First infos about Drakensang: The River of Time

[Gorath]

Of course in German. If anybody wants to post a summary... ;)

http://www.pcgames.de/aid,679955/Drakensang-Am-Fluss-der-Zeit-Zehn-Fakten-zum-DSA-4-Nachfolger/PC/Special/

Sounds like they'll address at least half of the major complaints.

[wolfing]

From what I could understand from the Google translation, seems they focused on more 'fluff' than content:
- Much more voice acting.
- Trees are hand designed now?
- Better graphics as game is designed with high def textures from the beginning.
- 2 new classes: a dwarf caster (geomancer) and a melee class (hand to hand maybe?).
- Setting will be around some great river
- I think I understood there won't be any more 'locked' areas.
- Faster traveling?
- PCs now have more 'personality' (you have to be careful who you invite to your group or something)
- You won't be able to use the same characters, as some haven't even been born (game takes place 23 or so years before?)
- Supposedly you now have to think more strategically as enemy's strengths/weaknesses will be more marked. Like fighting a scarab wouldn't be the same as fighting a wolf or something.
- Skills/abilities remain basically the same.

[Grandor Dragon]

Sure, here is your (quick) summary from someone who speaks German. My comments are in brackets:

- The game plays 23 years before Drakensang during the "Khom-War", the war between the Novadi caliphate and (the totally decadent and awesome) Al'Anfa. The titular river also refers to the actual great river in the region.

- There will be two new archetypes. Dwarven spellcasters and another northern warriortype.

- The game will have full voice acting.

- The party will have a house boat on the river. So your "abode" will often be very close to the actual quest area (great idea IMO).

- The game will be less linear, and you will have more choices as to when you visit which locations.

- Characters will have more depth, be more gray. The player will get to make some decisions that have long-lasting effects on the gameworld.

- There will be significantly less NPCs to choose from. Some of them will be familiar from the first game.

- Combat will be more tactical, as it will be even more important to pay attention to the strengths and weaknesses of enemies. The player will have access to miracles from the Gods.

- The game will use the same engine as Drakensang 1. Textures will be hi-res from the start. NPC gestures will be improved due to new animations.

- Drakensang 1 used "speedtree" for the flora. In the new games, trees will be designed by hand to make the game look more "European". The developers want trees to have bigger trunks.

The last piece of information made me laugh. It's by far the most random chunk of info on this list.

[Gorath]

They changed the article. These bastards! ;)

When I looked there were only 10 points.

[Turjan]

Sounds promising. Then again, these announcements always sound promising :D.

[Grandor Dragon]

I love the houseboat idea. It is a very nice solution.

I hope we will have Ardo to join the group. That would be cool.

Drakensang was a good game. Looking forward to the next title.

[Krzychu]

- The game will have full voice acting.
I don't think that full voice over is necessary in this game, Drakensang was really ok, but I suppose it's just been criticised too much for this lack of full voice acting.

- Drakensang 1 used "speedtree" for the flora. In the new games, trees will be designed by hand to make the game look more "European". The developers want trees to have bigger trunks.

"Wow, look at this tree! It's like *sooo* European!" Heh.

I just hope that the locations in next game will be as non-generic as in the first! I liked that in Drakensang.

[Alrik Fassbauer]

I don't think that full voice over is necessary in this game, Drakensang was really ok, but I suppose it's just been criticised too much for this lack of full voice acting.

I also think so.

[Prime Junta]

Just what we need -- a rare, mid-tier cRPG developer using their limited development resources on... making trees look more European.

There are days when I lose all hope in humanity. :p

(The rest sounds good, though.)

[Alrik Fassbauer]

Just one word: "Cultural differences". ;)

Aventuria is a setting rather based on middle-age Europe, so I can partly understand the decision.

Creating a game in a distinct setting but using let's say architecture from a completely different real-world place would imho disturb the lovers of that setting. I'm glad they knew that they had to do their buildings in the european (rather: German) style ... You can still find that style (but not the buildings, just the style) of architecture still in very old towns throughout Germany, which still have houeses from medieval times.

Examples:

Limburg an der Lahn: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Limburg_an_der_Lahn
Seligenstadt: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Seligenstadt
Duderstadt: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Duderstadt (For more pictures there's a link on the bottom of that article named "pictures of Duderstadt. You must scroll down there.)

These are towns I personally know.

[Arhu]

Just what we need -- a rare, mid-tier cRPG developer using their limited development resources on... making trees look more European.
But isn't that exactly what makes them so rare and precious? ;p

[Kostaz]

- The game will have full voice acting.
At last the lack of voice acting was the main reason I didn't like the game in the first place.

[wolfing]

At last the lack of voice acting was the main reason I didn't like the game in the first place.

And you'll probably say 'bad voice acting' was the main reason you didn't like the prequel, lol .

[Kostaz]

And you'll probably say 'bad voice acting' was the main reason you didn't like the prequel, lol .Prequel?
I was talking about the Dark Eye which had almost no voice acting.

[vanedor]

The action in the river of time happens before The Dark Eye. So the new game is the prequel.

Anyhow, your comment before is that sort of thing that sadden me. Past has shown us so many time that full voice acting is limiting the content.

[Grandor Dragon]

Yeah, full voice acting would be very low on my list of improvements. Actually, there is the possibility that voice acting will make the dialogues worse, since oyu are less in control of the "speed" of the dialogue (unless you skip). Well, we will see.

[Gorath]

Just what we need -- a rare, mid-tier cRPG developer using their limited development resources on... making trees look more European.

I read the Gamestar preview. It had a lot of other details, too.

The tree thing is really important for them. It seems SpeedTree can only create thin tree trunks. But Radon Labs wants huge trunks, for example to hide tree houses in the crown. Suposedly one of the screenshots showed a tree house. It was so well hidden that I didn't see it. ;)

[Dasale]

Only European trees has large trunk? That said I understand the extreme importance to have European trees, at last!

[Dasale]

- Skills/abilities remain basically the same.
Quite many spells are useless, there's a lot too many buffer spells, few skills are also quite useless. Too bad they don't fix and stick blindly on tradition, I suppose respect more or less original rules.

[Dasale]

- Characters will have more depth, be more gray. The player will get to make some decisions that have long-lasting effects on the gameworld.

- There will be significantly less NPCs to choose from. Some of them will be familiar from the first game.

Eeek I suppose those mean the companions will be more developed. I deeply regret this choice. Too much developed companion like in NWN2 or MoTB is quite heavy, it's a lot too much, and if the character is just average then it becomes heavy.

Companions of Drakensang are one of the major appeal of the game, not all are very well done, but few are quite good. You don't need ton of dialogs to succeed setup an interesting character and an attaching or intriguing companion.

[Curunír]

Quite many spells are useless, there's a lot too many buffer spells, few skills are also quite useless. Too bad they don't fix and stick blindly on tradition, I suppose respect more or less original rules.

No, I believe that just means that the selection of skills and spells will stay the same and not a lot of new ones are being introduced (TDE PnP offers a few hundred different spells and many dozen talents).

IIRC somebody actually wrote on the official forums that they promised that they will make underdeveloped skills of the first game more important in the second one by introducting more checks and such.

Furthermore many of the design choices in Drakensang were rather different from the PnP original, especially for special abilities. So they could change quite a lot of the mechanics without making Drakensang 2 less faithful to TDE than Drakensang.

[Dasale]

For the skills I don't know, the selection is sample and easy to understand.

For the spells, I feel there's something not that cool. I only area attack spell I saw require 8CR, that's dementia, fight would be over or at least situation changed too much during the time to cast the spell. Some spells last 10 or 15s I don't remember, well those are just boring to use. The spell that protect against one magic attack and then is over is also weird, with the time required to cast it and mana spend it is close to be useless.

[Thoth]

I hope they allow for more customization of the characters appearance at the beginning.

[Curunír]

I hope they allow for more customization of the characters appearance at the beginning.

The Gamestar preview said something about customizable hair and beards.

[NFLed]

Voice acting is very low on my list, I like hearing the first sentence or two and then just reading the rest.

[Corwin]

Cringe voice acting: I nearly let them sacrifice the virgin she was so bad!! :)

[Dasale]

Right I noticed that too but in general I feel the english voice acting good. It is often in the exaggeration but like the animations are. In my language they often choose a different path, by tempering a bit the caricature but that doesn't match the animations and that doesn't work always well.

I don't know if it's the comparison with the English version and not get used to a new version but I feel the voice acting in my language not bad but less good than most good recent CRPG.

About full voice acting if the D&D license cannot offer them that, targeting this goal will certainly be big trap. It's certainly weird to get full screen animation without voice acting. But I see the point to have it instead of a sample text dialog as does the NWN series when there's no voice acting. The problem is complicate.

[Alrik Fassbauer]

Only European trees has large trunk?

No, this is the wrong question.

The right question should be:

"Only non-Speedtree trees have large trunks ?"

[Alrik Fassbauer]

Cringe voice acting: I nearly let them sacrifice the virgin she was so bad!! :)

I think she's bad in the German game as well. ;)

[Alrik Fassbauer]

Furthermore many of the design choices in Drakensang were rather different from the PnP original, especially for special abilities. So they could change quite a lot of the mechanics without making Drakensang 2 less faithful to TDE than Drakensang.

I must stress this. Drakensang has some notable differences from the P&P original.

I sometimes call it "edition 4.2" to me, or maybe rather "edition 4.r", with r standing for Radon Labs. With 4.1 being the newest edition ( I always talk of the 4th edition [4.0], but the newer 4.1 is mainly based on that). I still don't quite know whether Radon Labs used the 4th or the 4.1 edition for the game, but anyway, they twaeked it into a new subset, optimised for the PC game.

[wolfing]

For the skills I don't know, the selection is sample and easy to understand.

For the spells, I feel there's something not that cool. I only area attack spell I saw require 8CR, that's dementia, fight would be over or at least situation changed too much during the time to cast the spell. Some spells last 10 or 15s I don't remember, well those are just boring to use. The spell that protect against one magic attack and then is over is also weird, with the time required to cast it and mana spend it is close to be useless.

Well these spells are more to be used strategically. Since the AoE spell also damages your party, it's to be used to start the fight (when you cast the spell and you're not in combat mode, it casts instantly, but then combat starts so you can't cast it twice)

[Gorath]

Improved character creation is also confirmed. See GameStar today.

This probably doesn't mean the whole thing, but at least the player gets more influence.

[Alrik Fassbauer]

Walkir has translated his complete report from the RPC :

http://forum.dtp-entertainment.com/viewtopic.php?f=63&t=12473