Risen - Review @ PCGZine

Dhruin

SasqWatch
Joined
August 30, 2006
Messages
11,842
Location
Sydney, Australia
The first full English review of Risen we're aware of can be found in issue #34 of PCGZine. It's a .pdf file, so you'll have to download to read it. There's plenty in the article to warm the heart of a Gothic fan and the final score is 84%.
Meanwhile, Rock, Paper, Shotgun has some short comments after some time with an early preview build. There's a spoiler in the piece, although I think it may reassure quite a few readers, so it's worthwhile in my opinion. Here's a sample, stepping past the spoiler:
It’s a fascinating statement of intent on the game’s part – this isn’t some fluffy, friendly world. I have to say I was a little ticked off I couldn’t then declare war on the nasty oik without the entire town attacking me, but perhaps it’s something that’s revisited later in the game.
I only got a little time to explore beyond that, but I get the sense there may be a sizeable world beyond. There were certainly plenty of options in terms of where to go, who to talk to and how to talk to them. I started creeping towards potential resolutions to the greedy-overlord situation, and with hints that however it played out, someone would lose. No easy answers, I suspect.
More information.
 
Joined
Aug 30, 2006
Messages
11,842
Location
Sydney, Australia
Interesting review, pretty much what I expected actually. Looking forward to this game, and will certainly buy it as soon as possible.
 
Joined
Oct 18, 2006
Messages
7,583
Location
Bergen
What an awful, awful website, and the PDF is worse. Pretty positive review, though. I'll be looking forward to hearing what you guys will be saying about it.
 
Joined
Oct 19, 2006
Messages
8,540
I didn't think the pdf was that bad, plenty of pictures to go with the article and I enjoyed reading up on the rest of the games. Looks like another title thats going to create more gamer backlog of my games.

However, I am upset that we are getting another title that is dx 9 only. I have a 64 bit Win 7 system capable of dx 11 and all games are still coming Dx9. When are we going to get games that take advantage of all thi new computing power?
 
Joined
Oct 18, 2006
Messages
1,397
Location
USA-Michigan
I tend not to agree so much. I just purchased a system consisting of AMD Quad 3.2, 8 GB of Ram, and Nvidia 275GTX and although it's capable to DX10, looking at screenshots and gameplay videos of this game, it looks pretty damn good to me. From the latest screens between the differences between DX10 and DX11, there seems to be very minimal difference. As far as I can tell, the shadows appear a little more blurry in DX11, but to get back to Risen beign a DX9, well, it looks pretty nice for a DX9 and what are we really missing in that respect?
Plus, it's all about gameplay.
 
Joined
Apr 24, 2007
Messages
85
I tend not to agree so much. I just purchased a system consisting of AMD Quad 3.2, 8 GB of Ram, and Nvidia 275GTX and although it's capable to DX10, looking at screenshots and gameplay videos of this game, it looks pretty damn good to me. From the latest screens between the differences between DX10 and DX11, there seems to be very minimal difference. As far as I can tell, the shadows appear a little more blurry in DX11, but to get back to Risen beign a DX9, well, it looks pretty nice for a DX9 and what are we really missing in that respect?
Plus, it's all about gameplay.

True, but il like to use my new 5850 to the max ;)
Nevertheless, this game is bought for the gameplay foremost.
 
Joined
Jan 8, 2009
Messages
1,747
Location
The Netherlands
Right, it does look pretty good but my point is more that we have a hardware feature implemented over 3 yrs ago that developers have been ignoring for about that long. Pc's should be blowing consoles out of the waters by now. I remember back when they seem to upgrade the dx versions on a yearly base. I know Hellgate London isn't a very good example but the dx 10 version looks so much better than the dx 9 version. Playability is very importantto me and I couldn't agree more with you but I wouldn't buy a sports car just to drive it on Sundays
 
Joined
Oct 18, 2006
Messages
1,397
Location
USA-Michigan
Right, it does look pretty good but my point is more that we have a hardware feature implemented over 3 yrs ago that developers have been ignoring for about that long. Pc's should be blowing consoles out of the waters by now. I remember back when they seem to upgrade the dx versions on a yearly base. I know Hellgate London isn't a very good example but the dx 10 version looks so much better than the dx 9 version. Playability is very importantto me and I couldn't agree more with you but I wouldn't buy a sports car just to drive it on Sundays

You (we) can thank the consoles and cross platform development (and rampant PC piracy to an extent) for all that since consoles can only do the equivalent of DirectX 9. No developer or publisher is going to invest any serious money into superior graphics on the PC port. The PC port is the version that is going to sell the least amount of copies anyway so why bother?
The last developer that tried to push the envelope in a big way was Crytek and we all know how that turned out. They got absolutely slaughtered by gamers for releasing a game that required a high end system. No one is going to be stupid enough to repeat that mistake again. Everyone is going to play it safe.

We will not be seeing anything revolutionary in terms of graphics until the next generation of consoles is released (which may be another three to five years going by recent statements from MS and Sony). Sure, we might see the implementation of some DirectX 10/10.1/11 effects in a few select PC titles where these effects can be implemented with relatively little effort but there will not be anything truly impressive in the next few years. Sad but true. Those days of revolutionary instead of evolutionary steps are long gone...

Look on the bright side though: We get to save a lot of money this way :) .
 
Joined
Oct 18, 2006
Messages
3,201
True, but il like to use my new 5850 to the max ;)
Nevertheless, this game is bought for the gameplay foremost.

Oooh, that is *such* a shiny card (well, the 5870 is better ;)). DirectX 11 does bring some nice new things to the table. Some are purely for performance reasons and could speed up some things considerably. Others, like tesselation and displacement maps, I really look forward to when developers start implementing it. I think DX11 has some potential for even better graphics, but then we'd probably leave behind some of the folks that have lesser GPUs (like me, for now).

Anyway, looking forward to Risen as well (as soon as I get a new PC!).
 
Joined
Oct 18, 2006
Messages
2,915
Location
The Netherlands
Oooh, that is *such* a shiny card (well, the 5870 is better ;)). DirectX 11 does bring some nice new things to the table. Some are purely for performance reasons and could speed up some things considerably. Others, like tesselation and displacement maps, I really look forward to when developers start implementing it. I think DX11 has some potential for even better graphics, but then we'd probably leave behind some of the folks that have lesser GPUs (like me, for now).

Anyway, looking forward to Risen as well (as soon as I get a new PC!).

indeed a nice card and not expensive (200euro) (my opinion ;) ) Got a 8800gts312 so its needed, and ofcourse i want hdmi output to my new LCD tv.

looking forward to dx11 game too, its a much bigger step then dx9 -> dx10.
Been awhile since ive been looking forward to a game like risen. Cant wait. Afraid my girlfr will get a bit sad and all… ;)
 
Joined
Jan 8, 2009
Messages
1,747
Location
The Netherlands
I sadly agree with you Moriender and another example on a wider scale being that 64 bit browsers that have been around for a while are not supported at all. Almost any site I go to with mine will try to load an updated flash player and of couse there is no such thing yet for 64 bit. Looks like I won't need another computer for a long time .
I am excited about Risen. Almost makes me want to yank the original Gothic out of the closet in anticipation!
 
Joined
Oct 18, 2006
Messages
1,397
Location
USA-Michigan
Only 84%?

Based on the text and comments on the review, the score could have been more. I really cannot agree about the one minus "Takes a while to get going". I'd consider that as a pro instead, because that keeps up the intrest and makes the game faschinating. Just think about Baldur's Gate 1 when it first came out? I was basically shocked and didn't get the game at all, but I WANTED so much to *get it*.
 
Joined
Mar 9, 2009
Messages
495
Location
Finland
Yeah, but on the other hand there have been loads of games that have been very slow for the, what, first six to ten hours? You don't want your game to be boring and then pick up until most have already lost interest. So I'd like to know what they mean with "slow to get going." Is it boring grind "get going" or just "get to know the world and environment proper before we get going?"

Anyways, I do agree with Moriendor about the state of graphics and its progerss. I've thought about this before, and I'm saddened by it because I used to *love* and anticipate new shiny graphics engines (Doom 2, Quake, Unreal, FarCry, Doom 3, Crysis, etc.) But now, we'll probably wait for the next console upgrade and I can't wait for that to happen. Not because the graphics aren't nice as they are now (I think we have finally arrived at a point where we can have animation/painting quality graphics without the pixellation/blockiness of previous generations) but because I am curious where we will go from here.

PCs can already do much more than consoles, but will we see any of it except tech demos before the next consoles are released?
 
Joined
Oct 18, 2006
Messages
2,915
Location
The Netherlands
Based on the text and comments on the review, the score could have been more. I really cannot agree about the one minus "Takes a while to get going". I'd consider that as a pro instead, because that keeps up the intrest and makes the game faschinating.

I gotta admit that I haven't read the review to avoid spoilers and thus I do not know the context of "Takes a while to get going" (what takes a while to get going... the story? character development?) but I can imagine from some of the things I have heard that PB might have repeated a "mistake" (strictly IMHO, of course ;) ) that they made with Gothic 2 as well.

Don't get me wrong. Gothic 2 (Gold) is my second most favorite game right after the first Gothic but I thought that it was a major design flaw that you got to the city of Khorinis so early in the game. That kinda put a full stop to the whole game right there. It sucked all the excitement right out of the early game (exploring the surroundings of Xardas' tower etc.) as you would spend the next few hours just talking to one NPC after another and another and another...

No, I'm not an ADD kiddie and I don't need a constant stream of kaboom and action but going through dialogues for hours on end isn't exactly my idea of fun either.
Maybe that's what the author of the article meant. Because as far as I know it is quite similar in Risen, i.e. that you will arrive in the main city (the hub) very early in the game so I'm guessing that we'll be spending several hours striking up convos in the beginning of the game.

As I said... a fairly big design mistake in my opinion. I think it would be better to first let the player explore the world more, then maybe have a pretty long dungeon crawling sequence and only then -maybe about mid-game- dump the player off in or near the city so that the city feels like a safe harbor to the player after all the excitement and action in the early game.

At least that's how I'd do it if I were a game designer but I'm not so what the hell do I know. Well, or actually that's how I'd do it if I were forced to have a big city in my game which I wouldn't really have in the first place if I had a say in it. I'd do several smaller cities/villages instead kinda like in Gothic 3 (size of the cities or villages being one of the things Gothic 3 actually did pretty well in my opinion).
 
Joined
Oct 18, 2006
Messages
3,201
favorite game right after the first Gothic but I thought that it was a major design flaw that you got to the city of Khorinis so early in the game. That kinda put a full stop to the whole game right there. It sucked all the excitement right out of the early game (exploring the surroundings of Xardas' tower etc.) as you would spend the next few hours just talking to one NPC after another and another and another…

Why? It's not like you were forced to, the game is still a sandbox game where you go and explore where you want to. I explored both the town and the surroundings. I like that you can go anywhere, it feels natural, i dont like when areas gets "unlocked" like in old adventure games, that kind of linearty is not what i would expect in the Gothic games after playing the first.
 
Joined
Jul 15, 2009
Messages
673
I sadly agree with you Moriender and another example on a wider scale being that 64 bit browsers that have been around for a while are not supported at all. Almost any site I go to with mine will try to load an updated flash player and of couse there is no such thing yet for 64 bit.
Well, but that's only Adobe's fault, or so I've read. 64 bit browsers can only use the Flash Player plugin if it's 64 bit as well, but Adobe has been slow in creating such a version. They are supposedly working on it.

As for Consoles holding back PC progression, in my opinion that's a Very Good Thing. It lets developers squeeze out more from existing technology, because they get more experience in optimizing their software without having to learn new stuff all the time. Happened to SNES games, for example. The first ones were still new and unoptimized, but later iterations made full use of everything the console had to offer, with great looking effects and so on.

Good for consumers, good for developers, perhaps not ideal for hardware manufacturers.
 
Joined
Aug 30, 2006
Messages
3,486
Why? It's not like you were forced to, the game is still a sandbox game where you go and explore where you want to. I explored both the town and the surroundings. I like that you can go anywhere, it feels natural

I'm an old school RPGer. I have been trained since the beginning of time to always talk to every single NPC in a city before venturing forth ;) .
Seriously, it's the most efficient way to play. Gather all the quests you can find and only then after you have talked to every NPC head out into the wild to finish one quest after another. That way you get to minimize the aimless running around and save yourself a lot of backtracking.
Of course, that's not how you have to play the game. You can also do other crazy stuff like tie one arm to your chair and play one-handed :biggrin: but, well, I guess you get the point...
 
Joined
Oct 18, 2006
Messages
3,201
I'm an old school RPGer. I have been trained since the beginning of time to always talk to every single NPC in a city before venturing forth ;) .
Seriously, it's the most efficient way to play. Gather all the quests you can find and only then after you have talked to every NPC head out into the wild to finish one quest after another. That way you get to minimize the aimless running around and save yourself a lot of backtracking.

LOL. That's how I play as well. In addition to this, I always knock out every sidequest first before I proceed with the main quest.
 
Joined
Oct 18, 2006
Messages
389
Location
North Carolina, USA
Back
Top Bottom