Risen 2 - First Screens!

Gorath said:

- (AFAIR) The world will be significantly bigger than Risen.

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Yay. I hope it's the size of Myrtanna from G3. That would be perfect.

Gorath said:

- Early islands have to be visited again. Something will happen and they'll be filled with more content.

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That above is also quite awesome - I'm playing Arcania right now and it's so disappointing how linear the whole game is.

Looking forward to Risen 2.

Couchpotato said:

To be fair you have to agree with Arkadia7. They said its the same hero from risen and the game was not set in a gunpowder age. How do you go from a medieval metal age to a pirate theme with guns. Unless the people had a huge leap of technology in a short time. Also hearing there will be no swords or metal armor its following what fable 2 did. but that game was 100's of years ahead of the first game.

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Actually, the ship in the harbour town does have cannons. So Risen was somewhat set in a gunpowder age. It just didn't play any roll in context of the game. Maybe firearms simply hadn't reached this remote island yet...

Janus said:

Actually, the ship in the harbour town does have cannons. So Risen was somewhat set in a gunpowder age. It just didn't play any roll in context of the game. Maybe firearms simply hadn't reached this remote island yet…

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Hopefully more info will come out explaining why. Still I have faith in the the game and cant wait till it comes out this year.

Couchpotato said:

To be fair you have to agree with Arkadia7. They said its the same hero from risen and the game was not set in a gunpowder age. How do you go from a medieval metal age to a pirate theme with guns. Unless the people had a huge leap of technology in a short time. Also hearing there will be no swords or metal armor its following what fable 2 did. but that game was 100's of years ahead of the first game.

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I didn't disagree with Arkadia7 at all - I was saying that I respected his opinion and that it was a fair and objective one.

Also, I didn't know that Risen 2 would feature the same hero. It is a bit...odd...that such a leap in technology would occur during the same hero's lifetime. I was hoping that it would be set 100-200 years in the future or so to keep the scenario "believable" - for whatever that's worth in a fantasy realm. Also not excited about the prospect of not having armor, if that is ultimately what they decide to do.

GhanBuriGhan said:

Could we, every now and then, have a thread witout D'Artagnan dueling someone? I know, nomen est omen, but still!

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You have no idea how soothing that would be

JDR13 said:

I already had the opinion that 2011 might be one of the best years in PC gaming we've seen in a long time. Knowing that we're also getting Risen 2 now only strengthens that opinion.

It's a toss up between Risen 2 and The Witcher 2 for my most anticipated game, but there are a lot of other promising titles as well.

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Definitely.

It's shaping up to be quite fantastic, and these two games alone would be enough for that to be true!

To those who thing centuries needs to pass for such a 'big' tech leap.....do remember that in 30 years or so, we went from barely be able to fly, to crazy fast computer advancement and even flying to moon and landing there. All that in just 30 years or so.

So, if we already have cannons in gothic and risen, why do you it it needs to pass such a big time that one person, inventor, would take 1+1 and figure out how to port cannons to something smaller.?i seriously don't see it.

There were no cannons in Risen.

That comment made me think "hmm I don't remember that", so I booted up Risen to check. There are no cannons on that ship in the harbor.

He's probably thinking of the Paladin's ship in Gothic 2. There were definitely cannons on that one.

Wow... in 2011? That would make this year probably the best PC gaming year ever.

Pretty good for a "dead" platform.

DoctorNarrative said:

Wow… in 2011? That would make this year probably the best PC gaming year ever.

Pretty good for a "dead" platform.

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According to the interview the game is 80% done and there starting to record the voices and audio. There aiming at a 2011 release probably around x-mas. Please let them stay on track as I don't want the dreaded excuses most games got last year that it will be pushed back. Still waiting for a few games still.

Look at Gorath's last post here.

the pirate theme looks a bit much. actually it looks like it's the main theme of the game. also I don't like the addition of muskets. as mentioned before, how can muskets be invented in the Risen world so fast? and what's with the eye-patch of the main character? imagine someone wants to become a mage in the game. a mage with eye-patch?
the fact that the game is not open-world at very first is not good too. even if it gets bigger in the future. because it kills the exploration aspect of Gothic games. I loved it that I was free to go everywhere from the start of each Gothic and only my weakness limited me, not some kind of invisible wall or something like that.
but with all things said, Risen 2 is my most anticipated game ever and I can't wait to play it.

What was that last boss monster in Risen 1? It was based on one of the elements. I'm wondering if the new setting has anything to do with the new boss monster.

BTW, I too love fantasy setting RPGs, but I have no probem playing in a new environment. It doesn't destroy any immersion factor for me if the game is well made.

Risen 1 has caused some serious pain for me. I never finished it, because I just was unable to defeat the endboss. These times jump and run attacks never were my strength, so while I had played Risen 1 through to the end, I failed at the end, try as I might.

So for me Risen 2 is on the not to buy list before it lands on the cheap "buy old games for 10 Euro" table...

elikal said:

Risen 1 has caused some serious pain for me. I never finished it, because I just was unable to defeat the endboss. These times jump and run attacks never were my strength, so while I had played Risen 1 through to the end, I failed at the end, try as I might.

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The final boss fight of Risen really was dreadful.

This video on youtube shows how you can beat him - if you care to beat the game for the sake of adding another notch to your completed games belt.

Aside from the final boss though, Risen was a fantastic game. I look forward to Risen 2.

yeah and do you use them? about how many hours do you think that ship scene would take. i'll gladly wager you money that i can produce roughly that same "screenshot" when the game comes out. and it won't take me dozens of hours or thousands of dollars of software i guess we'll all find out sooner than later thankfully anyhow.

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This deal is on…. after the game is released, how much money do you want to hand over?

As a side note… didn't you know that all the models for every game are more or less made in either maya, 3ds, blender or cinema 4d ? and yes these are used for target artwork and concept art too. Togheter with photoshop Z-brush and lots of other… and artist are darn fast. + Shadow filter in photoshop can even create the shadows in that scene.

the key is in the "target-artwork".
you create that before you get on with creating the game. that's the process you go through. but cool…

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It is kind of a lost cause….. he'll not admit to being wrong even when proof was presented. If we read through all his post I am sure none of them would come up with him admitting to being wrong.... if you searched through mine there would be at least one or two yeah I suffer from the same problem! Anyway throwing some stone in glas houses....

Wow awesome.
This is the only game Im excited about in 2011. Not a big dragon age person.

GothicGothicness said:

It is kind of a lost cause….. he'll not admit to being wrong even when proof was presented. If we read through all his post I am sure none of them would come up with him admitting to being wrong…. if you searched through mine there would be at least one or two yeah I suffer from the same problem! Anyway throwing some stone in glas houses….

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I agree often with him and really who wants to admit to being wrong, but this is just absurd.
anw, i see you're knowledgeable about game creation process and 3D modelling so thanks for shedding some light.

The first Oblivion "screens" were done like that, rendered in game assets, touched up a little. The example should serve as a reminder not to overinterpret such pictures- the picture of a mounted knight with raised sword led many to think there would be mounted combat.

GothicGothicness said:

It is kind of a lost cause….. he'll not admit to being wrong even when proof was presented. If we read through all his post I am sure none of them would come up with him admitting to being wrong…. if you searched through mine there would be at least one or two yeah I suffer from the same problem! Anyway throwing some stone in glas houses….

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Actually, if I have a problem with this - it's that I can have a hard time seeing that I'm wrong.

Once I see it, I'm truly quite ready to admit it.

I actually DO believe what I'm saying.

The screens look like they're done with an in-game renderer. What I don't know, is how much of it is "touched up" - and how much of it is what the game will actually look like.

But I'm VERY certain we're not looking at traditional concept art - and I don't think we're looking at prerendered 3D.

It's true that 3D packages are often used to create models/textures used in games (I'd say 95% of the time today) - but they're typically exported and converted down into something managable by the game engine. Usually, this means a much lower polygon count and less advanced ligthing/mapping effects.

If you look at the ground texture in the "ship shot" - you can CLEARLY see that it's a texture (as in not handdrawn) - and it certainly doesn't look prerendered in how there doesn't seem to be any advanced mapping going on, apart from perhaps normal mapping. No proper displacement map or advanced details. If it was a detailed 3D pre-render, it would look a lot better.

It makes zero sense that they'd go to the trouble of making such a detailed image in a 3D package and then convert it - somehow - into something between their in-game engine and a fully detailed pre-render.

It makes A LOT more sense that it is, in fact, a game render - touched up afterwards, to give the asset guys and engine-coders something to go on, for their final polish of the engine and assets. Beyond that, they're probably deliberately touching it up for marketing purposes.

The "target-artwork" is something that can be freely interpreted upon, and until we know EXACTLY what they mean - you have zero support to claim it's just concept art or prerendered 3D.

So, it's all speculation.

To boil it down:

I claim they're using their game renderer to generate the basic image, and then they're using some art package (like Photoshop) to polish it and apply mood and atmosphere.

I can't say how much of it is "fake" - but my guess is that it's less than you seem to think.

The "bridge shot" is the only shot that looks like concept art on first view, but after studying it - I think it looks like another game rendered shot - but with more effort towards touching up until it looks more like a painting.

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If I'm wrong about them using their game renderer - I will admit it immediately.

However, since I actually believe what I say - and I actually do give these things more thought than you seem to give me credit for - I'm not going to "admit it" just because a bunch of people are pretending they know for a fact that "target artwork" excludes the use of the game renderer.