Preview The Wargamer looks at Sacred

[Spazmo]

Tags: Ascaron Entertainment; Sacred

<a href=http://www.wargamer.com>The Wargamer</a> have a <a href=http://www.wargamer.com/reviews/sacred_preview/page1.asp>preview</a> of the latest snazzy action RPG <a href=http://www.sacred-game.de>Sacred</a>.
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<blockquote>Some of the quests suffer slightly from the lack of spoken dialogue. I don’t know if this is going to be a feature in the final game – I doubt it since that’s a big undertaking to make – but its incorporation would have added more to the depth of the game. As it is, some of the dialogue is not much more immersive than adventure gaming from several years past, what with a small amount of dialogue presented and the player given the choice to ‘Accept’ or ‘Reject.’ It would have been very nice to have some of these conversations take different routes, with multiple answers possible along different dialogue paths. As it stands now, the player is essentially spoon-fed all information without being given the chance to react or take a personal investment in the proceeding story. And, the ability to play an evil character is lessened as most of the quests revolve around doing good deeds. Not that this is in and of itself a bad thing—after all, good adventure gaming usually means a party of good-hearted underdogs versus Some Evil Menace™—but, having that choice of good versus evil approach makes for a richer game experience.</blockquote>
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That's true, of course, but in an action RPG, there are compromises to be made.
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Spotted at: <A HREF="http://65.75.129.150/~gengame/">GenGamers</a>

 

[Voss]

Honestly, does it?

I know 'You kan play da EVIL' has been the fad of choice for the past several years, but how often does it really add a 'richer game experience' rather than a handful of extraneous dialogue options? No matter how evil you are, you pretty much get railroaded into to fighting the generic evil menance anyway (and not so you can take its place, either), so really, whats the point?

 

[Barghest]

There is no good, or evil, in the world... Just shades of grey.

Has that ever been used in a CRPG?

 

[Major_Blackhart]

True concepts of Good and Evil are unrealistic. There are simply the strong who wield the power and rule, and the weak who are ruled. If you want to look at the world like that.

 

[Sol Invictus]

Fallout's storyline held onto that very philosophy, Blackhart. Not the sequel, though - just the original. It's one of the game's most appealing aspects.

 

[Major_Blackhart]

You know, I just realized that myself. That IS incredibly appealing.

 

[Malak]

I would rather do without the big dialogue. I for one just want to hack some goblin heads off. The simple design of the quest system better satisfies my thirst for achievement. I think Sacred hits the gameplay that I'm looking for on the dot. That review is a subjective look at the game, it certainly isn't an objective clean review on the way the game was made, which is tied in with the way the developers wanted the game to be played. Obviously past games have had rich dialogues, so if Ascaron wanted the game to have that, they certainly could have done it. However, if you see that they are selling three times the amount than what they had projected, you'll find there are plenty of people, like myself, who see Sacred as the game to get.

 

[Saint_Proverbius]

Well, you can't really look at an action CRPG the same way you look at a full CRPG. It'd be like looking at Elite and saying you wish it had teh flight dynamics of RAF Tornado or some other real world flight sim. Having a full fledged, realistic flight model isn't the overall point of Elite, even though it's similar to the flight sims.

It's not really all that important to have rich, meaningful dialogue with lots of choices in an action CRPG. There's really three things that are important in one - character advancement, combat fun, and ph4t l3wt. If you look at the action CRPGs that weren't that fun, you'll see that they didn't do one or more of these things well.

 

[Peacedog]

Shades of grey - Geneforge & Geneforge II.

As for Richer Gameplay Experience (tm) - if poorly done those "choices" will probably either be cosmetic or hurt gameplay. Not that I don't like them well done, but then I don't mind every game not having them.