Risen 2: Dark Waters Preview and Video Interview

The folks at Gaming Lives offer a preview and video interview for Piranha Bytes’ upcoming sequel to Risen, both of which tackle, among other things, the returning characters from the original games and the changes done to the difficulty curve in the game. Here’s a sampling from the preview:

As is customary whenever I get my hands on an open world title, I like to ignore everyone and run off to do my own thing. It means that I may end up wandering into a level twenty quest location, as was the case with Vindasel in Oblivion, but it also means that I get to quickly understand the terrain and how best to approach certain aspects. It didn’t quite work out that way with Risen 2, however, as I wandered down to the beach and was immediately mesmerised by the sight of a hulking galleon (although I’m sure pedants would point out otherwise) and a mid-day sun glistening on crystal clear waters. The water in Risen was always incredible, and I remember standing at the edge of a stream in awe, watching it caress smoothed pebbles as it found its way to a frothy drop, to the point where I dragged Lorna through to show her both the realism and attention to detail. I didn’t think it could be improved upon, but Piranha Bytes have clearly tweaked something somewhere because I had that overwhelming urge to (drop trou) and dive in for a quick swim.

The combat was as intuitive as the previous game, although it could be argued that I was already familiar with the play style and was therefore geared up to switch over to muscle memory. Either way, it was a bit of a kick ass experience in more ways than one. As is touched on by Daniel, the initial island is more or less what we’ve come to know as a tutorial level by modern RPG standards in that it’s almost impossible to be killed and serves more as away to familiarise the player with techniques and controls. Having said that, I still had one or two cans of Wupass (now with no added sugar) opened up on me thanks to my lack of any real weaponry.