Realms of Arkania - Producer Teases New Game - Thorvall

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Guido Henke, producer of the Realms of Arkania games as well Planescape: Torment has announced via Chrystals DSA forum that he is making a new game:
Ja, ich bin daran ein neues Spiel zu machen, wie ihr ja bereits gesehen habt. Es hat allerdings nichts mit DSA zu tun, sondern ist ein komplett eigenes Konzept, eine Idee, die ich schon seit einiger Zeit mit mir herumgeschleppt habe. Dennoch bin ich sicher, dass die DSA Wurzeln in dem Projekt hier und da schon durchscheinen werden. Es ist kein kompletter Zufall, dass das einen nordischen Touch hat und Thorvalla heisst. Das ganze Projekt werde ich in Kürze komplett ankündigen. Nein, wir reden hier von einem richtigen, grossen PC Projekt. Es hat weder mit DSA noch mit attic irgendetwas zu tun. Ich habe ja schon seit über 10 Jahren meine eigene Firma, G3 Studios, und insofern gibt es gar keinen Grund, attic wieder auszugraben. Das Spiel ist komplett original. Das Regelwerk ist ein neues Design und lehnt sich nicht an DSA oder D&D an. Es ist eine komplette Neuentwicklung von mir, da ich gewisse Spielmechaniken anders handhaben möchte, als das traditionell bei Rollenspielen der Fall ist.
Thorvalla ist ein single-player game, wie die guten alten Klassiker. :)
The English translation can be viewed at Gamebanshee:
Yes, I'm making a new game, as you have already seen. It has nothing to do with DSA [The Dark Eye - GB], but is a completely original concept, an idea that I've been carrying for some time. Nevertheless, I am sure the DSA roots the game has here and there are already apparent. It's not a complete coincidence that this has a Nordic touch and the name Thorvalla [Thorwal is the name of a region in the DSA setting - GB]. The full announcement of this project is coming shortly. No, we're talking about a real, large PC project. It has nothing to do with DSA or with attic [Attic Entertainment Software is the studio that produced the NLT - GB]. I've been running my my own company, G3 Studios, for 10 years now and thus there's no reason to involve attic.The game is completely original. The rules are a new design and is not based on DSA nor on D&D. It is a completely new design by me, because I want to handle some game mechanics differently than is usually the case with the traditional role-playing games. Thorvalla is a single-player game, like the good old classics.
Crystal mentions that the game will most like be funded through Kickstarter.
A teaser picture can be seen here as well as a teaser website can be found here.
More information.
 
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This gets me all sorts of excited. The setting is probably clichéd, but the promises of old-school gameplay goodness is something to look forward to.
 
pretty neat as Norse rpgs are not touched yet, although i'm sick of fantasy worlds
 
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Haha, right, Skyrim had a taste of that. It totally skipped my mind. Probably because it left me empty and unfulfilled.
 
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Interesting news. I hope he keeps things tight.
 
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Me, too.
 
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It's going to be a Kickstarter, so you can buy it soon enough. ;)

Guido is shooting promo videos today, according to his twitter.
 
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I'm very interested in this, if Guido Henkel is involved. I really enjoyed the three Realms of Arkania games, which if I'm not mistaken, he was involved in making. He was also involved in making Planescape: Torment, and his face(with a lot of makeup)was on the front cover of the game box.
 
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He was one of the key developers for the RoA trilogy and the producer of PS:T.
 
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Great to hear! A while back thecriticalbit.com wanted to do an interview to which he already agreed on twitter. They gathered questions on reddit ( http://www.reddit.com/r/thecritical...it_and_vote_on_interview_questions_for_guido/ ) though the interest wasn't that big apparently. :p
Now the site seems to be do be offline. Would have been great if they did the interview before that. Long time no hear (in the game industry) from this Guy.
Looking forward to what he has in mind and throw my money at it. But with Guido and a Norse setting, what can go wrong? :)
 
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I'm officially intrigued. I played the original RoA trilogy back in the day and while it had flaws it also did things I've never encountered in another RPG. (RoA is the only time I've ever had a character die due to poor wardrobe decisions. I forgot to check on someone's boots before setting out across country. They wore out, he caught a disease, I didn't have the medicine necessary to cure it and he died before I could make it back to a city. Whatever else you can say about that kind of gameplay, it's unique.)
 
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For those who don't know, Realms of Arkania is the english version of the German Game "Das Schwarze Auge" which again is the first PC adaption of the Pen and Paper brand of the same name. While there were three games in the ninties, there were a couple of other games made with this licence recently, for those interested in this game world.
However they are not called "Realms of Arkania" anymore internationally but "The Dark Eye". There is no involvement of Guido Henkel though.
For now there are the following games:
-Drakensang (RPG very similar to Dragon Age), but lots of running and lots of wall of texts, not that awesome
-Drakensang River of Time (follow up to Drakensang, but much better) and it's add on Philleasons Secret (horrible again).
"Drakensang Online" however is by the Dudes making the Drakensang games but is NOT using the "Das Schwarze Auge" license. They basically just kept the name.
-The Dark Eye: Chains of Satinav (adventure game)

There is also a Browser game "Das Schwarze Auge Online" in the making (wasn't really looking that good so far), and a Hack and Slash game called "Demonicon", which also plays in the game but is darker.

There are some differences between D&D and DSA. For once D&D is much more open, while DSA is extremely "fixed", meaning you can basically lookup every city on the world and check out the history of it's majors (well, not exactly, but you get my point). In addition you find a lot of "social drama" in DSA which you hadly see in D&D games. You have somehwat like all cultures in DSA, the Norse (Thorwaler), the Arabs (guys in Khom/ Al'anfa), Chinese (Maraskan), and Native Afrikans (Moha). You can find lots of explicit sexual content in the novels of that game and DSA also makes the sexual orientation to a subject a couple of times. There is also a focus on difficulties between races (remember playing Shadows over Riva and the Holberker problem? They basically were the result of Elves raped by Orcs). DSA doesn't say "Orcs are the evil" like Lords of the Rings does. In DSA there is a huge gray area, though as you play "heroes" your actions are mostly for the good.
And the game and setting seems to be much more aimed to Adults then D&D seems to be.
Of course that has it's limits as 18+ games can hardly be sold in germany. However in the Realms of Arkania games you could visit brothels and you got an "event" when you ran through the city without pants.

And that again fits to what Guido Henkel was doing with Planescape Torment. A game which has a very dark setting, with topics which make you think.
And one of the reasons he mentioned for leaving the game industry back then was that publishers didn't want to make such games tailored to adults anymore with topics not that suited for children.
So in that regard, I am also very interested in "how deep" his new game will be.

Ok, got carried away a bit, but maybe I could put some light on the one or other thing. :)
 
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