Preview Sacred look at WorthPlaying

[Saint_Proverbius]

Tags: Sacred

<a href="http://www.worthplaying.com">WorthPlaying</a> offers a new <A href="http://www.worthplaying.com/article.php?sid=16521&mode=thread&order=0">preview</a> of <a href="http://www.ascaron.com/gb/gb_sacred/index.html">Sacred</a>, which should be out in the United States later this month. Here's a clip:
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<blockquote>Sacred much like Neverwinter Nights also offers the player the options to combine and make customized weapons with different ingredients and substances. However it boggles my mind that the developers would to such details when they minimized character creation details. A missed opportunity I would say. While I mentioned earlier that it may appeal to some of the "quick action" type player, a mere possibility to customize your hero would have added a lot of depth and personality to the game. Hmph. </blockquote>
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Huh? Did I miss where you could do that in <A href="Http://nwn.bioware.com">Neverwinter Nights</a>?
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Spotted at: <A HREF="http://www.gengamers.com">GenGamers</A>

 

[Peacedog]

1) That site desperately needs an editor. I'm not entirely clear at what the complaint is here:

The lack fo character customization - is that starting ability scores and what not? Character look?

2) You could do it in NN - you had to bring "rare" ingredients with the right items to certain NPCs and they'd make you weapons or items. Like a +1 Katana, a Moon Rock, and Basilisk Dung and the NPC would make you the Katana of Uberness or whatever.

In the opening chapter, the blacksmith had a back room where a second guy was in charge of it.

 

[Otaku_Hanzo]

Yeah. The dwarf guy. He had a limited list of recipes though. And it was really nothing like what they have in Sacred. It was still item customization to an extent though. I guess. Sorta. In a way.

 

[Saint_Proverbius]

I guess I did miss it. Yeah, that would be a fairly limited system. Honestly, if you want to say that's weapons customization, then Fallout had it back in 1997. Take the chemistry books and a suit of power armor to Miles and you get Hardenned Power Armor - YAY!

 

[Transcendent One]

Didn't Daggerfall have item upgrading?

 

[Voss]

Oh, right. Heh.
Not quite the same thing... I don't know why they didn't draw the obvious comparision and bring up Diablo 2. It would have helped him understand the lack of character customization too.
And its definitely more the same style of game...

 

[Peacedog]

Honestly, if you want to say that's weapons customization, then Fallout had it back in 1997. Take the chemistry books and a suit of power armor to Miles and you get Hardenned Power Armor - YAY!

Hey, I'm not calling it "custom item creation" - but that's what they're talking about.

To tell you the truth Saint, I wouldn't exactly say that you missed it.

 

[Limorkil]

The comparison between NWN and Sacred is total BS. Hell, I totally forgot about the item creation in NWN because it is such a tiny part of the game and there are only a few very specific items you can have made. I don't think I even bothered.

Baldur's Gate 2 had about the same amount of item customization as NWN. A better Bioware-type game to compare Sacred to would be Baldurs Gate : Dark Alliance 2, which has item forging as a more prominent feature.

Diablo 2 is the king of item power-ups and comparing Sacred to it would make much more sense, although I suppose everyone has already done that.

For my money, the best example of item enhancing/making in older games is the Elder Scrolls series. Daggerfall allowed you to make spells, potions and magic items. Morrowind does the same, although frankly I think Daggerfall did it better (except for potions). I'm not necessarily saying that the Elder Scrolls series were the first games to do this, but they were the first games to my mind where making items was a core feature that everybody loved. That's the difference really: in NWN it is so small a feature that it is hardly worth mentioning, so it is a stupid game to use by way of comparison.

 

[Saint_Proverbius]

Prince of Qin spanks any item creation in any game thus far in my opinion. You found bits of metal, hide, wood, bones, etc. all through the game. Each one had quality properties, elemental alignment, and type.. And you had recipes for items. A bow might take a few tendons and a few pieces of wood, for example. The quality of the materials and the types of material would determine the inate power of the bow and the elemental alignments, if there were any, would determine the magical bonuses to it.