Nexon, the South Korean-Japanese video game developer and publishing studio behind titles like The First Descendant, has reportedly halted its work on a GTA-style open-world fantasy game codenamed Project EL.
The news (as machine-translated via DeepL and Google) comes from the Korean media outlet MTN, emerging mere months after Patrick Söderlund, CEO of Arc Raiders developer Embark Studios, was appointed as Nexon's executive chairman.
According to the report, Nexon has decided to stop development of its mysterious Project EL – a game described as a "fantasy-style GTA" of sorts, though little else is known about it.
Supposedly, Project EL was meant to stand as an open-world adventure game, with director Shim Ki-hoon – mastermind behind mobile MMORPGs like Alliance X Empire – at the helm of production.
It kind of strikes me as, perhaps, a GTA 6 meets Crimson Desert-esque experience or something, but I suppose we'll never truly know, seeing as Nexon has axed its development. Apparently, though, work on Project EL was in progress for about two years.
That's not a short stretch by any means, with a significant number of developers now on standby, reportedly, while seeking internal reassignment.
There's no telling what will happen with Nexon's other projects in the meantime, but there's talk that Söderlund's new position as executive chairman could affect how the studio is doing things – games and devs' specific roles within the company included. But it's hard to know for certain.
This is all via machine translation, after all, and some of it does lean a bit into speculative territory with Söderlund – but news of the GTA-like fantasy project's cancellation seems pretty solid… and disappointing.
I can't say I'm a big Grand Theft Auto stan myself, but something about the thought of Rockstar Games' unique open-world flair in a fantastical adventure title is admittedly quite exciting.
