Drakensang: TDE - A Closer Look Video

[Olivoist]

I confirm Drakensang: The River of Time is 4$ on Groupees (with the option to give more for charity NGOs !?) for the redeemable Steam version.
In that sweet 4$ bundle there's a bunch of other games, some of them RPGs, and even music.

https://groupees.com/bm18

Runs for another day and a half.

Apparently the game is not visible on Steam's catalogue outside of the US but it definitely works when redeemed with this bundle.

 

[Donkerman]

There's also forest of doom in there which I read when I was a kid, pretty cool gamebooks back in the day. This is of course a digital gamebook which is even better, no need for dice falling of the table.

 

[BrianOConnell]

Yeah seems to be some regional restrictions for these games on steam. I had the same problem 2 years ago and grabbed the complete edition from amazon with both games on it.

Thoroughly enjoyed the first game and haven't gotten around to the second one yet despite most of what I've read saying it's the better game. I like the world and the graphics are great for 2008. I found the Dark Eye rules interesting enough to seek out an english rule book all be it second hand and pricey. Very difficult to find english versions of the Dark Eye stuff. The only other two are World of Aventuria and Secret of the Blue Tower and Witching Hour. Again only available second hand and pricey.

 

[Alrik Fassbauer]

My dislike had nothing to do with pacing. It was just as I said, a dull character system without toys and things to look forward to.

TDE is never meant to provide the player with "toys" - unlike (A)D&D.

And the story might appear dull - because you all fail to see the "bigger picture" - and you fail to see it because Ulisses, the TDE license holder, never cared about vbringing it to you.

What you actually did at the end of Drakensang 2 was to destroy one of the most dangerous threats that had been lurking around for millennia. Yes, for millennia.

If Malgorra had suceeded in the end - and that was her long-distance plan - to get Pyrdracor back into life, then this would have meant destruction for most of Aventuria. against this, Borbarad would have looked like a child playing in a sandbox.

 

[Alrik Fassbauer]

I found the Dark Eye rules interesting enough to seek out an english rule book all be it second hand and pricey. Very difficult to find english versions of the Dark Eye stuff. The only other two are World of Aventuria and Secret of the Blue Tower and Witching Hour. Again only available second hand and pricey.

I have been asaking at Ulisses whether TDE 5th edition might get translated into the English language - and ranted there about the non-existence of English-language material.
If you want to discuss there as well - you need to register first, and it is normally in German language - here is the link of where I asked : http://www.ulisses-spiele.de/forum/viewtopic.php?f=59&t=7637

 

[Alrik Fassbauer]

Maybe you are not much into low fantasy? There is not much in terms of "toys and powers", especially at starting levels and locations.

Well spotted.

If there are any German gamers seeing this topic, I can't help but wonder, what is the correct German pronunciation for Drakensang? And what is the meaning? Dragon song?

By the way, I played the first game and liked it. The second game was similar, but I hit a bugged quest and stopped playing.

Since I'm the language guy here at least regarding my own language I'll try it :

You know what a Drake is ? It's the male duck.
The sound of Drakensang is similar to that - but the word itself is an artificial word.
A word artificially so that it might show a word from an much earlier form of the Aventurian main language - or the German language - meaning "Dragon Song".

You don't pronounce it like "DRake", but rather with an "a" like in "the name "Marcus". I think in Indiana Jones it is pronounced like the German "a".
Perhaps a bit more pronounced.

The main problem for me is, that I almost only know British English and not so much how American English pronounces things.
To me this means : the "a" is pronounced differently in both languages.
Whereas the BE "a" rather sounds like a German "a",
the AE "a" sounds rather like a German "ä".

The second part, "Sang" is pronounced in a similar way : With an "a" like in the name "Marcus".

I once met an German player who was actually pronouncing the game in AE - as if it had been an American production ! I was flabberghasted by this, because up to then I had *never* imagined that a GERMAn player would pronounce a GERMAN game in American English !

 

[DArtagnan]

Maybe you are not much into low fantasy? There is not much in terms of "toys and powers", especially at starting levels and locations.

I'm into fun, really. Multiple diverse powers and what I call toys is just my way of referring to distinct abilities that add to the richness of combat or interaction with the world in general. It doesn't have to be large shiny fireballs going off all over the place, it just has to be something that feels like I'm progressing and seeing new things.

Low fantasy can easily have that, but this system opted against it - which is fine.

But there was a reasonable amount of spells, IIRC - so I don't buy the low fantasy reason, sorry

Regarding the story and writing - I understand your opinion, because english version (which you probably played) was below average translation of german original. There are many mistakes, duplicate names and some logical nonsense. Some of it is not initially visible, the game seems ok, but if you will carefully read the journal (for example) or or if you know the lore, you will find it. Worst thing is that publisher dtp opted for cheap translation with truncated texts and dumbed down lore-related stuff. The game was written and designed for german audience because they have generally good understanding of TDE lore. Problem is that english audience dont - so in order to tell to tell the story right and make the world more interesting they should make some additional work. Like make some changes to dialogues to explain some lore stuff (especially about the main journey of the hero), put more lore books into the game etc. Unfortunately dtp didnt want to spend some time and money on this effort and opted for opposite direction to make story look more simple, more like generic fantasy to be accessible for english audience. Its not surprising that they were unable to promo and sell the game internationally.

You could be right, though I doubt translation was the primary issue. I'm what you might call "difficult" when it comes to writing, as I'm very hard to please.

BTW: River of Time is prequel so even if you dont play sequels of dull games you could try it sometimes.

I did try it, and it uses the exact same dull character and combat systems - or so close I couldn't tell the difference.

Sadly, that means I'm not likely to play it again.

But I'm happy for the people who like it

 

[Kordanor]

I didn't like the first Drakensang much and only played it for a couple of hours.
It started with the first quests which were extremely dull: Kill 5 wolves. Too MMO-ish and boring.
Then there was the pacing and running. Running for minutes through the city to get the next quest step just to be sent back to the other end. Incredibly boring.
I also think there was a lot of "kill vermin" in there in the beginning. Not too exciting.
And then lots of texts which struggled bringing a great atmosphere.
And of course I also dislike RTwP combat. So all games with that combat system have a worse stand with me anyways.

But then came Drakensang: River of Time.
They improved on all ends. Traveling was faster, Quests more interesting and the atmosphere was great. A big contributor to that however were extremely professional and good voice actors.
For that you need to know that in Germany >EVERYTHING< is dubbed. And some of the voice actors used for Dubs have so popular voices that everyone will recognize them. These people are famous for their voices. Like the Voice of Bruce Willis by Manfred Lehmann.
Now which voices did River of Time include?
Voice actor from from
Leonardo DiCaprio
Julia Roberts
Ben Afflek
Daniel Radcliffe
Brad Pitt
Jessica Alba
And even the guy yelling on the market is voiced by none other than the guy doing Spongebob

So this one of the very few games, where the German version is extremely superior to the english one.

The Expansion however completely sucked as it was just some content thrown together and sold as last act of the company which was already bankrupt at that point.

 

[Deleted User]

God forbid you have to run from one end of a city to the other, which takes about 1 minute. It should be instant teleportation.

Back in my day, we ran from one end of one city to the end of another in our RPGs, uphill both ways, in the snow, with filler combat and killing 5 wolves. And we loved every minute of it.

 

[Darkheart]

If there are any German gamers seeing this topic, I can't help but wonder, what is the correct German pronunciation for Drakensang? And what is the meaning? Dragon song?

I can't do the phonetics atm, but it's pronounced pretty standard as German goes. It's not a real (modern) German word afaik, but yes it means Dragon/Drake Song. Not sure if the title is relevant in the Dark Eye universe, since I only know the games and it's been a while.

 

[Farflame]

Not sure if the title is relevant in the Dark Eye universe, since I only know the games and it's been a while.

The name has a meaning and its part of the official lore now, but Im not sure how long. Maybe it was created for the game.

 

[Kordanor]

God forbid you have to run from one end of a city to the other, which takes about 1 minute. It should be instant teleportation.

Back in my day, we ran from one end of one city to the end of another in our RPGs, uphill both ways, in the snow, with filler combat and killing 5 wolves. And we loved every minute of it.

And I guess you would also have had lots of fun if you had to go though 20 loading screens, changing your floppy 10 times.

 

[DArtagnan]

I remember when I had to wait 20 minutes to load a game from tape on my Spectrum - and it failed at minute 19. Doing that half a dozen times before you got to play when it was finally in a good mood wasn't really all that fun

But I'm sure Fluent would have us go right back to tape technology, so we could "preserve" the past

 

[henriquejr]

I confirm Drakensang: The River of Time is 4$ on Groupees (with the option to give more for charity NGOs !?) for the redeemable Steam version.
In that sweet 4$ bundle there's a bunch of other games, some of them RPGs, and even music.

https://groupees.com/bm18

Runs for another day and a half.

Apparently the game is not visible on Steam's catalogue outside of the US but it definitely works when redeemed with this bundle.

Olivoist, I'm Brazilian and I can confirm all three games (Drakensang, Drakensang: The River of Time and Drakensang: Phileas Fogg's Secret) does appear to me, with prices listed in BRL and such.

 

[Deleted User]

But I'm sure Fluent would have us go right back to tape technology, so we could "preserve" the past

As a matter of fact, I do see tape as a viable medium, especially in the music industry. Some of the best sounding media to record a master to is a good piece of tape.

I recently sold my vintage Tascam workstation. I had the very first model they ever released, in the '70s, and it sounded amazing. For awhile there, I was recording all my vintage synths and music directly to the tape machine. Fun times.

These days, I'm good with a laptop and a nano keyboard. But I still love the vintage instruments, especially the ones that people just continue to snooze on. I guess I'm the same way with games, too.

 

[DArtagnan]

As a matter of fact, I do see tape as a viable medium, especially in the music industry. Some of the best sounding media to record a master to is a good piece of tape.

I recently sold my vintage Tascam workstation. I had the very first model they ever released, in the '70s, and it sounded amazing. For awhile there, I was recording all my vintage synths and music directly to the tape machine. Fun times.

These days, I'm good with a laptop and a nano keyboard. But I still love the vintage instruments, especially the ones that people just continue to snooze on. I guess I'm the same way with games, too.

A pattern is certainly forming

 

[Alrik Fassbauer]

God forbid you have to run from one end of a city to the other, which takes about 1 minute. It should be instant teleportation.

Worst thing is : SWTOR is going to get it !
And I mean *instant* !

 

[Deleted User]

What people like you miss, DArt, is that old stuff has a genius level as well. Just because it's old doesn't mean it doesn't have some genius in it.

You have to remember that back in the day, these things were considered amazing for their time.

Some of those old synths from the '70s are now being highly sought after for a reason. Of course, I liked them before they became trendy, but you can see why these things are treasured now.

It's similar to games. The vintage analog synths of the '70s were considered junk in the '80s, and most of them were trashed and thrown away. Then in the '90s, you could buy the best vintage synths for pennies on the dollar of what they originally cost. Current day, everyone wants a vintage analog, they are rare and go for big bucks. So I've seen how humans work first hand by studying that.

It goes something like this. New thing, it's amazing! Newer thing comes out a year later, old thing is trashed/upgraded/gotten rid of. 5 years later, people like me say, "hey, this thing is pretty cool! Let's investigate". 10 years later, people start getting into it again. A little bit later, everyone wants it because it's vintage, cool and now presumably rare. Rinse and repeat.

Same thing with games. The graphics may not look like the latest Call of Duty game, but there is some genius to be found in their designs.

I am a spelunker, in that sense. A purveyor of fine, ancient goods.

 

[Alrik Fassbauer]

I can't do the phonetics atm, but it's pronounced pretty standard as German goes. It's not a real (modern) German word afaik, but yes it means Dragon/Drake Song. Not sure if the title is relevant in the Dark Eye universe, since I only know the games and it's been a while.

The name has a meaning and its part of the official lore now, but Im not sure how long. Maybe it was created for the game.

"Drakensang" is just another hint towards the Big Picture : The pen & paper Saga / series of adventures known as Die Drachenchronik. (I won't translate it, because you should already be able to guess it by yourself. ).

The Drachenchronik describes the try to actually bring Pyr, the self-proclaimed Dragon-God and former Guardian of the Elements, corrupted by the Nameless God - back into life !

I'm currently in an pen & paper group, and we are playing 2 years through it now - and I think we have managed to get through 2 out of 4 books right now …

"Drakensang" - the song of the Dragons - basically means that a LOT of things are changing and shifting in the realms of the Aventurian Dragons - and if Pyr(dragon) was actually brought to life, war would break out among ALL dragons ! - With not much left to live in for all mortal beings …

Pyr was one of the Old Dragons - so mighty as only 7 (?) other dragons are and were in Aventuria … His power would be literally devastating - a lot of the continent would just break down.

 

[Fenris]

If there are any German gamers seeing this topic, I can't help but wonder, what is the correct German pronunciation for Drakensang? And what is the meaning? Dragon song?.

It's not german, it's like germans imagine a Viking saying Dragon Song. It's a Mountain in the TDE Setting, the mountain was "invented" for the game series.