Official Blog for 'Risen'

This is the place where the leaders of the Chosen post news. News about the Chosen, news about drow/Eilistraee, news about NWN/NWN2 and news generally considered interesting to us. This is also the place where you can comment on those news items. :rss:

Moderators: Shir'le E. Illios, Bhaern Quel

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Shir'le E. Illios
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Official Blog for 'Risen'

Post by Shir'le E. Illios »

Hadn't heard much about this game, but thought it might be interesting.

Risen is an action RPG by Gothic developer Deep Silver. And it seems that they started an [url=http://blogs.ign.com/DeepSilver_Risen/2 ... /:2lzf5uej]official blog[/url:2lzf5uej] over at IGN. Here's an excerpt:

[quote:2lzf5uej][b:2lzf5uej]What’s Risen?[/b:2lzf5uej]

Risen is an action oriented 3rd person RPG in which you play the role of a nameless hero character who is shipwrecked and stranded on a mysterious volcanic island. Risen is unique in many aspects such as that it doesn’t rely on your traditional fantasy creatures like orcs and elves to tell a story. You also don’t have your usual character creation or class selection at the beginning of the game because your character evolves throughout the game in a more natural way. Your choices determine if you’re becoming a distinguished sword fighter or a mage who wields his powerful spells against his enemies. The fantasy world of Risen is not generated by Heightmaps or with an editor with reusable sceneries but everything in the game is handcrafted which adds enormously to the atmosphere and authenticity of the locations. This means that buildings are not there without a history and the size of the settlements do reflect the amount of people living there.[/quote:2lzf5uej]
The graphics look quite nice, but to be honest the above quote leaves me with a number of questions. Prime amongst those is: can you play a female character? I get the strong impression that you can't, which automatically kills all my remaining interest in the game.

Still, trying to find out the answer I looked around a bit more and also found [url=http://uk.pc.ign.com/articles/966/96606 ... l:2lzf5uej]this preview[/url:2lzf5uej] as well as [url=http://www.risen.deepsilver.de/game/ind ... n:2lzf5uej]the game's homepage[/url:2lzf5uej]. The homepage looks interesting, but still no answer to my question.

Either way, it could be of interest to those who don't mind being restricted to a pre-defined male character. Personally, unless I hear different on that, I think I'll pass on this one.


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Post by Argoth »

Kinda like Gothic.
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Post by Rixxen Bladedleaf »

While I do understand where you are coming from Shir'le, I also understand that, like in the Gothic games, it is easier to tell a story from a single named character with a predefined identity. And you also have to look at the market right now as well, the last few RPG's/ Action RPG's with female leads have bombed due to horrible writing and game play, and most consumers tend to identify simple things like gender with bad things. Now me, I think all you need is a good dev team and some decent heads and you can make a game that anyone can play and like and customize to their hearts extant(IE The Elder Scrolls games, NWN, Mass Effect, KotOR). But Piranha has something to prove to people due to the whole Gothic 3 screw up. So don't throw the game out the window because of lack of customization, just throw it out of the window for something that is sorely lacking like a story or stability.
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Post by Shir'le E. Illios »

[quote="Rixxen Bladedleaf":2sqruglj]While I do understand where you are coming from Shir'le, I also understand that, like in the Gothic games, it is easier to tell a story from a single named character with a predefined identity.[/quote:2sqruglj]
I understand that, but for me the whole point of roleplaying games is that as a player you have a strong influence on the story, that in a way it is [i:2sqruglj]your[/i:2sqruglj] character in the story. If they can't even make the story such that its left open to player gender choice, then I can't really expect much from the rest of it either.

If they want to tell a story with a pre-defined identity then let them make an adventure game or an action game or such. If they're claiming to make a roleplaying game then that comes with the requirement that the player gets to have a large say in the story (particularly the main character), or it simply isn't a roleplaying game for me.

[quote="Rixxen Bladedleaf":2sqruglj]the last few RPG's/ Action RPG's with female leads[/quote:2sqruglj]
It's funny that you put it like that, because as far as I'm aware there have been no RPGs with a female lead. They're always either with a male lead or they leave it up to player choice. Action RPGs might be a bit different (though I can't really think of any that don't at least give you a choice), but female leads just tend to appear in action and adventure games.

Now perhaps I'm just horribly restricting myself, but I can't help it that I just don't enjoy roleplaying games with a male character. And believe me I've tried, including some that have been lauded as really good roleplaying games. It's just frustrating to be limited thus in a genre that's supposed to be about freedom of choice.


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Post by Argoth »

Have to agree with Shir'le on that one.
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