what appear to be electric charge bullets. The second star also spawns flying drones that shoot mini explosives at you.

Additionally, Officer Whisker will join the security officers in pursuit of the player when their wanted level increases, and they will be harder to deal with than regular security officers.

Going back though, the third star, however we don't have a showcase of it, but they describe it as anomalies that are gonna be even more dangerous than Officer Whisker to punish the player. Getting caught by the police just gets you brought to the police station where you have to pay a fine and that is it. One of the attendee's also asks if they can run away, to which yet again I feel like is best described by the developers themselves:

"Ya... Well... ummmm... Do you have any other questions? Ask something we can actually talk about on stream."

Next up they talk about the new routing system. It shows the player where to go to reach a certain point.

They also mention how they added new passenger boarding animations and 6 new cars, 1 motorcycle and 1 scooter. Now I personally think we've already looked thru enough images at this point, so I'll just show the star of the show

The Initial D car. I even checked and it matches 1:1 with that car.

Then they also mention how the city will have many street racing teams and car clubs to challenge, which requires knowledge of the routes and picking the most suitable car based on for example the weather. There will also be an online mode for this test for racing challenges with other players.

They are also adding some new features and QoL improvements to the shop management system, like quick restock, wishlist, a new decoration placement feature and a new "Selection" minigame where the player has to make food for customers in a certain period of time for Fons rewards.

You can also earn Fons thru other ways like races, etc, but the developers recommend City Commissions to be the best way to do so. You for example can do a delivery job which they claim takes a minute or two which gives you a specific rating based on your performance which results in worse or better rewards.

They also announce that now there are 5 purchasable properties in the city, and you can now quick travel to them. Players can also collect anomaly furniture products with unique functions which can unlock special commissions with good rewards. The developers also express that they want to incorporate anomalies more into regular city life. They also announce brand new anomalies, which are: Octowpus, Sea Prisoner, Beat King and Saddy Teddy from which you can even earn an Arc which has that anomaly's power as a reward.

There is also a new story quest

and a new spin-off story.

They also added character bond quests, anomaly side quests and more.

Then they just flood us with a list of things they adjusted/added that they couldn't actually fit into the stream, but they aren't as important or they even repeat the earlier things they talk about so I'll just skip this part.

Finally, they do a Q&A section.

First question is about why the global CBT is PC only, to which they respond with the fact that the overseas market has a lot more models of phones and not all of them work well and they don't want to release a completely broken game and that currently they don't have enough manpower to deal with it. They also show a video of a phone (Snapdragon 8 gen 2 with 8+8gb of ram) running the game at 60 fps with some stuttering and some things appearing broken.

Now sadly it does appear that the crowd density is majorly decreased, so the most demanding part is heavily reduced on mobile.

Here we can see the incredible dynamic reflections running on mobile at 60 fps. Yeah that's right, despite what modern AAA games say where they require ray traced reflections, cheap and accurate reflections without ray tracing are also possible which I think is incredible.

Now it's the time for the elephant in the room that I mentioned earlier, and that being Unreal Engine's 5 technologies having visual "artifacts". This demo was the downfall of it all.

If you look at the car, I've marked the actual placement of the wheel with a V shape, and the indent of the ghost wheels with just an arrow. On the top of the car you can see the actual current placement of the car body and the ghost image of it marked by a line.

Here you can see the character model marked with a V shape and each ghost image of it with a line. It looks disgusting and despite of how much the developers talked about how they want the player to be immersed, things like these WILL take you out of the game. I don't know if maybe they are using something like TAA (temporal anti aliasing) and it can be turned off in the settings, but this looks atrocious. I seriously doubt it, but if someone at Hotta studio does read this post, please don't keep this ugly "make-up" on your game. It looks terrible and there are better ways to deal with this.

Anyway now that my rant is over, they end up driving a car which shows some things popping in suddenly, lag spikes and broken effects but I expect those will be ironed out or at least won't happen as often.

And just after my rant, they decided to shove AI into our faces with the inclusion of NVIDIA DLSS 4 and multi frame generation now being available in NTE, but what I want to look at is the framerate they show without DLSS enabled.

They are running the game with RTX off on a multi frame generation compatible GPU at 71 fps. Not only that, but based on the fact that they're running it at 4K, we'll assume that they're using the GPU that NVIDIA classifies for 4K gaming. So based on that, this is an RTX 5080 running the game at just 71 fps. Yup that's right, a near top of the class GPU with RTX off running the game at just 71 fps. This isn't Cyberpunk 2077 level graphics, this is just a gacha game with an open world city and it's running this terribly with RTX off. This is actually insane. Unless they are actually using a lower class GPU (which they aren't telling us which GPU they're using, we just kinda have to guess), this is just unacceptable, whether it be due to the lack of clarity of which GPU they're using or if this is the actual performance. Also to rub salt in the wound, they also say that DLSS 4 can "enhance visual quality and reduce latency", which for those who don't know is a complete lie, as no upscaling is ever gonna be better than fully real frames, and also the fact that frame generation actually increases latency.

Anyway the rant is truly over now, and continuing the Q&A part, the next question is why is the CBT only 14 days long, to which they respond by saying that they want to validate the gameplay loop, such as daily quests etc, which they expand on by saying that the players need to grind materials for character development etc. just as if they were playing normally.

Next part they transition to is probably the biggest dealbreaker of a lot of gacha games, and that being the gacha. The system in the game is called the "Scarborough Fair".

It indeed is just a board game. Alright now this next part I think everyone will want to hear right from the developers:

"The overall probability to obtain an S-Class character in a single roll is 1.88%."

"On top of this, any S-Class character obtained from limited banners will always be the featured limited character."

Yup, that's right. Not only is the S rank/5 star/SSR character drop chance very high when compared to other games (ZZZ 0.8%, GI 0.6%, FGO 1%, RAID: SL 0.5%), but there is no 50/50 when rolling the limited banner. Now, we don't know if maybe the player doesn't get a lot of rolls so it evens out, but the next parts are kinda interesting too. Only some A-rank rolls and below are taken up by Arcs. S-rank and some A-rank Arcs are only gonna be obtainable thru various gamemodes or purchased with special currency that is obtainable thru gameplay. So to add sugar onto the wound this time, one of the attendee's says this:

"So TL;DR, you won't miss limited characters, and yes, you can obtain the most of high-rarity Arcs just by playing?"

"Yes."

Finishing off, they also mention the start of the CBT, which is at 9 AM (UTC+8) on July 9th.