Risen - Should it Bother Rising? @ OXCGN

What a strange article this is. Australian Xbox site OXCGN has kicked up an editorial piece that somehow concludes the gameplay (and, well, everything else) in Pirahna Bytes' Risen will fail - based entirely the trailers released to date:

The trailer leaves a number of questions: why can’t people leave the city? What are those strange creatures? And what exactly, is the plot behind the game? At one point you can hear the hopeless cry: “The gods have forsaken us”. They look to be the gods of plot, visual presentation, and gameplay.

More information.

hmm the author of this artice seems to be not a very bright person…

Another example of speculating and then drawing conclusions based on the speculations and then reporting the conclusions as fact. This practice runs rampant in today's press unfortunatley.

Sounds like that guy drinks way too much Fosters if you ask me.

What the…..? That 'article' was a waste of Internet space. What a bozo.

Originally Posted by Jabberwocky
What the…..? That 'article' was a waste of Internet space. What a bozo.

How to tell when someone on a blog is paid to post in one easy lesson …

That has got to be the stupidest thing I've read since… ugh, in a while, anyway.

Ehm, ok, this new low in writing standards has to be a joke. First that DA piece, now this?

Man, I hate these kind of "reviews". The graphics is not what you would expect from a current-gen game? WTF??? I mean, ok - there might be a few action games that does better on that front .. but if the graphics in Risen aren't good enough then all hope seems lost for smaller developers.

Also, and i know i should just ignore her, comparing the graphics to a first-gen Xbox or PS2 is just plain stupid. Show me just *one* PS2 game that will even come close to the level of graphics in Risen! Just like that review of the G3 expansion where the reviewer said the graphics were of similar quality as those in Ultima 9…

Oh well, I'm still looking forward to Risen in any case

This is the first unbiased preview of Risen I have read. The author does what a good journalist should do: Consider the track record of a company (and PB is really disastrous), take everything available into account (anyone remember the turning on wheels bears in the wildlife trailer?), divide promises from shown game features, compare to current standards (Risen does not look any better than Gothic 3) and draw conclusions from it.

Instead of hyping, like the rest of the web and the paid journalists use to do, this one takes everything with a grain of salt.

It's a pity that his language is not as convincing as the language of paid "reviewers" is.

LOL! That was the funniest take on this piece of drivel yet. You, Sir, have the makings of a class A troll.

Originally Posted by Sir_Brennus
This is the first unbiased preview of Risen I have read. The author does what a good journalist should do: Consider the track record of a company (and PB is really disastrous), take everything available into account (anyone remember the turning on wheels bears in the wildlife trailer?), divide promises from shown game features, compare to current standards (Risen does not look any better than Gothic 3) and draw conclusions from it.

Instead of hyping, like the rest of the web and the paid journalists use to do, this one takes everything with a grain of salt.

It's a pity that his language is not as convincing as the language of paid "reviewers" is.

Tell your brother that while you support him because you're family, you actually don't enjoy pretending to be this ignorant on a forum

It is the perfect example of a trailer that reveals little…

First of all, it is typical for trailers for games to 'reveal little.' Singling out Risen for this is silly. And even if in some other parallel universe trailers for games 'reveal a lot' I actually prefer for them to 'reveal little.' I get irritated at trailers for movies that basically go on for 10 minutes and show everything to the point you feel you don't even need to see the full movie.

…and does little to generate interest.

The author doesn't speak for me. I watched the videos and became much more interested in Risen than I had been before I saw the videos. /Shrug

The game’s trailer from late last year starts off with a man and a woman desperately running through a dark jungle, while behind them a creature that appears to be some form of mutated gorilla chases close on their heels. From the start, it is clear that the graphics are not exactly what you would expect from a modern game.

And here is a good example of why developers have historically been squeamish about releasing anything about their game during development. Conclusions are drawn based on a work in progress. You might expect statements like this in a gamers forum. But in a preview it's a bit much. And the cherry on top is the video the author is referring to is one from 'late last year.' I never saw it.

The trailer leaves a number of questions: why can’t people leave the city? What are those strange creatures? And what exactly, is the plot behind the game? At one point you can hear the hopeless cry: “The gods have forsaken us”. They look to be the gods of plot, visual presentation, and game play.

Clearly, the author loves movie trailers that go on for 20 minutes and give away the entire plot of the movie so you don't feel compelled to watch the whole thing. I don't exactly understand what is wrong with a trailer leaving a 'number of questions.' In fact, I thought that was what they are kind of supposed to do…

It doesn’t show any in-game play or what sort of game it will be (though it obviously leans toward

Again, most trailers for games do exactly this. To single out Risen in this regard is dumb. Now I do prefer trailers for games to show actual game play rather than pre-rendered video… but again, to single out this trailer when the vast majority of trailers for other games do the same exact thing is bizarre.

Although they are rather dull, they at least give you the impression that the in-game graphics may be decent, if not much better than the trailer. The look appears to be very similar to that found in Fable (Caribbean flair aside), and whilst this is not necessarily a bad thing, that was a first gen Xbox game.

And here we have the classic, '… and now I'll say something mildly positive just in case the game turns out to be a success I can hop on that bandwagon.'

Bleh. Bad preview.

Originally Posted by DArtagnan
Tell your brother that while you support him because you're family, you actually don't enjoy pretending to be this ignorant on a forum

Kudos, mate, your reply just earned you some massive respect in my book.

Also, be sure to read the replies of said "article." Luckily, I suppose, the readers of Oxcgn are not as brain-dead as the author might have hoped.
…either that or everyone who posted here also posted there.

Originally Posted by DArtagnan
Tell your brother that while you support him because you're family, you actually don't enjoy pretending to be this ignorant on a forum

No, it's not like that. I am not font of the oxcgn piece, but I tried to make a point:

Since the days of Oblivion, the avantgarde CRPG community (mostly represented by the Codex, the Watch and the NMA) is lost in hypocrisy: there are double standards for Bethsoft and Pirhania Bytes.

Mostly all of the points that were criticised about Oblivion could be said about G3, too - but what happened? "It's not that bad", "Better than Oblivion", "I encountered no bugs", "JoWood is to blame" and so on.

These guys at PB didn't make a good job on G3, but noone admits it, because they somehow got the "Anit-Bethesda" aura and everything about Risen is hyped beyond any reason.

I have no hopes for Risen and EVERYTHING I saw in the videos just looks bland, uninspired, graphically outdated, poorly animated and lacks any atmosphere. They just want to cash in on their G1+G2 fame. They won't get my money.

And I think that a different perspective, like the OXCGN article, helps people to see the failure of their ways.

Originally Posted by Sir_Brennus
I have no hopes for Risen and EVERYTHING I saw in the videos just looks bland, uninspired, graphically outdated, poorly animated and lacks any atmosphere. They just want to cash in on their G1+G2 fame.

Graphically outdated? I hate to get aggressive but are you blind? What videos were you watching? The HD Risen videos from Gamestar look great.

And that theory about them trying to cash-in on their fame doesn't fly. They're not that famous to be able to cash-in on anything. At best they could maybe stay afloat just on fan support.

Ha. Put out a negative article to generate traffic. Exactly what they want.

What, Sir, you weren't kidding?

Seriously, though -- don't you think it a tad absurd to write an article discussing gameplay, storytelling, and background all based on a… trailer?

I'll give you the unexciting graphics and visual style, but then Gothics never were at the cutting edge in that respect. PB does one particular kind of game well; they've proven that with G1 and G2. They overreached and failed with G3. It remains to be seen how much they've learned from that experience -- but that's a question that no trailer can answer, which makes pontification based on it pretty ridiculous.

Re the double standard (which, I agree, is there): I for one have more sympathy for people who try to do something genuinely interesting and challenging but fail, than for a group of people who try to do something fundamentally simple and unexciting and succeed, with pretty bloom effects on.

If a company decides to start to appeal to the lowest common denominator -- which, IMO, has been the direction both Bethsoft and BioWare have been going, Dragon Age notwithstanding -- my default assumption is that they're going to produce unambitious but technically well-executed and good-looking games. OTOH if a developer overreached and failed when trying to do something interesting and exciting, I have hope they'll succeed the next time around.

That's why I like PB more than Beth -- and really, really hope that Dragon Age is a new, if not exclusive, direction for BW.

Sir_Brennus: I actually never had a bug playing Gothic 3 and I think it is a good game. With Gothic 3 I didn't need to wait for mods to fix the game like I did for Oblivion. Currently I like both games pretty much equally with Gothic 3 having the community patch and Oblivion with many mods. When it comes to graphics I don't really care much but I like the looks of most modern games including Gothic 3, Oblivion, (what I have seen of) Risen.

EDIT: Prime Junta: I think that saying Bethesda is making games that are fundamentally simple is not quite right. It is more like they are trying to do too much and the game ends up being simplified overall since there are so many things to focus on. I think Gothic 3 was in a simular position except not quite so bad since they were not quite so unfocused as Bethesda.

Originally Posted by guenthar
Sir_Brennus: I actually never had a bug playing Gothic 3

When did you start playing Gothic 3? I bought it when it came out, and it felt like a development build -- not even beta quality. Stun-locking, hyper-aggressive wildlife, disappearing NPC's, monsters falling through the scenery, crashes to desktop, god-awful performance, you name it. It's come a long way since, for sure, but it was in a truly lamentable state on release.