Risen: Hands On

After three Gothic games, the most recent of which (Gothic III) was released in 2006, piranha-bites are back with a new Action Role Playing (ARPG) game - Risen. Coming to PC and Xbox 360 in October (it's not out on 360 in the US until next year!), we got our hands on a copy early and have put it through its paces in the early part of the game.

The opening cinematic (spoilers!) shows a motley crew on board a ship in the middle of the ocean. Something goes badly wrong and the ship is destroyed. Gameplay begins with your character (over which you have no choice, you're a bloke of preset visage with no customization options) waking up on the shore. If you've played Age of Conan (eek) you'll find this incredibly familiar. The quest you have to do (find a weapon, escort a fair maiden to safety) and the environment you do it in are almost identical to that game. Fortunately, that's where the similarities end...

Controls are pretty straightforward - LB switches you into and out of combat mode. When in combat mode your face buttons are all about defending or attacking. Out of combat, you can use A to interact with / collect objects that litter the environment or can be found on the bodies of your fallen enemies. This does mean a lot of sheathing / unsheathing in order to collect the booty from corpses (as you can't do this in combat) but it's no big drama.

Combat is entirely real time, with damage (etc) based on roll of the dice vs. comparative stats. You have action-based combos and block mechanics which ensure a good part of the result is based on skill but you also have to be wary of your level vs. their level, the type of equipment you're packing, etc. Unfortunately there's no way to tell the level / challenge an adversary will present until you engage in combat as there is no obvious mechanic by which to determine if a mob is higher level than you or overtly tough. The mobs are also mixed up in the environment, with seriously hard / high level mobs readily placed around the place with other creatures that are more your level.

Visually it's an interesting game - there's no obvious attempt to go for super realism (like Oblivion, for example), which helps it get away with fairly mundane-looking textures / animation / graphical detail. The lighting system is superb, with fire giving the environment around it a warm, soft glow like you might expect if you were really in a dungeon someplace holding a dripping, flaming torch aloft. Environments are densely packed with vegetation and detail, with spectacular weather effects really selling the concept that you're somewhere and someone else, doing something interesting and magical.

The sound, like the graphics, are rich and multi-layered. Lots of environmental sounds layer on top of an eerie soundtrack, with the requisite combat clashing noises adding viscerally to the feeling of being in a fight with some fantasy creature. Voices are all by stars (of varying levels) from Andy Serkis (my precious!) and John Rhys Davies to people that have appeared in East Enders or Casualty. The voices certainly sound great (although it's a bit annoying to have your character voice the dialogue you just read through and chose from a list) and fit in well with the world.

So far we're really impressed with what we've seen - Risen is going to have a hard time getting attention in a world of Fables, Oblivions and Warcrafts but from what we've seen, if you like a little action in your RPG and aren't that fussed on doing it with friends, Risen is going to be well worth a look when it comes out in mid-October.