Martial arts MMO Swordsman Online has received a new trailer that shows of the game's colourful Chinese locations, and reveals the story background for player characters.
Kung fu poses? Check. Jumping about on roofs? Check. Pretty landscapes bursting with colour? Check. Okay so the story sounds like the usual guff about secret relics, chosen ones and deadly bands of assassins, but Swordsman is looking like a welcome change of pace from the over-familiar elf/dwarf/orc axis of fantasy MMOs.
The game is based on author Louis Cha's novels set in the Ming dynasty era, and is being published by MMO veterans Perfect World, who have a roster of approximately 600 billion licensed massively multiplayer games at this point. It's out in China already, but is shortly coming to a Western audience in familiar free-to-play form.