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Game News Drakensang update

Vault Dweller

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Tags: Drakensang

Remember <a href=http://www.drakensang.com/>Drakensang</a>, a DSA game, code-named by its developers "Baldur's Gate in 3D!"? Well, here is more info, courtesy of <a href=http://drakensang.info/>this fine site</a>:
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<blockquote>Gamestar mentioned the following archetypes to be available to play:
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* Elven Ranger from Thunderbrook
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* Dwarven Mercenary from the Thash Mountains (near Lowangen)
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* Pickpocket from Punin
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* Battlemage from Andergast
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* Healingmage from Thunderbrook
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* Rashdulian warrior
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* Archer from Anchopal
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* Amazon warrior from Castle Kurkum (near Beilunk)
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* Thorwalian pirate
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Also, there is a paragraph about travelling:
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Travelling can be compared to NWN2 (for veterans: Realms of Arkania 1/2), from a regional map you can choose your destination. During travel random encounter can interrupt your passage. That means ambushes or wild animals, something like that.
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...
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Drakensang was this month's title story of the German magazine Gamestar. Here's a summary of some of the things from the article:
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- The game takes place in an area 80 miles around Ferdok, in the Middenrealms county called the Kosh. Dragons are devastating the hinterlands of Ferdok. You start your career in the small village Avestreu (german name). You will also travel to a large dwarven city and a cyclops city
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- Character creation: You can choose your character from 11 Archetypes, 8 of them having 3 sub-classes. That makes 27 different character types overall. Archetype in that case means an unchangeable combination of race, class and cultural background. You can choose the gender, but can't change the look of your character (figure, head, hair, skin color, etc.). For your character's talents you will have some customization options, but you are not allowed to generate your own character from scratch (ed: perhaps a good decision, because character generation in TDE 4 is quite a complicated thing that needs a hell lot of time, a lot more complicated than AD&D)
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- Character feats (talents): The number of talents is not yet final and need some more balancing. The article mentions two talents that indicate some kind of craftmanship in Drakensang, forging and making bows. Alchemy / Brewing potions is integrated, the talent "survival" reveals placing herbson the map. To train your characters you need to visit a trainer and pay for their lessons with Gold and experience points. 40 spells of the official rule set have been integrated into Drakensang, e.g. Fireball, lightning, Summon Skeletons. Warriors have feats like Overthrow (Umreißen), blade dance (Klingensturm) and Precise shot.
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- Party: besides your main character you can have up to 3 companions. You can change your party constellation at all times. Nonactive companions autolevel through the whole game. All companions have their own personality and their own individual quests. You have full control over your companions' character attributes, equipment and inventory.
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- Combat: 5 different group formations; you can modify your attack rolls, for example to do more damage, but this also increases the chance to get a critical failure. For a successful attack the computer calculates the hidden part of the body. The armour of this part influences the damage a charactersuffers from the attack.
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- Controls: There is one leading character, the rest of the party follows automatically (like NWN2). To direct your character(s) you can either use WASD or mouse. Camera follows automatically, is rotable and offers different zoom steps (see also the oncoming dev diary #12). Left click orders your char to execute an acion (context sensitive, for example open the door), right click opens a radiant menu you can choose alternative orders from (use lock pick, use magic, break door).
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- Technical things: Not all dialogs are synchronized, only the most important ones. Like Dragon Age, Drakensang does not have a regular day / night circle. Instead it is using lights as a tool to create atmosphere, like the sky becoming suddenly dark when a dragon flies above the heads of your party.
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- Quests: Most quests offer different solutions, for example battle, persuasion, choosing one faction over another. An example was given, a witch is asking the player to bring her altar wine from the camp of thepraiots (a inquisition like organzation, followers of the god of order, Praios). He can choose between helping the witch and bringing her the wine or killing her by order of the praiots. Both has consequences for following quests.</blockquote>Don't forget to check the <a href=http://www.drakensang.info/component/option,com_zoom/catid,1/>concept art</a> and <a href=http://www.drakensang.info/component/option,com_zoom/Itemid,99999999/catid,2/>new screenshots</a>.
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Thanks, Brother None.
 

JarlFrank

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Vault Dweller said:
Remember <a

- Combat: 5 different group formations; you can modify your attack rolls, for example to do more damage, but this also increases the chance to get a critical failure. For a successful attack the computer calculates the hidden part of the body. The armour of this part influences the damage a charactersuffers from the attack.

I guess this should mean hit instead of hidden if it was to make any sense.

Otherwise, it sounds quite good. The quest example with the choice and consequence is far from anything great, but it's a lot better than the usual shit because they at least try to include some kind of RP into the G. Also, sounds like you will have opposing factions and you can choose which to join. Sounds good so far. You can have a party, which is good. You have control over their inventory and stats, which is also good [depends on your viewpoint though]. Still, that "inactive characters still level up" part sounds strange. Will you get some stupid party system like KotoR, where you can hire loads of characters but only take a limited number with you? That would suck.
Also, they mentioned different solutions to quests [persuasion is in!] and the travel system should be similar to the old RoA games. Yes, sounds good enough to be optimistic.
 

thesheeep

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Sounds very promising...

And surprisingly true to its prequels... I just played through DSA1 again, last week.

40 Spells are more than enough and the choice of archetypes seems ok, even if I don't know why not to choose classes and races yourself. It's done in the TDE 4, too...
 

thesheeep

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Gosling said:
Hmm, autolevelling party members? Why? It decreases replayability and makes party members feel more like a set of tools than your actual companions.

Fallout had almost no choices when it comes to leveling of companions... And it really was not disturbing.
 

JoKa

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the companions were, apart maybe from the inventory, the least developed aspect in fallout - and you had NO control over their leveling (expect not having them level by not having them, d'uh).
also: it's not really relevant here what was better or not in fallout, please compare it to DSA 1-3...
 

Roqua

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YES!
If anyone cares about the actual important part of that release, I'm debating its merits with one of the devs of the game (I think) at rpgwatch.

http://www.rpgwatch.com/forums/showthread.php?t=2237


whcih, at least I believe (along with anyone who is sane) validates what I say in this thread:

http://www.rpgwatch.com/forums/showthread.php?t=2217

Just don't be as big of idiots as you are used to being here as rpgwatch doesn't give out special titles for morons to make them feel wanted, and my being the King won't help there.
 

stargelman

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How profoundly disappointing. It seems another company has chosen to make games for the mentally challenged - the decision to almost remove character generation tells me as much. Ok there seems to be some C&C which is a good thing of course, but the example given is pretty poor and makes me hope that there aren't not more equally uninspired situations.

As things are going in the industry, it's almost enough to make me wish I had never played games of the calibre of PS:T.
 

Jora

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Vault Dweller said:
Travelling can be compared to NWN2 (for veterans: Realms of Arkania 1/2), from a regional map you can choose your destination. During travel random encounter can interrupt your passage. That means ambushes or wild animals, something like that.
This is nice and all, but even Baldur's Gate had random encounters. Can I assign tasks to party members? Tell them to go hunting? Get a job? Keep watch? Have they kept the old system or replaced it with the modern simple travel system?
 

Amasius

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Travelling can be compared to NWN2 (for veterans: Realms of Arkania 1/2), from a regional map you can choose your destination. During travel random encounter can interrupt your passage. That means ambushes or wild animals, something like that.
I hope it's more like ROA 1/2 than NWN2. The traveling map in ROA was awesome while in NWN2 you can only head for areas you have heard about. Damn linear game design.


Roqua said:
If anyone cares about the actual important part of that release, I'm debating its merits with one of the devs of the game (I think) at rpgwatch.
Avantenor isn't a dev but the webmaster of a drakensang fanpage. I actually agree with you. Character creation in ROA 1-3 was great. (Only beaten by darklands) It took me literally hours and I loved every second of it. I remember than in ROA you could autocreate your party members. Why not implement such a feature for lazy people?

Baldur's Gate in 3D? I hope that I can romance an elf chick. :roll:
 

denizsi

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Just don't be as big of idiots as you are used to being here as rpgwatch doesn't give out special titles for morons to make them feel wanted, and my being the King won't help there.

"I'm the king of my domain"
 

thesheeep

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Jora said:
This is nice and all, but even Baldur's Gate had random encounters. Can I assign tasks to party members? Tell them to go hunting? Get a job? Keep watch? Have they kept the old system or replaced it with the modern simple travel system?

I hope that they will keep at least SOME of those things.
And that they won't dumb it down TOO much... a bit "dumbing down" is what I will accept.
For example, I don't think that it will be possible to steal in every shop again and again and again... in ROA/DSA that got you as much money as you wished...

I hope that they make some things better than the original ones did.
Examples:

- Spells. 70% of the spells implemented in ROA were totally useless. All the things one needed were Fulminictus, Ignifaxius, Lightning, Evil Eyes and balm (I'm note sure if the titles are right, I'm playing ROA in German...).
Drakensang has 40 spells.. and lets hope they put them to good use...

- Travelling. Travelling was fun in ROA1 and 2 (ROA3 sucked, because it had almost no travelling), but some ways simply took too much timeand effort. You couldn't just click at a town and go there. You had to travel through every single town in between. Always going from one exit to another. This is unnecessary. I think you should have to go the same way... but stay on the world map all the time (except when something important happens, a fight or sth. else...).

- Character creation. Well, creation in ROA1-3 had too few choices imho... too few archetypes. They already fixed that in Drakensang. 27 is niiiice.

- Combat. Well, the system was ok. I think they will make it RT with pause now... can't change that. Anyway.. combat should be harder than it was in ROA1-3 (except for the last boss in ROA3... damn that one was hard ^^).

- Places without a use... there were many of them in ROA1-3. Too many. Sometimes, less can be more ;)

... I think I could go on... but I just don't want to ;)
 

Avantenor

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JarlFrank said:
I guess this should mean hit instead of hidden if it was to make any sense.
Yes, that's right, my fault.
Roqua said:
If anyone cares about the actual important part of that release, I'm debating its merits with one of the devs of the game (I think) at rpgwatch.
I'm not an employee of dtp / Anaconda and / or Radon Labs. I'm not a dev, I'm not connected to the development or retail of the game in any way. I have no influence on the game development. I'm just a fan making a fansite (official website is drakensang.com). What I write is based on informations I get from german community and german press releases. My statements are my personal opinion and not automatically identical with official PR of dtp and / or Radon Labs.
 

Avantenor

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No, still 1Q 2008. Maybe we get some new information on german RatCon or GamesConvention in August.
 

thesheeep

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Well, you can.
If you live in Germany. Or near...

But I'm not even sure if they will appear at RatCon... is anything confirmed?
 

sheek

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- Technical things: Not all dialogs are synchronized, only the most important ones. Like Dragon Age, Drakensang does not have a regular day / night circle. Instead it is using lights as a tool to create atmosphere, like the sky becoming suddenly dark when a dragon flies above the heads of your party.
No night and day = progress?..

More archetypes could be good news, and it looks like they're keeping most spells and skills.

But the main thing for me is the 4 player character limit and RT/DungeonSiege-combat, which ensure I won't buy it.
 

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