Drakensang - German Preview in GameStar Magazine

Alrik writes that German mag Gamestar has a major cover-article preview of Drakensang in the latest issue. Their site offers thumbnails of the magazine pages but not in a readable form, but hopefully some of German readers will grab the magazine and fill us in.
More information.

German mag PC Action (in my opinion a little crazy but far more competent than any other German mag) has also a preview of Drakensang. If requested I can summarize the article.

If there is anything useful, that would be nice. I'm really looking forward to this one but they aren't very focused on the international audience.

Ok, here are a few points addressed in the PC Action preview of Drakensang. I don't know what is already known, so I just post everything I think is interesting.

Warning: Potential spoilers!

• You don't have to know the first three DSA games to enjoy Drakensang
• The preview version they played at the developers Berlin studio was 80% complete.
• In the beginning your character travels to the capital Ferdok to meet with an old friend called Ardo. But he is missing and after a few inquiries you find out that there have been several murders in Ferdok and that your friend is somehow involved.
• Later on the player will learn that Ardo is dead and stumble across a big conspiracy.
• You may play elves, dwarfes and humans
• You do not need to understand the pnp system to play the game.
• There won't be day/night cycles
• You walk from one area into another by using a map (like BG oder NWN2 I think)
• There will be 50 locations, all about 1km^2
• There are random encounters
• The game looks and feels like a BG
• Six person party: Four heroes, one guest and a summoned creature
• You may 'store' your characters in one location and they level even if you are not using them (see NWN2 or Kotor)
• you may pause combat at any time
• There are 40 spells
• Some of them have been modified (for example the 'five-minutes' spells)
• You can hurt your own party members if you are not careful enough
• Not all dialogues will be synchronized
• There will be only on ending but a few ways to get there

Thanks for the summary, Roi Danton. Sounds like this could be a good-sized game with 50 locations. Does 'four heroes' mean four player-generated party members(that is, roll up all your own party , like ToEE, Icewind Dale or Wizardry 8) I wonder, or one player character and three joinable NPCs?

Anyway, looks very interesting.

To call PC Action "a bit crazy" is an understatement for me. I just don't like the language presented there, it sounds *far* too immature to me.

Therefore, I don't buy it.

This doesn't mean they aren't competent, but just their language ... *shudders*

Alrik Fassbauer said:

To call PC Action "a bit crazy" is an understatement for me. I just don't like the language presented there, it sounds *far* too immature to me.

Therefore, I don't buy it.

This doesn't mean they aren't competent, but just their language ... *shudders*

Click to expand...

PC Action belongs to the Computec Media AG... they own several of the leading games magazines in Germany and at least in my opinion the whole group is kinda dubious. They work together with portals that sell / lend games and tend to hype everything that might catch the interest of the reader.

magerette said:

Thanks for the summary, Roi Danton. Sounds like this could be a good-sized game with 50 locations. Does 'four heroes' mean four player-generated party members(that is, roll up all your own party , like ToEE, Icewind Dale or Wizardry 8) I wonder, or one player character and three joinable NPCs?

Anyway, looks very interesting.

Click to expand...

I read on some fansite that you can only generate one character... the others are pre-generated (pretty much like NWN, NWN2, etc). You can have 4 permanent members and 2 temporary ones... which will join you for a particular quest, etc.

Computec exists very, very long. My oldest "Amiga Games" magazine I have is from 1993.

So - I assumne they have expanded their fields, nothing less.

The *original* PC Action is rather acient as the PC Games - but has been through several *very* strong changes in tone and language.

I liked the old PC Action of the mid-90s to the late 90s very much, but at one point i missed there was that change of language - it sounds SO much immature to my ears that I believe that the PC Action must be written for a much, much younger audience than the plain old PC Games.

And regarding "craziness" - I don't know if you've ever read the "PC Power" - but THIS magazine war unrivalled in terms of "craziness" until today.
But this was no "silly" craziness I see with the PC Action of today, but rather ... I'd call it rather "sophisticated", although that might not hit the right spot ...

Back to Drakensang: The article (in Gamestar) says that you can only define ONE character - the rest are party members you pick up during your journey of Aventuria.

So - this is not unlike Baldur's Gate.

exactly.

Ferdok isn't the capital of the Kosh. It's the old capital, yes, but meanwhile it lost this status to Angbar. It's still an important city, it's an important trade city lying at the banks of the great river (on of the most important travel lines of the middenrealms). But it's also suffering from the recession and the people are a little bit old-fashioned or conservative.

In Ferdok you get you're own mansion. This mansion is the hub. The rest of your companions are waiting there for you. But it seems, you get some customization options. Nothing in special, but as you follow the storyline you will collect some trophys.

You're starting at "Avestreu", a small village near Ferdok. Ferdok's gates are closed because of a mysterious series of murders. Your character has an appointment at Ferdok and so your journey begins.

In the meanwhile we were told, that Drakensang is the name of a mountain.


SPOILER!



In the beginning, you have to find two intercessors (advocates) who guarantee for your integrity. So you're starting doing some good things to the people of Avestreu. There you can also meet one of the first companions, an amazonian warrior. You're starting with some side quests and you're getting in touch with the bad guys for the first time.

When you enter the town to meet your friend (Ardo von Eberstamm, former regent of the Kosh). You'll find out that he was also an victim of the mysterious murderer. That's the next step in the storyline.

Maybe you know, that there is a print newsletter for the pen & paper game in Germany. It continues to report about the changes and development in the aventurian world. In the latest issues there have beeen reports about some mysterious artefacts related to dragons. Also there are rumours about a mysterious sect of dragon cultists (something bad). And of course a progress report about the building of the Hesinde church in Ferdok (The main quest needs a Hesinde church and Ferdok didn't have a Hesinde church until now. No problem, the creators of TDE reported that the Hesinde church is building a new dependance in Ferdok. )

Someone uploaded the magazine's video to YouTube. The reporter's comment is in german but you can get an impression of the gameplay.

http://youtube.com/watch?v=jp3BRdX7cO0

Very nice. Thanks Avantenor. I liked the warrior maiden a lot, she actually looked like she had the muscle to swing a sword--though it's odd that all the males are dressed for cold weather in full length trousers, cloaks and layers of wooly clothing while she seems dressed for the beach

The game atmosphere with deer leaping through the forest and the mustachioed swordsman were also neat.

Alrik Fassbauer said:

To call PC Action "a bit crazy" is an understatement for me. I just don't like the language presented there, it sounds *far* too immature to me.

Therefore, I don't buy it.

This doesn't mean they aren't competent, but just their language ... *shudders*

Click to expand...

Yeah, you either like them or not. In my opinion they are a refreshing chance from all those 'we have to be serious because the reader wants it' mags.
Beyond their more or less openly craziness (language and so on) they do sometimes have a really good humor (at least in my opinion, even with fitting political jokes) and offer rather good previews and reviews for a print mag.

EDIT: Oh, and yes you can only generate your PC, the rest of the heroes join you on your quest.

magerette said:

I liked the warrior maiden a lot,

Click to expand...

She's an Amazone, actually.

Amazones in Aventuria are a female-only group of warriors worshipping the god Rondra, a female god of war and thunder, associated with a lion.

Rondra is one of the 12 gods common in Aventuria (that means that Rondra belongs to a Pantheon of 12 gods which are considered as THE gods of Aventuria, although a few groups have a slightly different Pantheon (The Thorwalians, for example, rather worship Swafnir, a child of Rondra and Efferd, the sea-god, instead of the 12 gods - except Efferd, of course, which is their main god besides Swafnir. Swafnir is associated with and depicted as a giant whale.)

These names are German names. For English names please take a look at ... oh, the official site isn't working anymore !
Look at Wikipedia instead.
Edit: Or here : http://www.chromatrix.com/html/tde-mobile.html

Alrik Fassbauer said:

Rondra is one of the 12 gods common in Aventuria (that means that Rondra belongs to a Pantheon of 12 gods which are considered as THE gods of Aventuria, although a few groups have a slightly different Pantheon (The Thorwalians, for example, rather worship Swafnir, a child of Rondra and Efferd, the sea-god, instead of the 12 gods - except Efferd, of course, which is their main god besides Swafnir. Swafnir is associated with and depicted as a giant whale.)

Click to expand...

Whu'aver, I worship the one God. And I'm not talking Rastullah either! Nameless One, baby, all the way!

Burn him on the stake with the holy fire of Praios !

Most of the info I'll post now is already in some other posts in this thread, but I'll do it nonetheless, since its only "copy & paste" for me.
Those are the (mostly gameplay-relevant) infos I consider most important - this time from the Gamestar Article.
I don't know why but some of them (the number of regions e.g.) seems to contradict the information from the PC Action.

But well, here we go:

- 12 (self-contained) regions to travel to (one of them the quite large city of Ferdok)
- 20 character classes to choose from
- 30 talents/skills (alchemy and smithing included)
- 40 special abilities (mainly combat-maneuvers)
- 40 spells
- 200 weapons and armor-pieces
- 160 other items
- 70 story-relevant NPCs
- 40 types of enemies

- At the beginning of the game, you choose one of the 20 classes for your main character. You start the game alone. After a short while you'll obtain up to three followers (making up a party of up to four). There can also be up to two temporary NPCs in your party.

- After choosing your character class you can either use the default skill allocation or allocate skills yourself - corresponding with the TDE rules. The adventure begins right after that, there's no loading screen after character selection.

- In combat you can control all your party's characters (by pausing at any time). Every character has their own quick-bar for skills, items, spells, etc. You can queue commands. When characters level up you can choose which skills etc. to level up for all of them.

- While you can only walk arround with a party of yourself and up to three permanent followers, yo can all in all gain up to 10 different followers to join your cause. "Inactive" followers wait wait at a tavern in the big city. All characters get the same ammount of experience, regardless if they quested with you or waited in the tavern.

- If at least one of your party-members survives combat, the others will be revived with very low health.

- Some dialogue-options are skill based. Most of the time you have more than one option to answer. You can sometimes try to bribe, intimidate or convince NPCs (maybe there are even more possibilities).

- When travelling between areas (on a "worldmap"), random encounters may take place. You can try to avoid them with a high sneaking skill. Not all of these encounters will be enemies, of course.

- No day/night cycles. Differences in lighting are mainly used dramaturgically.

- According to the magazine (Gamestar), the variety in quests (in the preview-built they played) is bigger than in any other RPG in recent years.

- It is possible to display a (configurable) console, where all the calculations are shown.

- There's loading times when changing between interior and exterior areas.

Radon Labs has expanded its official English website with an expansion product page for Drakensang
http://www.radonlabs.de/gamesdrakensang.html

Thanks for the link Dark Savant.

We all know what skills and talents are but can anyone enlighten me further on what the "Talent-based dialogue system" that will be used in Drakensang implies? - it suggests 'dialogue based on an npc's talent' - is that correct?

I'm guessing it will be like in the RoA series. If my speaking character has the intimidate skill, he might get more information from a seedy NPC than my scholarly mage. The mage might use persuasion though to get more information from a courtier. A charasmatic female might get more info from a male soldier, etc.

The higher your skill in Charisma is, for example, the more information the NPC will give out, basically.

Like cprgnut says.

Only that it isn't gender-specific.