Otherland trailer surfs realities, fights lizards

After initially reading this as "Otterland" I was always going to be slightly disappointed when this trailer on Evil Avatar turned out not to show a gritty RPG about a band of armoured otters. In fact, it's another bemusing, violently colourful video for the upcoming MMO based on Tad William's Otherland novels.

The books explore a future in which virtual reality is part of everyday life. Citizens spend much of their time as avatars, building their own virtual spaces and exploring the creations of others. These can take the form of be gleaming futuristic cityscapes, medieval castle grounds and sweeping green landscapes full of floating chess pieces, for some reason.

The trailer even mentions that we'll be able to create our own virtual spaces in Otherland. This will be done using eDNA, which can be collected from monsters and objects in each VR environment. We have no idea exactly how any of this will actually work. There are scant details on the Otherland site , but there are a few nice images showing off the different virtual environments we'll get to explore and, hopefully, create.

Tom Senior

Part of the UK team, Tom was with PC Gamer at the very beginning of the website's launch—first as a news writer, and then as online editor until his departure in 2020. His specialties are strategy games, action RPGs, hack ‘n slash games, digital card games… basically anything that he can fit on a hard drive. His final boss form is Deckard Cain.