14 DAY TRIAL // The game label of Koch Media, Deep Silver, released today a development video for the fantasy RPG Risen, just short of 10 minutes offering insights on the game from Piranha Bytes. The interview features project director Björn Pankratz and game designer Mike Hoge, and details the concept art, background story, open-world exploration gameplay and why the hero of the game remains unnamed. It also details the cultural localization of the English version.
The humor of Gothic I was very well received by the international gaming community and those who didn't explode in laughter at least at one point in the game are a true oddity. But it seems like the German version of the game employed the humor and cultural baggage specific to the German developers and the specific area that they inhabit. This gave the aforementioned version a much more personal touch and the German speaking players were offered an extra treat from it. In Risen, developers hoped to fix the gap brought by the cultural transition and employed Andrew Walsh to properly reproduce the dialogue in English.
The game unfolds over four chapters and takes place on a volcanic Mediterranean island, during a fictional medieval period. It will allow the player to shape his own destiny, his fate being decided by the actions and decisions that he will take during the game. Through the full world streaming support, the game will drown the player in the detailed – not only graphically but also culturally – world of the game. The innovative and intuitive interface it offers is meant to appease both the veteran gamers but also the newcomers to the genre.
Similar to the Gothic series that shares the same developer company, Risen received the support of a new publisher and hopefully will avert the fiascoes that the JoWood titles sparked. The Gothic games, all without exception, were amazing, with an original story, unique atmosphere and addictive, rewarding gameplay. But, forced to respect the schedule publisher JoWood imposed, they were all released in an incomplete form, as they suffered from serious gameplay and visual bugs that forced players to muster every ounce of determination to not abandon them.