Risen 2 - Preview @ GameSpot

Originally Posted by Zloth
I'm guessing one of Piranha Byte's lead designers was maimed by a wild boar and now considers them to be the most deadly critter this side of the gates of Hell. I would give them even odds against a rabid elephant in all the PB games I've played.

Indeed. It baffles me. I still get bouts of incoherent rage and frustrated head-desking by just thinking about the boars and wolves of Gothic 3. So, come Risen and I'm playing it and I see the first wild boar. I'm eyeing the beast with trepidation and pondering if PB had changed their όber-boars into something more "sensible". POW! GORE! MAIM! AIEEAAARGHHHT! Hmm, I guess not.

Be that as it may, still I would NOT want them to make their games easier. No! C'mon, it's good to give players some challenge and make them pay attention, instead of just making use of mindless clicking of the Awesome Button(tm).

I'm a whiner, so I shouldn't play Risen 1 or 2.

Making things more accessible early on is a necessity because Risen 2 is officially by far their most expensive game. (Place no. 2 should be Gothic.) They have to make it easier for new players to get into the game.
PB also said in the latest interviews that the game will open up more and more, they'll work on the NPCs and avoid having nothing left to do in the late game.

its kind of a toss up though as most games that have more late game stuff to do generally achieve this by either sequestering off areas or restricting certain gameplay elements. the pirahnas have usually done a good job on this, but i imagine stepping back into a smaller world for risen meant that had to make some tough choices that ultimately led to the weak late gameplay.

does anyone know if risen 2 will have a larger gameworld, i remember them saying there will be multiple islands but usually they always give us a this game will be x times the size of a prior game?

Originally Posted by Gorath
Making things more accessible early on is a necessity because Risen 2 is officially by far their most expensive game.

That makes for interesting commentary.

I remember the 80s when Arcades were huge here in the U.S. Arcade games were anything but 'accessible' yet they swallowed billions in quarters.

My view is that 'accessibility' is really a self-fullfilling prophecy. The industry declares that accessibility is needed and therefore it has become needed.

But really, if accessibility is so important, it fails to explain why I (and so many others) dumped all their spare money (and time) into super hard arcade games.

Originally Posted by Moriendor
Risen 1 was a cakewalk even on hard. I remember saving up far over 100 learning points on the first 15 levels or so because I wanted to prolong my class/faction decision for as long as possible and then just spend all the points once I had chosen a path.
Despite the saving up of LP and running around with a cripple of a character it was still pretty easy.
And I'm not boasting or trying to show off by saying this. I know for a fact that I'm not a leet gamer (how could I be with the little time I have for gaming - I sometimes don't play anything for weeks). I'm average at best so for anyone with any real skill it must have been ridiculously super-easy even on hard.
GameSpot is completely and totally nuts claiming it had an "absurd difficulty curve". STFU, GameSpot, before anyone reads -or worse- believes that crap. Thank you.

Quoted for truth.
I think Risen was very easy even on hard too. ( Especially compared to Gothic ) Of course, maybe it's because I played as a mage. I mean, unlike Gothic 2, mage is ridiculously powerful in Risen. Especially if you save LP and max one of your offensive magics earlier in the game. Then you can see how strongest of enemies fall at your feet before even having the opportunity to hit you.

I'm a bit disturbed to see someone from Piranha Bytes saying that Risen 2 will be "easier". I hope this isn't the start of them dumbing down their games in order to compete with more mainstream titles.

Yeah, it really worries me too. Of course, it's really hard to remain faithful to your roots in this industry these days.

You guys must be the stud gods of the gaming universe if you really thought Risen was too easy on the Hard setting.

I agree that playing a mage gets easier in the latter half of the game, but the early stages were anything but easy for me.

Originally Posted by JDR13
You guys must be the stud gods of the gaming universe if you really thought Risen was too easy on the Hard setting.

I agree that playing a mage gets easier in the latter half of the game, but the early stages were anything but easy for me.

Well, as I said earlier I'm very far from being a leet gamer so definitely no "stud god of the gaming universe" powers involved on my side . The "secret" to finding Risen easy on hard was to pick fights.
If anything looked like a mid or high level animal (remember that animal attacks could not be blocked) the strategy was to run like hell. If it looked like a humanoid on the other hand then the strategy was to lure it away from its group (if there was any), corner it and then hack it to death (attack spamming FTW). It was rare that an enemy would or could break out of a cornered encounter. The AI was pretty poor in that regard. This strategy worked especially well even at a very low level against those skeleton warriors on the West coast.
Then once you found your first Fred scroll in the West coast ruins it became tons easier once again since you could use Fred for tanking or as a distraction.

It really wasn't that hard. What's hard is some of the Tomb Raider games (puzzles and boss fights) or some of the QTEs in Fahrenheit (Indigo Prophecy).

P.S.: There's some shaky-cam in-game "footage", well, or more like a still frame of Risen 2 from E3 right here on YouTube. It's an official Deep Silver video and in spite of the low quality of the camera (it was shot with an iPhone) and being filmed off the screen it does look quite spectacular graphically (as opposed to the IMHO somewhat very average looking low res console screenshots from E3).

As a melee dude after primary enemies started to appear, it was not easy.

Anyone claiming differently is bullshitting or exploiting. Not necessarily a hard game or anything like that, but it wasn't easy.

It is of course to be expected that an open world game, that doesn't resort to scaling, will provide a preset amount of challenge throughout. The more your character improves the easier the world gets; that's the whole point. There still remain areas that offer a greater challenge but even those should be in some way limited otherwise the game becomes effectively more linear.

Moreover it seems logical to me that it should be balanced in such a way so that it will be manageable to players that, for whatever reason, choose to ignore a fair number of side quests and limit their exploration and xp gathering.

So if I spend my time exploring everywhere, doing everything there is do, effectively improving my character in the most efficient way to the point of being the most powerful individual around, I expect that the game will reflect that by 'becoming' easier. As such I find that complaining that Risen is an easy game, either because it gets easier or because you found the way to exploit it is unreasonable.

(Not to mention that for every game there's always someone who will complain that it's too easy, to the point that it gets pretty boring. Maybe sometimes it's not that the game is easy but it just provides a kind of challenge that, for some reason, you can handle better than others, even if you are not a particularly skilled gamer.)

Originally Posted by TheMadGamer
My view is that 'accessibility' is really a self-fullfilling prophecy. The industry declares that accessibility is needed and therefore it has become needed.

Yes.

And it becomes a self-fulfillung prophecy, because "the industry" is training/educating the audience to only play "accessible" games - hence the infamous "Ultima = unplayable" thing.

Originally Posted by JDR13
You guys must be the stud gods of the gaming universe if you really thought Risen was too easy on the Hard setting.

I agree that playing a mage gets easier in the latter half of the game, but the early stages were anything but easy for me.

Well, no I'm a noob compared to the most people on this forum.
Yes, the game has it's slow and hard start, because you become a mage only after reaching chapter 2. So in chapter 1, I decided to avoid combat and exploring as much as I could ( only did them when they were necessary for a quest ) and did them all in chapter 2.

BTW, when I wasn't a mage, the " hit-evade " tactic worked perfectly for me.

Originally Posted by DArtagnan
As a melee dude after primary enemies started to appear, it was not easy.

Anyone claiming differently is bullshitting or exploiting. Not necessarily a hard game or anything like that, but it wasn't easy.

Well, I guess playing as a melee character is hard in Risen. ( I haven't played as one, so I don't know for sure ) Because you should get near your enemy to hit them and also you can hit one enemy at a time, but when you play as a mage, not only you can hit them from a long distance, but also you can hit couple of them at the same time. ( When fireball is maxed, it has a good range of effect. )
Also one of the things that makes the game easier than Gothic games is the fact that you can drink potions while moving. So even Mana bar won't become a restriction, because whenever it becomes empty, you drink one while you are escaping and when you are charged, you cast the spells again before they reach you.
But I agree, I used the wrong sentence , I should have said " the game is not that hard even on hard" instead of " the game was easy even on hard. "

Well all I know is that I'll be seriously disappointed if Piranha Bytes reduces the difficulty in any significant way. I would prefer that they simply added an "easy" setting, and left normal and hard alone.

Originally Posted by Toaster
I think Daniel Oberlerchner is the brand manager at Deep Silver so that'd mean it isn't a real Piranha saying it will be easier.

Exactly. Besides, I never said that the whole game is going to be easier. When you have a 40-60 hour long game, you have plenty time later on to "torture" the player so the learning curve at the beginning will be not as steep as in the previous games. There will also be a bit more exposition in the story for the players who haven't played Risen 1 before, so the pacing feels alright.

PB should put a single Gothic 3 boar in Risen 2 as an easter egg. Everyone knows Gothic 3 boars are comparable to end bosses in most games. Just imagine a few of these fights:

- Boar vs Master Li (Jade Empire): Boar wins by stunlocking Li the entire fight.
- Boar vs Diablo (D1 and 2): Same as above.
- Boar vs Malak (KotOR): Yep, you guessed it. Malak may be a Sith Lord, but the boar would win without breaking a sweat.
- Boar vs Sarevok (BG1): Slow, 2H using guy? Roadkill..

Originally Posted by Maylander
- Boar vs Sarevok (BG1): Slow, 2H using guy? Roadkill..

That was kind of how I won that fight first time around Summon monster, lots

Originally Posted by kalniel
That was kind of how I won that fight first time around Summon monster, lots

Wand of Monster Summoning is incredibly overpowered, hehe.

Maybe we get the same wand in Risen2…
What? No? No wand?
I guess good old Fred will still kick arses then.