Risen Preview

IGN is first in line to preview Piranha Bytes’ Risen based on a demo shown at this week’s Game Developers Conference.

Regardless of what you decide, there will be a large number of options available to players, ranging from fighting styles in battle to the skills that you can wield. You won’t always have to leap into battles and attack every creature or animal that you come across; in fact, you’ll be able to pick and choose whether nearby enemies are taking an aggressive posture towards you because you’ve gotten too close to them, or whether they’re distracted because they’re focusing on something else. For example, I watched as a character moved around a wolf that was too busy eating the corpse of a fallen farmer to notice his presence. While many of the areas that I saw were outside in the woods or in marshy areas, I was told that there will be a number of areas, like temple ruins or other indoor dungeons, that will be randomly generated to provide a unique experience when players step onto the island.

Although the game was being demonstrated on a PC, I was told that the lead platform for Risen is actually the 360, and that the developers have been spending a large amount of time working on the fight system and the other basic mechanics to ensure that the game works well on both platforms. There is a rather interesting thing that stands out because of the console focus, which is that there is almost a non-existent HUD to the gameplay. Apart from two bars that represent mana and health for your character, everything is completely removed until you enter battle, at which point the enemy health bar pops up at the center of the screen. While it’s certainly an ambitious project, it’ll be interesting to see whether Deep Silver will be able to produce all of the open world elements for Risen when it hits shelves later this year.