Gamestar has a first report based on an interview with Franz Stradal, of course
in german. Stradal says he was disappointed by the concept of Sacred 3 and so they decided to recreate the old Sacred formula on their own.
- open world
- fantasy/horror theme
- 4-6 clearly defined character archetypes; mages are mages and cannot simply become melee fighters with magic
- alll archetypes habe their own starting area and a set of personal quests to define their backgrounds
- they want to replace the old "technocratic" Sacred inventory with a more elegant solution
- less simple loot, instead more meaningful items
- they want to give skills like lockpicking or crafting more meaning than improving statistics by 1%
- stronghold could be possible, but they haven't decided yet
Stradal is working on that concept since 2010. At the moment there is only paper concept, they didn't start programming, just some very early prototyping. Stradal is actually working on KingsRoad (F2P Browser-ARPG) for Pro7Sat1Games, the rest is also working somewhere else atm. But if they get 25.000 €, they would start preproduction in fulltime. I guess this would be a prototype for a kickstarter campaign, he says something about 40.000 backers they would need for full production. He hopes to get the whole game done until 2016, if it gets funded.
The announcement came by surprise. Like many, I'm a little bit sceptical about their project managament. Sacred 2 wasn't really a heroic endeavour. On the other hand, Sacred at its time was brilliant, Sacred 2 still above average. So I think they have the talent to create an entertaining ARPG.