Topic: Drakensang: The Dark Eye - Update: Ergo's Fixpack Version 1.80 (Mod) released

[MysterD]

NEW - 12-1-2010:
RPGWatch -> Ergo's Fixpack (honestly, it should be called Mod-pack) for Drakensang: TDE is out there, for those who are interested - up to version 1.80.

OLD:
Drakensang: The Dark Eye is going to be coming in the USA, which was developed by Radon Labs.

This is already out in Europe and got some good reviews from publications over there, by the way.
THQ will be the USA publisher for this.

'Drakensang: The Dark Eye' Coming to North America
Posted on Wednesday, October 15 @ 11:07:11 PDT

THQ has signed Drakensang: The Dark Eye, developed by Radon Labs, bringing back epic party-based RPG gameplay in a breathtakingly detailed world, based on one of the world’s biggest pen & paper franchises.

The Dark Eye Drakensang is a new party-based RPG game that uses advanced 3D technology and epic vistas to bring the truly realized TDE fantasy world to life. Drakensang, developed by the original TDE authors, will take gamer’s on a journey centuries back in time and dive into the mystical world of Aventuria, that previously only existed in the minds of avid TDE players. Now, thanks to the stunning vistas and tactical turn-based fights displayed in a real time environment, TDE gamers will finally be able to visually experience the landscapes, edifices, heroes, and creatures of the TDE universe.

The Dark Eye Drakensang is set in a unique, medieval world where sinister forces are at work in the city of Ferdok in Aventuria. Summoned by a letter from an old friend, gamers will start off their adventure investigating a series of strange ritual murders. Only after gathering trusted, skilled companions can player’s battle to solve the sinister conspiracy threatening to change the world of Aventuria. The game features a talent-based dialogue system that will allow gamers to threaten, persuade and charm their way through a a universe full of unique characters, creatures and locations.

Key Features:

    * party-based single-player RPG
    * extensive terrain
    * talent-based dialogue system
    * strategic real-time combat
    * faithful adaptation of an epic fantasy universe
    * varied, flexible magic system
    * Nebula 3 Engine
    * full Shader 2.0 and 3.0 support
    * realistic physics
    * living artificial intelligence
    * hitzone-based combat system
    * motion-captured animations

Already available in Europe, The Dark Eye Drakensang will be available on Windows PC in early 2009.

The game's already out and has been patched overseas in Europe, for those who didn't know.

Official Drakensang: TDE Website
Radon's Official Drakensang: TDE product page.

Screenies.








RPGWatch Links with tons of reviews, but most are in German language:
Link #1
Link #2
Link #3
Link #4
Link #5
Link #6

Radon Labs has plans for Drakensang's future
Drakensang will have an Expansion.
And a full-fledged sequel, too.

[Xessive]

I don't know why I'm not impressed with those shots.

[Pugnate]

While the art style looks somewhat generic, if this has a half-decent story, I'll get it. I am an RPG animal.

[MysterD]

I hope the translation from German -> English doesn't wind up botched, either; in the translation of the dialogue itself AND in the voice-acting quality.

[MysterD]

BitTech interview with Boris Arendt from Radon Labs and Class Wolter from German publisher DTP.
 

Class Wolter: Pfft, that’s fine. Did you like the look of the game?

BitTech: Yeah, I did actually. What engine is it running on?

Boris Arendt: It’s called Nebula3. We were really lucky and able to get the team who made the original engine to come work with us so that we could expand and build on it and add the features we needed into it the game. It’s really custom-made for this game and evolved with it.

bt: In the presentation we just saw you said that, even before you could release the game in Europe the fans were working on their own translations. Have you made modding tools available for it then?

BA: Modding tools aren’t really part of our policy, but still...people must have been able to mod it somehow. I don’t know these real technical things very well, but we see in the forums that there’s a modding community there already.

CW: Yeah, we didn’t plan to make the game modifiable but the fans have found stuff out themselves and made some really great things.

Even if you don't release a SDK, you just can't stop the modders -- hehe!

bt: It must have been really well received in Germany then?

CW: Oh, yes. Yeah.

bt: So, what are your expectations in Britain where The Dark Eye brand isn’t as well known?

CW: Well, when we started making the game we wanted it to be able to stand on its own because we know that The Dark Eye RPG system the game is based on is only really well known in Germany. On the other hand, there have been other games based on it like The Realms of Arkania series which were published in nineties and were very successful internationally. They won all sorts of ‘Best RPG’ awards.

For those Realm of Arkania games...
Attic developed those games in Germany.
SirTech did the translations to English for those games.

CW: So, Drakensang is made to stand on its own and you don’t really need to know anything about the background or RPG or lore. All that you need to know is already in the game – if you like fantasy RPGs then you’ll enjoy it.

BA: Yeah. The thing was, we wanted to stay true to the license on one hand but we didn’t want to alienate those who were fans of the license the game is based on. It’s big, you know? The Dark Eye system is in Germany like Dungeons and Dragons is here. While it’s cool to give a nod to fans of it though, we don’t want to cater only to them.

bt: At the moment Gothic 4 is being talked about and The Witcher has just been re-released as The Witcher: Enhanced Edition. What do you think that Drakensang has to make it sound out?

CW: Well, we’ll be supporting the game with patches but we don’t have plans to do an expansion like with The Witcher. We’re confident with how stable the game is now.

What we do have though is a unique setting, a beautiful world. Gothic 4 is aiming for very late 2009 at a guess, The Witcher has been out for more than a year now, so there’s a gap there for us to fill. People who loved things like Baldur’s Gate and who loved the very classical RPG gameplay have a bit of a gap right now too – so they should have a look at this.

bt: You don’t tend to see so many fantasy RPGs any more. BioWare for example did Baldur’s Gate but since then it has done Mass Effect and KOTOR and gone very sci-fi. Do you think the RPG market is moving on and leaving fantasy behind?

CW: No, no. For us, we think it’s an opportunity as there’s still a big demand for classic fantasy games. Gamers have been in love with these types of games for a long time and they are still in love with them. BioWare has moved elsewhere, but there’s still a demand for fantasy RPGs and we see that in the sales figures and comments.

BA: There’s a demand for linear, story-led RPGs too. The problem with the open-world RPG approach that BioWare has been toying with is that you can’t really tell as dense or as good a story as you have to spread the content very thinly if you have a large world.

Most of the time you have this feeling, or at least I do when I play these games, that there’s not enough diversity in the environments. We can use our game to explore all manner of different areas, cultures, quests, side-stories and that’s something you can’t do as well if you have just one big, giant sandbox because the game starts to look like a patchwork or have huge areas of emptiness. I had this with Fallout 3, for example. I liked it and I was very excited about it but I was sometimes wandering around going ‘Hello? Is anyone there?’ and the next quest-giver was miles and miles away. It was a lot of grind and meaningless combat to get over to there a lot of the time.

I think the open, sandbox RPG style will work someday when the budget is big enough and you can properly fill the space you have. Right now that isn’t going to happen with this financial situation though. So, I think sticking to this linear and story-led concept is a better path for us and something that gamers can appreciate.

bt: How does the combat in Drakensang work then? You mentioned in the presentation that I was a round-based mechanic displayed in real-time. Why approach it in that way?

BA: We didn’t want to cater just to that one type of player who likes just turn-based or just real-time games. In the end, if you’re honest, all gamers like the chance to be strategic if it’s all getting a bit too much and tell their squad to go here, do that, shoot him and so on. At the same time though, the action shouldn’t just be all strategic. It isn’t Battle Chess, you want the chance to be spontaneous with some enemies.

That was always a pain with some of the old turn-based games. Fallout is a game I really love to play, but it isn’t fun when you have some stupid rat creeping along three squares a turn. So, we chose to combine both options and let players tackle it as they want.

bt: The story is very linear, right? There’s the main quest and there are side-quests, but are there different paths? How much do your stats and choices change the gameplay?

CW: The storyline is originally a very linear, very straight one. At certain points however you get the chance to go around it in one way or the other and these decisions have a fairly big effect on how the world appears and what you’ll experience.

For example, at one point you have to decide if you want to side with an army of Witches or with a group of Naturals. Depend on how you decide, your environment will change. If you’re with the Witches then the people of the world start to get a lot more hostile and aggressive.

bt: Do you think gamers have certain expectations these days in terms of wanting an open world and multiple paths? Were you affected at all by that?

BA: Well, I can only really talk for the German players and what we’ve seen on the forums after the initial release. There are people who want a world simulation where everything is super realistic and super-reactive, which is what Peter Molyneux is trying with Fable 2. I can’t tell if someone who might like Fable 2 might like Drakensang because it’s such a different style of gameplay, y’know? Just because I play one style of RPG doesn’t mean I don’t play another style because people have different tastes. Personally, if it’s an RPG then I’ll play it – though I do have favourites.

bt: What are your favourites?

BA: Well, the Baldur’s Gate series, of course. I’m an older guy though and what I really liked was the Fallout games. They had some frustrating bits when you couldn’t meet the timeline to get the waterchip, but they were still great.

It’s a bit of a mix-up. When you start working on a game like this people tell you to go play the old stuff because it’s so great and you need to research it. Objectively though, nostalgia plays tricks on us all. If you play your old stuff today then you sometimes don’t love them as much as you did.

bt: And, like those games, Drakensang is PC only?

CW: Yeah, right. At the moment we’re a pretty small publisher, pretty small developer and so to start with decided to be PC only, but that has nothing to say for the future. We’re investigating all the possibilities.

bt: You mentioned Peter Molyneux and there’s a very definite trend right now in the industry to try and appeal to the casual audience and the largest possible crowd. How much pressure are you under to include an element of that, rather than focusing for the hardcore crowd?

CW:. Um...I think when you do something for the gamers then they’ll fall in love with it. The pressure isn’t very high...or rather, you shouldn’t try to please everyone. It shouldn’t always be that granny can come along and play the game as well. You should target a group and stick to it and for us that group is role-players. They especially don’t want to be drowned in casual game stuff.

bt: So, what are your feelings on Peter Molyneux's plea for reviewers to get non-gamers to play a game because of the casual, non-gamer appeal?

CW: I think whenever you play a game then all you should really need is an intention to sit down and play the game. You shouldn’t have to try to pretend that you’re in a different mood – especially when you’re a journalist. You guys see so many games every day and he really shouldn’t be telling you how to see a game. You should feel it as you play it, for yourself.


Drakensang is already out in Germany and is due for release in other territories soon as a PC exclusive. If you want to know more about the game, or just want to respond to some of the answers above then drop your comments in the forum.

[MysterD]

Drakensang: The Dark Eye - English DEMO released.
501 MB Download.

[MysterD]

GameSpy preview.
GamesRadar preview

[MysterD]

IGN
7.6 from IGN

GamesRadar
7.0 from GamesRadar (out of 10)

After playing so many D&D variants, it’s easy to forget what a beast its game systems really are. We just found ourselves typing something about what a complex, very, very German RPG Drakensang is, but, really, it’s not. What it reminded us of most was our first time playing The Witcher. Both feature worlds that seem generic until you dive in a bit deeper, both open with a couple of chapters so boring that they could replace diamond as the drilling industry’s tool of choice, and both improve right about the time you’re ready to uninstall.

In the case of Drakensang, it’s not the big dramatic moments that make the difference, so much as a lot of the smaller details coming together. You finally start getting fights that demand more than just having everyone steam in, swords clanking. The fiddly, frustrating character development system never stops being fiddly, but you start to realise the benefit of the extra control – especially with a full party. With a full party, the initially horrific camera and control system actually makes sense.

EDIT -- March 9, 2009:
GameRevolution.com Review
B from GameRevolution

Drakensang: TDE joins Steam
Drakensang: The Dark Eye joins STEAM

EDIT -- April 8, 2009:
Eurogamer Review
SEVEN from Eurogamer (out of 10)

[Xessive]

I just checked out Drakensang TDE and it's pretty good. It's a tough game and while its learning curve is not very steep it does require a lot of patience to get the hang of things. The game does have a very generic feel to it and the UI is crummy and ambiguous for the most part.

Visually, the screenshots do not do it justice. This game needs to be seen in motion to be appreciated. The animations are smooth and well done. The flow of the environment, especially the pastoral countryside, is gorgeous.

The sound and music are decent. The voices are decent too; I haven't come across any that were particularly annoying in my brief encounter with it. Although not all dialogue is voiced, just greetings and key moments.

Gameplay-wise, it's a little slower than your average action-RPG. It does go with the typical quest format. The quest log and map are pretty good and will make sure you don't lose track of where you are or what you ought to be doing.

Overall, the game's graphics, environmets, and characters design are great (impressive in some parts even) but I can't shake the "cheap" feeling around the UI and some elements of the design.

[MysterD]

75 from ComputerGames.Ro (out of 100)

[MysterD]

I just checked out Drakensang TDE and it's pretty good. It's a tough game and while its learning curve is not very steep it does require a lot of patience to get the hang of things.

...

Visually, the screenshots do not do it justice. This game needs to be seen in motion to be appreciated. The animations are smooth and well done. The flow of the environment, especially the pastoral countryside, is gorgeous.

The sound and music are decent. The voices are decent too; I haven't come across any that were particularly annoying in my brief encounter with it. Although not all dialogue is voiced, just greetings and key moments.

...

Gameplay-wise, it's a little slower than your average action-RPG. It does go with the typical quest format. The quest log and map are pretty good and will make sure you don't lose track of where you are or what you ought to be doing.

Overall, the game's graphics, environmets, and characters design are great (impressive in some parts even)...

All agreed.

...but I can't shake the "cheap" feeling around the UI and some elements of the design.

I wish in the character sheet -- some of the skills, abilities, base stats, and all of that -- had description in-game to tell you in detail what they do.

My problems include the technical oddities:
1.Had to disable (56K) modem sound to get the game to stop hitting the audio error after boot-up of game to cause a CTD.
Though, I'm wondering why I had modem sound on, in the first place -- since I have DSL connection now.
2.Save file corruption and/or profile.xml corruption leads to CTD.
Had to move saves one-by-one to another folder, to figure one which save was corrupted.
3.BSOD when in-game just happens and rebooted PC a few times.
Worth noting - ain't seen it happen, since I turned High-Res Textures off, though.

Regardless, I can't put this thing down. Everything about this game -- other than the technical issues -- seems to just to be very well executed.

Back to playing now...

[MysterD]

PC Games don't die once support is done with it; modders just do their thing with it to fix things and try to improve the game.

RPGWatch -> Ergo's Fixpack (honestly, it should be called Mod-pack) for Drakensang: TDE is out there, for those who are interested - now up to Version 1.80.