Unsacred - A New Sacred ARPG

This is great news. I hate what deep silver has done to sacred 3. This is very good news.

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.

joxer said:

Never bought Sacred 1 nor 2 and today I can't remember why… Were those perhaps coop/MMO games? Dunno…

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I played through both Sacreds alone, offline. They offer huge open worlds with an insane amount of interesting little side quests. Lots of lore, story and detail, mostly delivered through text. Plenty of humour too. The games are packed with content, like some kind of isometric Skyrim without voice acting. Deeper and less linear than other Diablo style ARPGs. But the respawning is ridiculously relentless. And if you skip through the text, you're left with a fetch/kill klick-fest.

When I used the lower spawn mod for Sacred 2 it was a much more enjoyable game, that I still play on and off.

Warmark said:

When I used the lower spawn mod for Sacred 2 it was a much more enjoyable game, that I still play on and off.

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Is there a similar mod for Sacred 1?

In sacred 1 anytime you entered a new region it would show in the upper left corner. the region name and a set of numbers like 7500/7500. The first number would dwindle as you killed monsters. When it reached "0", a special boss would appear & drop some cool gear when killed. It is in both sp & mp, but I can't imagine anyone with enough patience to kill that many monsters in solo mode. ( I haven't seen one yet, despite many hundreds if not thousands of hours I have logged in the game.) It was clearly designed with mp in mind. And when you did enough side quests in a region, you would hear your toon say "this region is at peace". the respawning in that region would be slowed dramatically. I like re-spawning, but I can certainly understand how aggravating it can be to some players. But to me, it's just more experience & more loot. But I have said for years, why can't they just add a slider to ALL games for respawning. From off to insane. That way everyone sets it to the way they like it, and people who hate respawning can still play the game. To me it's a no-brainer. But no one has done it yet. Baffling.

gandalf.nho said:

My only problem with Sacred was the excessive respawning, you leave an area and return 5 minutes later and the monsters are already back…

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It's the same in SWTOR. And look at the number of years between them. Ten years. You'll notice how much these respawn rates have influenced RPG-related games ...

Icefire said:

But I have said for years, why can't they just add a slider to ALL games for respawning. From off to insane. That way everyone sets it to the way they like it, and people who hate respawning can still play the game. To me it's a no-brainer. But no one has done it yet. Baffling.

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You sure noone made it?

It's not a slider though to set the "grind mass", but an on/off hero skill in Square Enix' phonegame Chaos Rings 2.
You choose to be a zombie (in RL, not in the game!) and grind endless respawns since your brain can't comprehand anything else or you ditch the grinding part completely and play other game aspects by activating the skill.

With the fact that Sacred 3 won't have an open world, less to no RPG mechanics...and seemingly no loot system. I'll be keeping a close look on Unsacred instead.

hum not looking good, no more news and the website no longer exists

Ah well I spoke too soon I guess, after a bit of research the game is now called Unbended.

http://www.unbended.de

I guess they had some lawyers visit them heh.

Galaad said:

Ah well I spoke too soon I guess, after a bit of research the game is now called Unbended.

http://www.unbended.de

I guess they had some lawyers visit them heh.

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I mentioned this last month in the news. They had to change the name .I guess the new owners of the Sacred IP Deep Silver didn't appreciate the name.

Link- http://www.rpgwatch.com/show/news?ref=0&id=683

Icefire said:

But I have said for years, why can't they just add a slider to ALL games for respawning. From off to insane. That way everyone sets it to the way they like it, and people who hate respawning can still play the game. To me it's a no-brainer. But no one has done it yet. Baffling.

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It could affect game balance, though. Someone who turns respawns off wouldn't get as much experience or loot as someone who played with them on. Then how would the developer balance the game properly for both categories of players? Seems like it would cause more problems than it would fix to me.

Sacred 1 seemed like a pretty interesting game but I personally couldn't get past the endless hordes of level-scaled respawns. It was just draining after awhile. I've said this before but the respawns in Sacred 2 didn't bother me nearly as much as Sacred 1. Maybe because I was playing Sacred 2 in co-op mode, or the mobs overall were just easier to handle, but Sacred 2 was a much more enjoyable game for me overall than Sacred 1. It also didn't help that in Sacred 1 I guess my build was not the greatest so every encounter was life or death, making the game even more tedious when wading through hordes of enemies that take awhile to kill. In Sacred 2 you could make quick work of most groups.

Back on topic, I'll keep my eye on this game and hope that they tone down some of the level scaling and respawning. Any open-world RPG interests me so I'll keep watching it.

I bought Sacred 2 to play in coop with a friend but it didn't last long. Nice graphics and a huge world couldnt overcome the grinding feel. I think we had three play sessions before calling it.

When I think of an ARPG I think of the underdog Nox instead of Diablo and consorts (never played Diablo though, sorry).
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nox_(video_game)
Good memories and it comes from Westwood studios!

While on this nostalgia trip Darkstone also came to mind
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Darkstone:_Evil_Reigns
It is more or less a dungeon crawler where the dungeons are randomized every playthrough. For some reasons I did like it back then, although I guess it isnt that good.