Risen 2: Dark Waters Preview

The folks over at Cheat Code Central have put together a preview of Risen 2: Dark Waters, the pirate-focused RPG sequel heading our way courtesy of Piranha Bytes.

From what the Deep Silver guys told us, the core RPG mechanic in Risen 2 appears to remain much the same as the first game (or is at least familiar), with leveling and spendable skill points (although they didn’t speak much to the way this will work with the new gun-centric weapon system or what it means for melee). The interesting thing is that since you are not starting with a specific class, you’ll be able to create any kind of class or specialization hybrid you like. This freeform RPG strategy sounded pretty cool but being a pirate game, we did hope there’d be ships and ship-to-ship battle. Deep Silver told us, however, that they felt it best to focus on doing one thing well rather than doing a bunch of things poorly, which for our money is a smart approach.

And speaking of smart, after learning a hard lesson with Risen (trying to port the PC version over to console with not enough time or resources and ending up with, well, a mess), Deep Silver’s taking its time with Risen 2, to make a version specifically for the console. Even better, they’re adopting the console controls to the PC version since public feedback told them that console gamers are often confused by PC controls while PC gamers don’t mind using the console ones.

PC gamers don’t mind consolized controls? Since when?