There's a teaser video on their web page right now : http://www.larian.com/
Their YouTube Channel : http://www.youtube.com/user/LarianStudios
Their YouTube Channel : http://www.youtube.com/user/LarianStudios
For me, hack & slay = Action-RPGs.
Because there just don't exist any other Action-RPGs which contain anything else than just hack & slay.
"Social interaction Action-RPG" ? No, impossible.
There's a teaser video on their web page right now : http://www.larian.com/
Their YouTube Channel : http://www.youtube.com/user/LarianStudios
Just out of curiosity. How would you define the following RPGs?
- Vampire The Masquerade: Bloodlines
- The Witcher
- Alpha Protocol
- Fallout: New Vegas
They all have real-time action-like combat yet their strengths lie in the interaction with NPCs.
I haven't played them, because they aren't my favourite genres … To me, they are not Action-RPGs (despite what all press releases say, just don't trust them, because of the overwhelming success of the Action-RPG genre invented by Blizzard EVERY game nowadays HAS to be "action"-related, at least in the press release), because they contain meaningful social interaction.
Just compare the amount of social interaction weighed against the amount of hacking and slashing through myriads of monsters from Blizzard's D2 or from Sacred with the amount of social interaction weighed against combat in Drakensang 2, for example.
I think I remember that even Trine 2 was advertised as an Action-RPG.
I don't know who had this idea, but just use "Trine action RPG" as keywords in google, and you'll come up with several hits saying that Trine 2 is either an "action/RPG" or that it is "NOT an action/RPG".
The original Trine game also became infamous by being marketed here in Germany by Ascaron (Publishers of Sacred) at Amazon as being sold "uncut".
Well Alrik limits himself to fantasy roleplaying only, and quite frankly, it's the weakest setting currently having social roleplaying aspects. I would prefer more social roleplaying in a fantasy setting, too.
But his statements do not reflect this directly as he seems to refer to the entire RPG genre in which case many of his complaints are unjustified IMO.