Risen 3: Titan Lords

[Murk]

More like Risen 4:20 amirite

 

[JarlFrank]

Kai Rosenkranz was the original sound composer for both Gothic and Risen. However he left Piranha Bytes during 2010 and then he co-founded a new company called Nevigo.

This is their main product:

Well, this looks pretty cool. A bit pricey though, but it's cheaper for students (99 euros is still a lot though).

 

[toro]

But did they percieve Risen 2 as a mistake? Will they return to a more gothic-like approach? Why do I have hope again. Stop it, toro. This will hurt again.

Piranha Bytes acknowledged long time ago that they have a contract for a trilogy. Maybe this is the reason why they botched Risen 2, but the idea is this:
1) They want to differentiate Risen from Gothic and this approach is obvious with Risen 2. This makes sense if they want to create a proper Gothic 4 in the future. Gothic belongs to them, Risen belongs to Deep Silver.
2) They have the engine from Risen 2. They only have to change the combat back to Risen 1, add more non-combat content, a bigger map and a proper ending FFS!!!

Overall I'm pretty sure they can create a good game. Not a stellar one, but a good game.

I'm so desperate for a PB's game that I actually played Oblivion. And Risen2 even broken and bland as it is, still has more charm than Oblivion.

 

[ohWOW]

Face it bro, it's way worse than Oblivion. I didn't believe it's possible, but Risen 2 is a quintessence of shit, bad shit design, shit gameplay, shit core, shit everything, beginning with the first line of a code, ending with the last one. It's a rock bottom of a shit-hole.
There's absolutely no, not even a single one, positive thing in this fucking abomination. Even mods won't salvage this infested with leprosy corpse.

If someone wants to build anything basing on this, the process must begin with shooting it dead and burying it in the woods. Then starting a completely new project.

 

[JarlFrank]

Risen 2 isn't good, but it's still way above Oblivion. It was actually fun to play until the last few areas which were ridiculously linear.

 

[DalekFlay]

Oblivion was fun to play until I clicked "new game."

 

[Sunsetspawn]

This needs to be hammered into your brains people:


RISEN WAS MEDIOCRE AT BEST.

As compared to what? And don't say Planescape.

Risen was the best RPG this console generation, and I'm having a hard time thinking of many PC RPGs from the past five years that beat it.

The truth is, I'm fishing for good RPG recommendations, so...

 

[Captain Shrek]

This needs to be hammered into your brains people:


RISEN WAS MEDIOCRE AT BEST.

As compared to what? And don't say Planescape.

Risen was the best RPG this console generation, and I'm having a hard time thinking of many PC RPGs from the past five years that beat it.

The truth is, I'm fishing for good RPG recommendations, so...

As compared to the game it was supposed to be spiritual successor of. As compared to good games in general due to the actual lack of content, terrible writing and extraordinarily ordinary combat mechanics ripped straight from a 10 year old game when way better implementation involving more involved and reactive combat like Dark Messiah is available.

 

[DalekFlay]

Let's keep judging everything against the favorites of our youth and see where that gets us. No nostalgia goggles involved there at all, surely. Pure rational thought.

 

[Tagaziel]

Technically, it's not nostalgia if you replay them regularly, keeping the experience fresh. Distant memories are idealized, fresh ones usually aren't.

 

[toro]

Face it bro, it's way worse than Oblivion. I didn't believe it's possible, but Risen 2 is a quintessence of shit, bad shit design, shit gameplay, shit core, shit everything, beginning with the first line of a code, ending with the last one. It's a rock bottom of a shit-hole.
There's absolutely no, not even a single one, positive thing in this fucking abomination. Even mods won't salvage this infested with leprosy corpse.

If someone wants to build anything basing on this, the process must begin with shooting it dead and burying it in the woods. Then starting a completely new project.

Chill out. I agree that the game was mediocre at best and honestly I cannot defend it more than this.

Anyway, they will have to release a trailer in the next months.

 

[DalekFlay]

Technically, it's not nostalgia if you replay them regularly, keeping the experience fresh. Distant memories are idealized, fresh ones usually aren't.

Yes but all your replays are under the same nostalgic haze.

I'm not saying new games are just as good if you remove the goggles, only that the goggles tend to get some people to act as if the old games are flawless when they are anything but. "I cannot play X new release because of Y flaw but Z old game is my favorite ever despite it's own horrible flaws."

 

[Felix]

Just finished Risen 2, don't know why the fuck they changed the combat, it was fine in Risen, just need to tweak a bit. I want to control my own attacks, damn it. Also where is the proper aiming for range weapons? Aiming in general direction and watching things die in a few hit is stupid.

Like the setting though.

 

[Tigranes]

I'm playing Risen 1 at the moment and it is nearly as good as G1/2, I'd say simplified skills system is the only major negative. Risen 2 was a far cry from those great games but the engine was good, many good aspects were retained, and in fact the pirate theme wasn't that bad - a combat system that wasn't butchered and featured proper dodging at release would have done a lot for it. On one hand just about all the major things they changed from Risen 1 was in favour of decline; on the other, you actually play the game, and you realise that a lot of the time, what you are doing is pretty much still the same good stuff you did in R1 & G1/2.

Anyway, I'd be just fine with Risen 3. Let's be honest, there's not much of a 'deep setting' or 'great characters' for either franchise so it doesn't matter at all whether it's called Gothic 4 or Risen 3. What matter is that they get themselves back to form and make the great stuff we know only they can make. I don't know how well Risen 2 sold, I suspect more than R1, though maybe not enough to justify R3 being exactly the same... investors look at metacritic too.

 

[Zeriel]

Technically, it's not nostalgia if you replay them regularly, keeping the experience fresh. Distant memories are idealized, fresh ones usually aren't.

This. Best example I can think of in recent memory was new XCOM compared to old X-COM. A lot of my feelings of disappointment with the former had to do with playing the latter shortly before the new one was released. It was still addictive, still great gameplay, I was actually kind of shocked as a bit of a graphics whore to find myself putting in ten hour play sessions on a game that old. So, yeah, not always nostalgia. In fact, a lot of the DOS era games hold up very, very well to modern gaming (i.e, way better) once you get past the "well that's in 320x200 resolution" effect.

 

[Metro]

As I said, very mixed reviews.

Mixed? Those are horrible scores from mainstream outlets. Translate to about a 2/10.

Anyway, I'd be just fine with Risen 3. Let's be honest, there's not much of a 'deep setting' or 'great characters' for either franchise so it doesn't matter at all whether it's called Gothic 4 or Risen 3. What matter is that they get themselves back to form and make the great stuff we know only they can make. I don't know how well Risen 2 sold, I suspect more than R1, though maybe not enough to justify R3 being exactly the same... investors look at metacritic too.

Overly optimistic. I'm sure it won't be any better than Risen 2. Only hope for PB is that Deep Silver decides the franchise isn't worth continuing now they have Saints Row. PB would be forced to go indie but, even then, so many of the original people have left who knows if they can make a good Gothic game.

 

[Zeriel]

As I said, very mixed reviews.

Mixed? Those are horrible scores from mainstream outlets. Translate to about a 2/10.

You can't do the "well, they must be grading it higher because they're bought and sold for" compensation when they're not actually bought and paid for. If this had been a Bioware release, it would have been 8/10s.

 

[Felix]

It's kinda strange that one thing I love about PB's games are the main character's cocky attitude and smartass's dialogue options. That's like half of the fun for me.

 

[Metro]

As I said, very mixed reviews.

Mixed? Those are horrible scores from mainstream outlets. Translate to about a 2/10.

You can't do the "well, they must be grading it higher because they're bought and sold for" compensation when they're not actually bought and paid for. If this had been a Bioware release, it would have been 8/10s.

Not even a matter of being 'bought and paid for' -- it's a matter of: 1) not wanting to burn a bridge with a fairly significant publisher (Deep Silver) and 2) most mainstream reviewers have such shitty taste that a 6/10 to them translates to a 2/10 to most of us... with rare exceptions for when they give poor scores because a game is too hard or doesn't look pretty.

 

[Zeriel]

I wasn't aware Deep Silver was significant. Was pretty sure they were a medium-tier mostly European-only publisher, hardly on the level of an EA or Activision.

 

[Metro]

They had enough money to buy the Saints Row franchise. At the very least their parent company, Koch, has deep pockets.

 

[Koschey]

Eh, Risen 1 was okay, but it paled in comparison to G1 and especially G2. Mostly because the world of Risen felt way more sterile and empty than in the Gothic series. The NPCs were mostly interchangable cardboard cut-outs. Once you solved the quest they were involved in, you could savely forget their existence. Even people you'd think would or rather should be important, like Don Esteban, felt almost incidental to the story. This was especially noticable in tube city in the first chapter. Get quest, solve quest, advance some paces down the street to the next quest giver, never return.
Add to that the sparsity of humans outside of the three faction settlements, no chapter (re)spawn to speak of, few new side quests and almost no reaction to or acknowledgement of any of the later major events by NPCs; with that starting from chapter 2, the game became simply a long chain of fetch quests in an empty world.

Individually, quite a few parts of Risen were well done, but contrary to Gothic 1 und 2, these parts never really assemble to a whole. So, yeah, while Risen is definitely an improvement over G3, it is a far cry from its spiritual predecessors. Then with Risen 2, PB lost me. For now, colour me disinterested in Risen 3 or whatever they're working on.

 

[Tigranes]

How were Gothic characters any more than cardboard cut-outs? You basically had Germanic muscle-men walking around going hurr durr and handing out quests. In fact, I don't think Don Esteban or the Inquisitor were particularly great characters, but do just fine when compared with Xardas, etc. Moreover, every single PB game basically gets worse and worse in the second half of the game - chasing down the dragons in G2 NOTR was excruciating just like Risen endgame is a monsterfest.

I played G1/G2/R1 at a very similar time period, and I didn't really see anything that jars that much. I'd argue that while G3 and R2 are lesser games, the differences have also been hugely overstated; instead of core elements of the games being trasnformed, they were basically the same games done not quite as well + several questionable decline features (which were, indeed, major).

 

[ohWOW]

As compared to what? And don't say Planescape.

Risen was the best RPG this console generation, and I'm having a hard time thinking of many PC RPGs from the past five years that beat it.

The truth is, I'm fishing for good RPG recommendations, so...

Risen 1 is a mediocre, but solid game.

While being technically good, they failed on delivering us a proper content and lore, just copy-pasted from Gothic series and renamed it. Eldric/Xardas, 3 main guilds/factions (bandits/renegades, order of law or something (city), mages). An isolated area idea (instead of a mining colony we've an island). A mysterious deity that some believe to bring people happiness, that happens to be our main enemy (Sleeper, Holy Fire-Titan). A nuttso that helps us most of the game and turns evil towards the end (Cor Kalom, the Inquisitor). Instead of magical stones we're searching for magical titan armour and discs most of the game. Etc etc etc etc.
At first I was pissed, but then realised that probably Piranha Bytes can't make anything new in these fields

And it seems I was right, just look at that that garbage Risen 2 is.

 

[DalekFlay]

Risen is the best RPG this console generation? Eh?

I would put New Vegas above it easily, without even thinking twice.