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Drakensang - Interview @ Bit-tech

by Dhruin, 2008-10-19 11:58:57

Bit-tech has an interview on Drakensang with Boris Arendt from developer Radon Labs and Class Wolter from German publisher DTP.  The conversation comes from an Eidos press event to promote the upcoming European English version, which is news to me - either I'm getting old or Radon (and dtp and Eidos - and THQ come to think of it) could do with better press releases.  No surprises from the article itself and here's a sample:

bt: You don’t tend to see so many fantasy RPGs any more. BioWare for example did Baldur’s Gate but since then it has done Mass Effect and KOTOR and gone very sci-fi. Do you think the RPG market is moving on and leaving fantasy behind?

CW: No, no. For us, we think it’s an opportunity as there’s still a big demand for classic fantasy games. Gamers have been in love with these types of games for a long time and they are still in love with them. BioWare has moved elsewhere, but there’s still a demand for fantasy RPGs and we see that in the sales figures and comments.

BA: There’s a demand for linear, story-led RPGs too. The problem with the open-world RPG approach that BioWare has been toying with is that you can’t really tell as dense or as good a story as you have to spread the content very thinly if you have a large world.

Most of the time you have this feeling, or at least I do when I play these games, that there’s not enough diversity in the environments. We can use our game to explore all manner of different areas, cultures, quests, side-stories and that’s something you can’t do as well if you have just one big, giant sandbox because the game starts to look like a patchwork or have huge areas of emptiness. I had this with Fallout 3, for example. I liked it and I was very excited about it but I was sometimes wandering around going ‘Hello? Is anyone there?’ and the next quest-giver was miles and miles away. It was a lot of grind and meaningless combat to get over to there a lot of the time.

I think the open, sandbox RPG style will work someday when the budget is big enough and you can properly fill the space you have. Right now that isn’t going to happen with this financial situation though. So, I think sticking to this linear and story-led concept is a better path for us and something that gamers can appreciate.

Information about

Drakensang: TDE

SP/MP: Single-player
Setting: Fantasy
Genre: Action-RPG
Platform: PC
Release: Released


Details