Risen 2 BETA
 

Seems it started these days, if anyone has a spare key or doesnt want to play it, i would gladly accept it , cheers :)

I would also gladly accept a spare a spare key for the Risen Beta, and, IMO, anyone who has one should give it to me before porcozaur. ;)

Why not just wait and enjoy the game as it was meant to be played ;)

seems the game is meh?
http://www.rpgcodex.net/forums/index…uys-nda.69586/

anyway i got my key, ill post some impressions tomorrow :D

Hmm… Moriender seemed pleased enough with it, and I certainly trust him more than the average Codexer.


*Edit* I read through the entire thread. While he wasn't pleased with certain aspects, the OP makes it a point to say that he doesn't think it's even a true Beta.

I don't understand the statements about not being a true beta! does this mean that this beta is so bad that it should be an alpha, or that it is too good to be a beta? Or it is very short for a beta? Can you please clarify this JDR13, as the comments made about the beta are worrying.

i think ,he thinks, that the "testers" have absolutley no influence on any bugs or gameplay features.

its just a sneek peak not a beta test.

So it's a buggy demo instead?

What I think he meant is that people shouldn't put too much stock in it.

In other words, don't look at it like a demo or think it's representive of the full game.

It means that PB and Deep Silver would be fucking stupid to expose their most loyal hardcore fans - the guys who paid extra for the last CE - to anything resembling an actual beta. Maybe there's still fine tuning missing, but the first 5000 bugs have certainly been killed before the "beta" started.

If you want a Beta Key, you could get one from the IGN Prime (just sign up for the free trial period).
IGN Prime
I know that it says its for US & Canada only, but they don't check your actual address, so its fine. Heck i'm from Europe and I got a key (its a steam key).

Thanks for all the replies. I hope that the 'true' beta is what we come to expect from PB (minus bugs of course).

Thanks lilmagi for the heads up on the beta key from IGN.

Unfortunately, IGN is no longer offering the free trial period.

I feel sorry for anyone who expected a "true" beta. Real, true beta testing should be, no, MUST be done by professional testers. This type of public beta that they are doing with Risen 2 is at the most good for "load" testing, i.e. you throw the game at a wide variety of system configurations and see how it works out.
But any real bug squashing etc. should definitely be done by professional QA.
I never expected this "beta" to be more than an early access demo and that's pretty much what it turned out to be. All I ever wanted from that CE code was to be able to play the next PB game before its release and they fulfilled that promise. I certainly didn't want to help them with serious QA unless they'd pay me for it ;) .

What is a little lame, however, is that Deep Silver did not provide any kind of tool for bug submission nor a (closed) beta forum. It is pretty frustrating that you can not share any findings at all until the "beta" is over. They are going to send out beta feedback forms after March 2 when the beta has officially concluded but that's it and it's not much to say the least…

What they provided here as the "beta" definitely does qualify as a demo. A pretty extensive demo even. If you explore everywhere then you get to squeeze approximately five or six hours out of the two areas that are included in this demo (the starting city of Caldera and parts of the first island, Takarigua).

As for bugs: Quite a lot of people on the WoR forums have reported issues with launching the beta. The issue seems to be that the R2 Beta does not automatically update DirectX, PhysX and the Microsoft Visual C++ redist stuff. Most people were able to start the beta after manually updating/installing these drivers/APIs.
Other than that it is a misrepresentation of the truth if anyone is claiming that the beta is seriously buggy. There are bugs, of course, but that is to be expected from a non-final version, right? I haven't experienced anything serious in the bug department in the six hours I played. Mostly just minor glitches.

Regarding the game's performance (Deep Silver tolerates posts talking about the game's performance on the WoR forums so this is not conflicting with the silly NDA): My system is an Intel i5-2500K@4.2GHz, 8GB RAM and a Gainward GTX 570 running at 800/2000MHz). The game is installed on a Crucial 256GB SSD.
The performance needs to be viewed in two categories. Category one would be outside of the jungle and category two inside the jungle.
With all settings maxed out at a resolution of 1920*1200 and VSync enabled I'm getting approximately 50-60fps outside of the jungle and 25 - 40fps inside of the jungle. The shadows are the real performance killer. Reducing shadows from ultra to max will yield an immediate +10fps gain.
The game looks really nice when maxed out so I'm not sure what that Codexer is smoking when claiming that it doesn't look better than Risen 1.
However, when compared to a DirectX 11 graphical feast like Battlefield 3, well, Risen 2 can't compete on that level and you can't help but think that the performance should probably be a little better for how the game looks. Let's hope there will be a little more room for optimizations.

As far as the rest of the criticism of the Codexer is concerned, the guy is way too negative, of course. Some of the criticism is justified but you need to apply a Codexian hyperbole filter to refine the truth.

Thanks :) . Please do note, however, that I expressed my sentiments in this way: First = :disappointed: … Then = :) … and towards the end of the "beta" :thumbsup: .
Trying hard not to break the (IMHO silly) NDA so sparse on details but: Some initial disappointment is almost unavoidable. For example for the first time in a PB game we start in a very tiny area (a small, confined part of Caldera) instead of having pretty much the entire game world lying at our feet. The beginning is nearly 100% linear.
Secondly, the beginning of the story is cringe-worthy and full of logical fails.
But then… once Caldera was left behind and once the game opened up a little on Takarigua, the game grew on me and the good old, unique PB style began to shine through. Also, the new character development system looks very promising and at the end of the beta I was definitely longing for more.

ive played it today for about 7 hours, the game definitely has PB written all over :). The big minus is the combat, which is extremely bad, something like it was in g3; other than that, the inventory has been modified and its more consolish/retarded like the amalur one. Also the music isnt too impressive, not to mention it isnt very gothiclike. And finally the so-much-apraised-by-PB anumations are much improved from risen but still mediocre at best.

Other things i didnt liked: the camera has an immense lag which is very annoying; also no dodge and no swim, finishing moves with slowmotion like in fallout, fast travel like in TES

Got in via IGN Prime. The camera is a nightmare and the characters all twitch and gyrate constantly while talking. The camera makes the controls really awkward and the game is kinda the worst. I'm really disappointed. I liked Risen 1 a LOT and this is a huge step backwards.

Yes, it's definitely just a clickfest this early into the game and with the free cam and lack of a real target lock it's pretty wild and random overall. But if you look at the skills/talents there is lots and lots of abilities yet to be learned so there's hope that the combat will get much more interesting later on.

Yep. That could have been done better. Just a long list (OK, with filters) is kind of stupid in a game with unlimited inventory. There's bound to be endless scrolling towards the later parts of the game when you have 1000s of items in that list.

Maybe that's because it's Risen and not Gothic :biggrin: . Seriously though I thought that the music was OK. I don't require "impressive" music, however. Quite the contrary. I prefer background music. Literally. Music that is not intrusive and doesn't get on my nerves. The Risen 2 music got that job done. Which is good enough for me. I'm not much of an audiophile game music lover.

True as well.

Yes, quite noticeable at first. Then I got used to it. There is definitely a sensation of input lag and fairly unresponsive controls at times.

Well, PB games never had a real dodge move so that was to be expected. The only defense is blocking as usual.

Yes… *sigh* that would have been really nice to have…

… you forgot "that can be turned off via the options menu" ;)

:lol:

Hmm, the music is important if your going on a very long journey (in an open world rpg) as it reflect the mood of the surroundings and adds another dimension to the story and 'feel' of the characters and places. The music in Gothic 3 and Divinity 2 was a joy to listen to throughout your adventures and in going through different landscapes. So it is a bit dissapointing to hear that Risen 2 music is 'OK', but probably this goes along with the fast travel feature.

We will have to wait and see about the combat; the combat in Gothic 3 starts as a click fest but it improves alot as you gain better skills (e.g. large weapon and dual wield skills).

Is it true what was said about not being able to kill NPCs? I would be surprised if this is the case since Risen 2 prides itself with 'choices and consequences' as in PB previous outputs.

Well, which RPG doesn't pride itself with choices and consequences? ;)
Also, if you know past PB games then you will know what to expect here. There are often multiple ways to solve a quest but other than that it's always been "choices and consequences light" in PB's previous games so I wouldn't expect a drastic change in that department in Risen 2.

To answer the question, it is true that NPCs can not be killed in this beta at least. You can knock NPCs down and when they get back up they are instantly back at 100% health. Then when you knock them down a second time it takes a lot longer until they get back up and they begin to carry a "pissed off" tag above their head. They also announced a while back that some important quest NPCs can not be killed (or maybe knocked down and thus "pissed off") at all.
Maybe they wanted to avoid that you can clear the world of nearly all living beings this time around as you could do in their previous games. Or maybe it's just like that in the starter areas and you will be able to slaughter NPCs later on in the game. We'll have to wait and see about that…