Risen 2 Weekend Roundup Post
I haven’t talked about it much on the site, but I’m also rather stoked about the upcoming open-world (or semi-open-world, at least) RPG from Piranha Bytes, Risen 2: Dark Waters. This is a direct sequel to their open-world medieval RPG Risen, itself a spiritual successor to the early entries in the Gothic series (which Piranha Bytes also crafted).
Where’s the interest for Ultima fans? Mostly in the people at Piranha Bytes. The German developer has made it clear, in the past, that their games are heavily inspired by the Ultima series, and they have more or less consistently tried to incorporate features in their game worlds that Ultima fans will find familiar. If you’re looking for examples of how to do NPC scheduling right in a 3D game, play something by Piranha Bytes.
Dark Waters is, granted, a bit of a different beast in that it fuses a Caribbean pirate flavour on to the typical medieval fantasy context. By all appearances, that will make for intersting results (imagine a game centered around Buccaneer’s Den).
As such, and because I do periodically report on the game on the site here, I’ve decided to start putting together weekend roundups of news, video, and whatever other material I come across related to Risen 2 and spotlighting its development.
Risen 2
The Making of Risen 2, Part 2.
This being the North American version.
Apparently, pirates (which the player will always start as) tend to be drunk “most of the time”.
Okay, so this one isn’t actually related to Risen 2 directly, but Rock, Paper, Shotgun’s collection of posts exploring the trials and pitfalls that befell them whilst playing Risen is still a worthwhile read as a primer for the upcoming pirate-themed game.
Didn`t play Risen but I played all Gothics from 1 till 3 (4 is not from Piranha). I heard that NPC shedules are not in Risen 1. Will it be in the second ? I am not sure. But crab from screenshot reminds me one of the monsters from Gothic.
Gothic is amazing. It truly gave me the Ultima feeling while playing PLUS a dark atmosphere. I will never forget the first time that I played the first Gothic… I wandered into the nearby woods & it FELT dangerous to be in there. The next thing I new, a wolf jumped from the bottom right of my screen directly onto my level 1 character, killing him & then proceed to go into an eating animation. I was HOOKED.
I felt the same way about Risen. There is some NPC scheduling. Characters hang out, cook food, forge things, sleep in their own bed, etc. I would say comparable to Ultima VII. In many ways, Risen felt like a remake of Gothic. I recommend it to anyone who likes Ultima or just a good rpg adventure.
I look forward to Risen 2. I haven’t been following it as I should so I hope that it has characters & connections to the first Risen (including ancient buildings that have mysteriously RISEN.)
Love how that dude’s keyboard looks like it’s from the 80’s, maybe an Amstrad or an Amiga. Not really, but one can imagine.
Also, Arrrr! I brought back three coconuts from Venezuela. U.S. customs is incompetent, it seems. They are small, in various stages of growth, and haven’t been skinned/harvested. Two still have their leaves. Will photograph extensively.
Ultima had pirates and the Avatar was often one of them, blasting fools on the high seas and taking everyone’s loot. Ultima should have had an equator and different climates north/south of it.
@SEVERIAN The crab reminds me of a mud crab from TES, but more aggressive looking. The guy with the sword looks like he’s about to get worked over and try to run away.
“I wandered into the nearby woods & it FELT dangerous to be in there. The next thing I [k]new, a wolf jumped from the bottom right of my screen directly onto my level 1 character, killing him & then proceed[ing] to go into an eating animation.”
That is the coolest thing I’ve heard recently. I haven’t played Gothic, but the phrase “eating animation” and all it invokes is pretty evocative of real horror.
AS Schythifuge mentionned, Risen had NPC schedules. They were actually much better than in Gothic 3 (where they felt broken and/or incomplete) and much closer to what we could see in Gothic 1&2
Risen is very much a Gothic 2 clone though, with some Pagan thrown in. Very neat game.
Risen 2 should be neat as wel, altough I’ll admit to some skepticisme to the piracy theme. Not that I mind pirates… but it doesn’t really feel like the same world at Risen at this point.
Glad to hear that shedules are in the game. I shouldn`t trust reviews so much. Sadly, Pirates of Caribbean RPG was canceled past year. So, there will be only one pirate RPG.
Well there’s the Two Worlds II add-on which was pirate themed as well, but I don’t know if this was any good or not.
[k]knew
Typos…constantly. I need to slow down & read before posting! It is a constant problem.
I just purchased & installed the Two Worlds II addon, though I have yet to play it. Between suffering with my water graphics for Savage Empire, I am juggling Fallout: New Vegas, Arcanum, & Rome: Total War. TWII is next along with Oblivion & Risen was actually reinstalled recently for a near future second playthrough. I do hope that the addon is worth it. TWII is fun though, better than the first one which was an addictive chore to beat.
Also, I should mention that Gothic II – Night of the Raven and Risen both had pirates in them. In fact, Captain Greg was very stereotypical of a classic pirate captain.
My (limited) understanding is that Risen 2 builds off of the pirates in Risen to some extent. The games are evidently set in the same universe, and Risen 2 might feature some characters & locales that will be familiar to those who played the first game.
That’s all rumor & speculation, of course, but none of it seems beyond reason or possibility.
Yeah there were pirates in.Gothic and Risen but they werent a central part of it. But most importantly thr world still feels.mostly medieval fantasy -a far cry from the focus on musket the sequel.has.
It feels to me Risen is going in this direction.simply because.they want to move away from.traditionnal fantasy rather that out of.logic from Risen’s setting. The biggest complain aimed zt Risen was that it felt too much like Gothic so my feeling is that they wqnt Risen to get its own identity now.
I guess this might also be relates to.the fact that the Gothic rights are soon coming back to them. Perhaps theyll wan to keept the medieval fantasy feel to Gothi. but then i cant picture Pb doing.both Risen abd Gothic. their studio is toobskall for this
well.see
Oh and as far as Two World goes I actually liked the first one.better heh
Regarding Two Worlds to expand a bit on it.
I’ve alway felt Two Worlds 1 was rather underrated. Or rather that it suffered from having been released in a terrible state (and a terrible console version to boot). However I played it a long time after its release, so it was patched and bug free by then and it was a very enjoyable experience to me.
It followed a design philosophy reminiscent of the Gothic series (though with a more open world approach), and altough it fell short on many aspect (pretty bad writing all around and terrible voice acting), it worked on the whole and did some very interesting stuff in spite of obviously cut contents.
Now Two Worlds II is a more polished game on the whole… it has some good stuff, but it just feel to me to be lacking compared to the first episode. I mean it feels lifeless – the town in TW1 had many generic NPC granted, but you could talk to them all. Here the towns felt like something out of Assassin’s Creed, with people moving around but with whom you can’t interact with – and i hate that in RPGs. And even the content I mean: Two Worlds had many more towns or village, and they all came with their sets of quests. Two Worlds II has but a few actual towns or village… hell the first main island has many villages, but most of them are empty and/or overrun by monsters. Hardly exciting stuff.
And the quests kinda lack appeal. I still have a fond memory of the beginning northern area of Two Worlds I where you have this ongoing conflict between the count’s men and rebels – and you can take sides and solve it in different ways. This felt good and involving. I can’t think of a single quest of Two Worlds II that felt that interesting.
Also TW1 had a crazy amount of lore all thing considered: whenever you talked to people you often learned a lot about the area or the mythology of the lands. Here, most of the dialogues feel minimalist.
And the plot is meh. Now Two Worlds’ was very basic (go get parts of the artefact, go kill bad guy), but it worked. They obviously try to do more here, but it feels very disjointed. And I’m still puzzled as to how it fits with Two Worlds – it feels you have missed an episode in between.
Oh and: worst end boss EVER.
Now I still think Two Worlds II was fun, but while I still keep very good memories of TW1, it feels to me TW2 is rather forgettable.
I was expecting something that would really improve on the good bases of the first episode but it didn’t really : it’s similar in many aspect (notably the hack’n slashy combat and loot, which is okay for me), better in some ways (writing, voice acting), but worst in other and generally felt he went in a very different direction that it just isn’t as fun as the Gothic-ish direction of the first game.
I’ve yet to try the addon, but I figure it’s gonna be more of the same. At leat it should be better than Fall of Setariff 😛