News

[Avantenor]

Radon Lab's Jan Lechner answered some community questions in the official german forums at Anaconda. Here a short summary:

• There are no factions or guilds they player character can join, although he will get to know some interest groups in Drakensang, maybe taking over some quests for them that will change the course of the game.
• Priests will not be available for player character, because the karma system would take to much efford to implement since it is completely different to arcane magic system.
• Priests will not be available for player character, because the karma system would take to much time and effort to implement since it is completely different to arcane magic system.
• There is a variety of companions waiting for the player to join forces (not only 3 at all). Some of them will follow him immediately, some of them are little bit harder to please. Playing a lonesome fellow shall also be possible though it shouldn't be easy, because Drakensang is meant to be an party-based RPG.
• Cinematics during the campaign will be done in ingame graphics (no renderings).
• Inventory is limited by slots and weight, dependant on character's personal strength.
• Player character won't have to eat or to take care for their weapons and armors. Mikromanagement is optional, giving the player more advantages, i.e. if he's skilled in repairing or modifiyng weapons.

Community Q&A (German) Last but not least, a personal request. I'm looking for some assistance in filling our site with content. So if you're interested, send me an PM

[Avantenor]

Jan Lechner was asked to write some words for RPGVaults latest RPG Roundtable, topic "They don't make RPGs like they used to". His answer:

RPGs have changed, for sure. Technical capabilities, gameplay and game mechanics have changed and emerged. In the earlier years, technical limits forced developers to deal with a certain way of abstraction that came up in loads of charts and indexes in RPGs. Only some elements of the information these charts gave could be displayed graphically. For meant only hardcore gamers played CRPGs for a long time. At the same time, the focus was set as to the essential element of RPGs, the storyline. All elements of storytelling - characters, leveling, the relationships between characters, the RPG universe, and of course, the story outline were given their appropriate attention.

Today, when developing a CRPG, we have much greater capabilities. And we have to realize this. But this has also moved the focus. A lot of CRPGs currently in development are trying to take as much as advantage of technology as they can - but obviously, the developers forget that RPGs are extremely influenced by non-visible aspects like storytelling and characters, and also the implementation of the player himself as well as his own imagination. Of course you can't trivialize - there have always been good and not so good games, and there always will be. And maybe, it's just the high number of releases today makes players feel like there was more quality in the earlier years of the industry. [...]

The whole thing @ RPGVault

[Avantenor]

Meanwhile Community-Manager Olgierd Cypra translated the whole Community-Interview into English. You can find it here.

RSS-Feeds is now available again, the trailers should also come back in the next days.

[Avantenor]

RPGCodex got the chance to make an interview with Radon Labs Jan Lechner and Bernd Beyreuther. We get some more details about combat system and dialogues, so check out for new informations.

1. Since you are making an RPG, what's your definition of a role-playing game? What features are important to you and why?

Jan Lechner: My understanding of an RPG is that it presents a world to the player, in which he can take on a certain role that he can act out accordingly. What’s important is that any restrictions and options are grounded in the logic of the game world and are not left unexplained.

Even if I decide to play a mage, the game should allow me to take a powerful sword in hand and try to use it. And such options need to lead to logical consequences, so ideally my mage can hurt himself with a warrior’s broadsword or at least have serious problems when it comes to a fight.
In a role-playing game, the player should always have the opportunity to define his role himself, within a certain framework. That means, I need to be able to behave in different ways with regard my character as well as my surroundings. And again here, it is important that the restrictions that I’m subject to are explained logically within the game world.

Such different behavior should also elicit different reactions from the environment and thus in turn influence my decisions.

I don’t expect a role-playing game to allow me to anything and everything I can think up – a good RPG prevents me from thinking up impossible things to do in the first place.

2. In several interviews you've described Drakensang as "something like Baldur's Gate in 3D". I'm curious, why Baldur's Gate? Why not "another DSA game!" or "something like the well loved and influental Realms of Arkania games"?

Bernd Beyreuther: When we arrived at the description “Baldur’s Gate in 3D”, this was at the end of a long and intensive game design process. At no time, did we think “we’re gonna make a clone of this or that game”. In fact, we spent several months, collecting and reviewing the game design aspects for – what we consider – a *proper* role-playing game. We asked fans and gamers for their opinions and played many different RPGs.

We found a number of features that were – and still are – very important to us: a party, dynamic combat with a round-based ruleset, a certain complexity in skills, strong and memorable characters, dynamic dialogues and a whole bunch more.

The old RoA games were not homogeneous in terms of the gameplay, which was a consequence of the technical restrictions of the time: We moved through 3D-cities that were bereft of people. Everything was displayed from the first-person perspective, but you never got to see your party. For combat, it switched over to a rigid isometric perspective etc.

Therefore our objective can hardly be described as “Realms of Arkania in 3D”. Our project is just better described as a “Baldur’s Gate in 3D”. But this does not mean, that we took more inspiration from one than the other.

Zum Interview

[Avantenor]

Today dtp and Radon Labs offer us a little christmas special: An elven character animation. You can either download the video at our video subsite (17 MB) or watch a version of minor quality at YouTube.

Have fun!

Video @ Drakensang.info

Video @ YouTube

[Avantenor]

Only a short information from a german interview at German commercial games network OnlineWelten. It seems that a crafting system will surely be implemented in Drakensang. PR Manager Claas Paletta was asked about about implementation of the so called "professions" and Paletta assured that they will have such thing like stitching leather or making potions. But they have to examine what seems to be reasonable for a CRPG.

That's for now, but there's another thing.

You maybe will experience some problems with links, downloads and so on within the next two weeks. Our whole network - and that also means also our site drakensang.info - is transferred to a new server because of some performance problems in the past. That goes hand in hand with some minor changes to infrastructure. We hope to get rid of these problems asap. If you encounter any error, dead links and so on, send me a mail (avantenor@globalgameort.com).

[Avantenor]

Bad news, folks. Today I got an actual release list from Anaconda. It says DraSa will hit the stores in Q1 2008 instead of Q4 2007. Let's hope it will be the last delay.

[Avantenor]

Today, Jan Lechner gave his farewell to the community. He will leave Radon Labs for personal reasons and wished the community and his colleagues all the best. In future, game designer Fabian Rudzinski will take over Jan's Job in the official forum. Maybe you will remember Fabian as he was introduced in the first Developer Diary . Fabian is responsible for nearly all important design aspects of Drakensang, i.e. talent system, characters, story proceedings, quests etc. And he brought a little present for you all: An animation of a dwarf. You can download the movie at our video section, it's about 6MB. You can also watch the movie in minor quality at YouTube.

Our video section @ Drakensang.info
Svens farewall posting @ official forum (german)
Video @ YouTube


At least, a little announcement: Don't miss the new Developer Diary at Friday. Lead Programmer Nico Pogoczelski is going to tell you something about the work of a coder and as example he has chosen to describe the process of creating the overview map.

[Avantenor]

In it's last issue, German game magazine Gamestar reveals some of the archetypes the player can choose to play in Drakensang. This is my personal translation, so it could vary from the final game, especially the local terms. To get some map links for these locations, please read the news on drakensang.info.

Gamestar mentioned the following archetypes to be available to play:

• Elven Ranger from Thunderbrook
• Dwarven Mercenary from the Thash Mountains (near Lowangen)
• Pickpocket from Punin
• Battlemage from Andergast
• Healingmage from Thunderbrook
• Rashdulian warrior
• Archer from Anchopal
• Amazon warrior from Castle Kurkum (near Beilunk)
• Thorwalian pirate

Also, there is a paragraph about travelling:

Travelling can be compared to NWN2 (for veterans: Realms of Arkania 1/2), from a regional map you can choose your destination. During travel random encounter can interrupt your passage. That means ambushes or wild animals, something like that.

BTW: Do you already know these Concept Arts?

[Avantenor]

Anaconda released several character animation files during the last days, showing a male elf, an orc and a goblin. you can grab the files from our server or watch it directly from YouTube in minor quality.

orc & goblin: http://www.drakensang.info/content/view/67
male elf: http://www.drakensang.info/content/view/66