Realms of Arkania - Producer Teases New Game - Thorvall

Wait! Realms of Arkania is based on the Dark Eye PnP setting? Not that it matter for the news here, but I never realized that.

Back to the "main" topic. So, this dude, Guido Henke, is making an old school RPG based on a Nordic setting. hmm. I sort of like the name though: Thorvalla (Thor Valhalla).
 
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There was a lot of bullshittiness about the title of "producer" in the computer game industry in the late 1990s and early 2000s, and it's a but troubling at least for me that this is the title he held for most the game projects he was involved in, then. Also, looking at his bio he's kinda all over the place as far as his career which either means he's a real renaissance man who excels at everything or he lacks commitment. Anyway. Whatever. The Realms of Arkania games were pretty good. Not great, but worth playing. And there were some interesting ideas in there that weren't present in other games of that era. Even if he did no more than update those to modern standards, I'd be interested in playing them.
 
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There is also a Browser game "Das Schwarze Auge Online" in the making (wasn't really looking that good so far),

It is called "Herokon", and it's open Beta right now.
It's entirely based on Flash.
If you decide to participate in the Open Beta : Try not to use Opera for this ! Or at least let it "answer" itself as a different browser.
 
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Kordanor: Thank you for the overview. Good stuff.

I am looking forward to how this game develops.
 
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When Guido does a kickstarter, I'm all in. :) In addition to his wonderful contributions to gaming, he also has run one of the best DVD review sites for years: dvdreview.com.

And, although he most definitely qualifies as a Renaissance Man who wears many hats, he actually wears all of them quite well.
 
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Please bring back the kind of character creation system from the "Realms of Arkania" games. That was my most favorite part of the games and would spend hours creating my and re-creating my characters.
 
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Guys, his name his Henkel. I've corrected the newsbit hours ago, but the discussion thread isn't automatically modified once it's created.
 
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There has been a lot of norse games, such as both from japanese publishers such as (valkyrie profile) and others (heimdal, heimdal 2,..) .... and many many more... but more doesn't hurt :)
 
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RoA 1 is one of the greatest RPGs ever, sadly the series got worse as it went along but I still will certainly be backing this. I'm hoping it is fantasy combined with a planescape twist, perhaps something to do with the afterlife involving the mythology of the norse-like peoples of thorwal?
 
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Don't know why all the excitement. Maybe I read too fast but the guy pretty much said "I was involved in games A and B, and this game is not like game A and not like game B, except that the name of the town is ASDFa which is like game A's ASDFb sort of".
 
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Of course he had to say "it's not like DSA" - he posted on a DSA forum and his game doesn't have a DSA license. ;)

More seriously, he left the games business due to the limitations and compromises he had to make to get his projects finished in a publisher based business environment. Now these limitations are gone if he manages to collect money in a Kickstarter. Which certainly won't be easy.
I can understand that if he can remove the business chains, he wants to do the same for ruleset and gameplay. He wants to create something new.
 
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@Alrik
Oh, yes. Sorry. Of course it's called "Herokon Online".

@Wolfing:
He said that he is sure that the roots in DSA/Dark Eye are apparent.
In addition to that he made the announcement on an hardcore Dark Eye Forum. He probably wouldn't do that if it's going to be a mobile game about rolling dice.

But besides that people are also following new games from Notch though they have nothing to do with Minecraft, right? This man stands for something. And that is what we are looking forward to.

@Gorath
The good thing is, that Guido wore so many hats in the past, that he should know what he is doing. He worked as producer, programmer and musician for a couple of companies. And hopefully he knows how to invest the money best.
 
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There was a lot of bullshittiness about the title of "producer" in the computer game industry in the late 1990s and early 2000s, and it's a but troubling at least for me that this is the title he held for most the game projects he was involved in, then. Also, looking at his bio he's kinda all over the place as far as his career which either means he's a real renaissance man who excels at everything or he lacks commitment. Anyway. Whatever. The Realms of Arkania games were pretty good. Not great, but worth playing. And there were some interesting ideas in there that weren't present in other games of that era. Even if he did no more than update those to modern standards, I'd be interested in playing them.

Henkel started much earlier. His first shipped title is from 1985 (not 1987 as MobyGames says). In that day games were made by single devs or very small teams.
It's clear he has a lot of experience as writer - his job for the last decade -, as coder, game designer and project lead. He also composed music for some of Attic's games.
 
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Perhaps he is trying to get people excited so that he can get an TDE/DSA license ? Or, even better, if he succeeds, he might be able to do a following game with an TDE/DSA license ?
 
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I don't think so, for multiple reasons.
- The DSA Licence is extremely limiting and strict. In the past people making games with this licence complained now and then that it's quite hard to work with it. It probably also needs a strong collaboration with the license holders. At least in the past they always did that, which also limits the story possibilieties quite a bit. No real "save the world" or "change the world" scenarios possible (personally I like that it is limited that way, but that's another topic)
-I don't think that it's very hard to "get" the lincense, as long as you fulfill these conditions. Can't give you any quotes here but I have a very strong feeling that if Guido wanted the License he could have had it.
-The DSA License is very strong in Germany, but not internationally. This was one reason why Drakensang: River of Time failed afaik. It was a big success in Germany. But the costs were so high, that an international success would have been necessary.
Guido and his team however are located in the USA. As he states it's hard for him to even write proper German anymore and therefore the Game will initially make the Game in english and then translate the game to German as stretch goal. Would be suicide to do something like that with a DSA license. Also a cooperation with the license holders would be harder. As far as I know the Dev teams met quite a lot with the usual DSA Story-writers to check for consistency and whatnot. Don't think that would work that well if they are US based.
 
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This reminds me of something:

Both Drakensang: River of Time and Venetica are on Steam Greenlight. They're both still not available in certain regions. So go vote for them if you don't have them yet.
 
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Interesting news. I had the chance to do an interview with Guido once, and he is really a nice guy. His attitude is really down to earth (in its positive meaning). I hope he can come up with an interesting concept and gets the attention he needs for his kickstarter pitch. :)
 
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