Ananta Gameplay: Combat, Character Switching, Multiplayer and No Gacha, From the Gamescom 2026 Previews

Ananta’s gameplay combines Spider-Man-style swinging, brawls fought with whatever is lying around, cinematic chase missions and GTA V-style character switching, and every character is unlocked through the story rather than a gacha. That is the picture Arekkz Gaming pieced together on 22 September 2026 from the Gamescom 2026 hands-on previews and from interviews the game’s director gave IGN and the Japanese site GamePress.

Ananta launches on 15 January 2027 on PC, PS5, iOS and Android, and the only people who have played it outside China are journalists who tried a guided demo in Cologne. So this page keeps three things apart: what the developers said, what previewers reported, and what Arekkz Gaming make of it. Every screenshot below is pre-release footage shown in their video, with its timestamp.

Ananta gameplay: what the Gamescom 2026 previews and interviews told us

Arekkz Gaming’s video runs 8 minutes 36 seconds across nine chapters. The table sorts what they cover by how solid it is. “Developers” means the director or a producer said it on the record; “previews” means a journalist described it after playing. Nothing in the last column has been answered by NetEase yet.

Topic	What was said	Source	Still unknown
Gacha	Characters unlock for free through the story; money comes from skins and cosmetics	Developers	Shop prices
Public beta	No large global beta so far, another test not ruled out	Developers	Whether a test happens before launch
Multiplayer	Part of the plan	Developers	Co-op or PvP, how many players
Demo	About 45 minutes to an hour for IGN, in short guided segments	Previews	The normal pacing of the game
Combat	Telekinesis on objects, disarming enemies, attacks per weapon type	Previews	Depth of the skill system
Missions	Cinematic, with shooting, quick-time events and scripted set pieces	Previews	How many missions play this way
Switching	The camera flies across the city to the other character	Previews, footage	Limits or cooldowns
Length	Around 100 hours at launch	Developers	Story only, or everything

The last column matters. Most of what previews describe comes from a demo built to show variety, and IGN’s team said as much, in Arekkz Gaming’s summary at 3:34: they were moved from one slice of the game to the next, sometimes after a few minutes, and left unsure what a normal hour of Ananta feels like.

Is Ananta a gacha game? The three reasons the developers gave

No. Ananta has no character gacha, a point NetEase first made to Famitsu in 2025 and which our no-gacha explainer covers in full. What is new is the reasoning. In the interviews Arekkz Gaming quote from 0:31, the director gave three reasons.

1. Accessibility. Ananta is free-to-play on four platforms, and the team wants as many players as possible to start without meeting a paywall.
2. The story needs the whole cast. Every character matters to the world and the plot; if some could only be bought, the director said, the story would no longer feel complete. Characters unlock for free as you progress.
3. Money comes from appearance. Revenue will come from skins, cosmetics and other customisation, which the developers say will not affect progression or fairness.

That matches what producer Ash Qi told Famitsu in 2025, as Automaton reported: paid skins and limited-time content, no pulls. Arekkz Gaming call the route “pretty cool” and expect it to win over players who avoid gacha games, while pointing to Reddit threads worried it could alienate the people who do play them.

Does Ananta have multiplayer?

Yes, in some form. The developers now describe multiplayer as part of the plan, Arekkz Gaming report at 3:09, without saying what it will look like. Their guess is shared-world co-op, and they would love a cops-and-robbers mode like GTA IV’s.

Previews add a little. MMORPG.com described a multiplayer sandbox in the Gamescom build with the Captain, Taffy and Richie. Back in October 2023, lead producer Ash Qi told PCGamesN the game would have multiplayer components with “a strong focus on solo play” and that it is “not a MMORPG”, as Gamepressure reported. Expect a single-player story first, with shared play on top.

Why is there no Ananta public beta?

Because the team does not want you to see too much before launch. The director said repeated public tests end with players knowing most of a game before release, and compared it with older games, when nobody had seen every corner of a world online first. Ananta has been tested: NetEase ran an offline technical test in Hangzhou on 3 and 4 January 2025, and the community reported a closed beta in China in January 2026. Another test is not ruled out; the developers told players to wait for official announcements. Arekkz Gaming would still like a technical test, because only players can catch a major flaw early.

How does combat work in Ananta?

Previews describe brawling built around the environment, closer to the Batman Arkham games than to a combo-heavy action game.

The Captain, the protagonist, has an ability that works like telekinesis: grab an object from the street and throw it at an enemy. IGN mentioned drain covers flying during fights, according to Arekkz Gaming at 4:14, who compare the feel to Scarlet Nexus. You can also disarm enemies and turn their own weapon on them, and each weapon type has its own attacks.

Stealth exists too, though IGN’s description, as Arekkz Gaming relay it, made it sound simple. Skill trees, stats and how characters differ in a fight have not been shown, which is why our tier list ranks nobody until launch.

What are Ananta’s story missions like?

Cinematic, by every account. Story missions mix normal combat with third-person shooting, quick-time events and scripted action sequences, and IGN compared parts of what it played to Uncharted 4, Arekkz Gaming note at 4:42. The demo’s chase fits: the Captain shoots from a moving car while Lykaia calls out targets, then ends up under a truck in a button-prompt sequence. Automaton’s headline from the same show put it plainly: Ananta’s cinematic style and cityscapes “make it feel more like a full-priced AAA game”, despite being free-to-play.

Set pieces like this are what the demo was built to show off. How often the full game plays like Uncharted, and how often like an open-world sandbox, is something nobody outside the studio can answer yet.

How does character switching work in Ananta?

Almost exactly like GTA V. Open the switch wheel, pick a character, and the camera pulls up above the city and flies to wherever that character is. Previewers found them getting on with their own lives when it landed: talking to someone, standing around, or saying hello to a cat. Arekkz Gaming like it because the cast feels alive even when you are not playing them, and acknowledge the weekend of complaints on X that it looks lifted straight from GTA. It does.

The camera then settles on whoever you picked, mid-scene. In the footage Arekkz Gaming chose, that is Richie at work.

Switching is more than a camera trick, too. The same button can do different things depending on who you control, which is where traversal comes in.

Traversal: the Captain’s tendrils and Taffy’s bunny bike

The Captain swings through Nova City on black Chaos tendrils, and Arekkz Gaming say it controls much like Insomniac’s Spider-Man games. Switch to another character and that button changes: one character IGN played summoned a bunny bike on the spot, which Arekkz Gaming identify as Taffy, whose bike is her trademark in every trailer.

Driving, parkour and skydiving all appear in the footage as well. The open question is how different each character’s movement kit feels once the whole cast is unlocked.

Social media, influence and life-sim activities

Ananta leans on modern life. Like GTA VI, it has social media inside the game, but here you build influence as you progress. IGN asked whether that was meant as a critique of online culture; the developers answered that they are reflecting how young people live today rather than judging it, Arekkz Gaming report at 6:09.

The same idea runs through the city’s news. In-game bulletins report on what happens in the streets, like the headline below about a flying train.

Then there are the small things. Previews mention roasting tea by hand, and trailers have shown spas, sports, mini racing games and a gym.

How long is Ananta? Around 100 hours at launch

The developers say Ananta will have around 100 hours of gameplay at launch; Insider Gaming reported the same interview as “more than 100 hours”, alongside a plan to support the game for at least seven years. Nobody has said what the figure covers. Arekkz Gaming doubt it is the main story alone, because a studio would phrase that differently, and read it as story plus side content. If it were the story only, they point out, it would be enormous.

Arekkz Gaming’s verdict: too many ideas, or the right ones?

They compare the mix to Where Winds Meet, NetEase’s other big open world, recast as an anime GTA. Their conclusion is cautiously positive: the developers are making “a lot of the right moves”, but the best footage so far is over-the-shoulder capture from events, and a proper look at unedited gameplay is overdue. We read it the same way. The systems exist; whether they hold together for 100 hours is the question launch will answer. Until 15 January 2027, our PC requirements page and release date and pre-registration page cover what you can do now.