Risen 3: Titan Lords - Finally Announced

[danutz_plusplus]

If there's one thing I can't bring myself to say about ANY PB game, it's that it's generic.

Arcania was generic.

Both Risens have an AMAZING sense of place and the atmosphere is palpable.

They're not quite as realised as the Gothic games - but you have to appreciate how long they've been building essentially the same game. There's only so much you can do with settings that are so similar.

Even so, I'd take a Risen over a Witcher game in terms of world building and exploration any day of the week and twice on sundays.

Ok, maybe I've worded it wrongly. Not as generic as I made it out to be, but mainly inconsistent between the games of the series. And it just feels like they don't have a direction theme-wise.

And I just stumbled onto the press release for Risen 3:
"The world of Risen 3 is abandoned by all gods and suffers from the Titan Wars when a new threat rises from the soil. A young warrior is attacked from the shadows and deprived of his soul. He sets off to reclaim what is lost amidst the darkness that is spreading throughout the world.

The banned Mages could be powerful allies on his quest. To get their help, he needs to find the Mage sanctuary on Taranis, also known as the Island of Thunder. Protected by the Guardians, the Mages search the mines of Taranis for crystals loaded with magic energy. Will the player join the Guardians to get in contact with the Mages? Or will he choose one of the other guilds in Risen 3 to reach his goals?"

Does that not seem generic fantasy?

Now that you mentioned The Witcher, that's one game I find does way better in world setting, intricate world politics between feuding empires, etc

Don't get me wrong, I absolutely loved the Gothics. Gothic 1 is up there among the 3 favorite rpgs. But with Risen it just seems to me like they're trying to recapture that old flavor, but just seems to be to fall short.

 

[DArtagnan]

I don't know - as pretty much all fantasy games feel generic to me. Games like Baldur's Gate, Dragon Age, Drakensang, and so on - all feel overly familiar in my mind.

The political stuff in the Witcher seems heavily inspired by Game of Thrones, for instance - and is more "real world" and the game is very low fantasy.

So, I think they're going for very different things.

What I WILL say about Risen (and the Gothics, for that matter) is that their overall stories have never been particularly interesting.

To me, Witcher is more about the characters and politics, and Risen is more about the actual location.

While the writing is much more elaborate in Witcher games - there's a certain lowkey charm to the writing in PB games that I really appreciate. The overall plot might be "big" - but most of their games are about "small" people doing "small" things. Stuff that I find infinitely more interesting than superheroes saving the world and going Matrix on mob asses.

But that's me

 

[Maylander]

I'm one of the biggest PB fans around, and even I have to admit the overall story has never been fantastic. It's not bad by any means - quite good really, but it's mostly the world, atmosphere, exploration and gameplay that really makes PB games shine.

For example, their best game is probably G2, but the story is as standard as it gets. Lots of orcs lead by a Big Evil that the hero must defeat. You get to know the entire plot in the first few minutes of the game. Yet it's still fantastic, one of the best games I've ever played.

 

[danutz_plusplus]

I'm not arguing about story, even though imo Gothic 1 had quite an original setting and story (I loved that you didn't know the main antagonist until way into the story. You just keep hearing about the Sleeper, but I'd never imagined that he'd be the end). Way more original and interesting than G2. While G2 was a lot more improved in gameplay and streamlined a lot of the systems, it just never had the charm that G1 had. I'm sure nostalgia plays a huge role when I say this.

I guess the most jarring thing for me was the change in theme with R2. And now it seems like they're just going all over the place. It really breaks immersion for me when I feel like the authors aren't very sure where they're taking the series.

 

[DArtagnan]

It's true - I didn't feel that Risen was well connected to Risen 2 in terms of story.

But since I'm the kind of guy who forgets the story of the game he played yesterday - it's not really a big deal to me

 

[Maylander]

I guess the most jarring thing for me was the change in theme with R2. And now it seems like they're just going all over the place. It really breaks immersion for me when I feel like the authors aren't very sure where they're taking the series.

Yes, true, they seemed to jump 200 years in terms of technology and setting, despite it actually being just a few years. Now they seem to go backwards again.

 

[SpoonFULL]

Who is left in PB from the original Gothics team?

 

[Maylander]

Most of them I think, but I do know that some of the more influental members are gone, like KaiRo and Henrichs.