The eighty -year -old old man Milan Kunder his last novel “ignorance” devoted entirely to the evidence of the obvious truth: you cannot live the past. In the studio Piranha bytes It seems that they have not read the books of the French writer and still live in 2001, like a bearded older – in a deaf Siberian village.
All the time that the development of Risen lasted, the Germans deftly drove us by the nose: they teased mysterious letters on the site, importantly puffed their cheeks and politely evaded the answer to the question of what they still do for the game. And although everyone understood that in general everything would be done in the traditions of the series Gothic , There was a hope that the change of name and setting would somehow sobbilly affect Piranha Bytes, will help them rethink and develop old ideas.
Everything turned out exactly the opposite. Of course, the developers did not hide that the first two parts of the Gothic would be based on the new game. But now we understand: in fact, it meant that they are doing literally the same game as eight years ago.
Many, many times
Only the graphics really changed-the technology diligently brought into line with modern standards. But this from afar can not be seen-the same green-brown landscapes of the Central Russian strip, forest, swamps, giant mosquitoes and carnivorous moths.
All other changes are not so significant, but not to count the similarities. As in the first Gothic, the action of Risen unfolds on an island magically fenced from the rest of the world. As in the first Gothic, the nameless hero (according to the good old tradition, we know almost nothing about his past) did not get here of his own free will. He sailed on the ship, landed in a storm, and woke up on the island, where he realized that the storm was still flowers. As in the first Gothic, the opposing fractions operate on this piece of sushi. Now there are only two of them, but both are old acquaintances: on the one hand, the bandits in the camp in the swamps, on the other, are Mago-monastery in the monastery. As in the first Gothic, for some time we can work on both sides, but then we need to make the final choice. As in the first Gothic ..
Everything is generally here – as in the first or second part of Gothic. History, as before, is divided into chapters and revolves around the awakening of certain magical forces. The sleeper was replaced by the titans who thought of the unkind, and the charismatic sorcerer Xardas – no less charismatic inquisitor of Mendos, an impressive man with an expressive red eye and the surname of the Colombian drug lord. Nothing more seemed to have changed more: here everyone is still digging and looking for artifacts (in the third Gothic, half the plot was built on this), and after some time the hero forces the heroes to collect magic trinkets scattered across the island. Accordingly, as in the first two Gothic, the most interesting chapter in Risen is the first when we quietly work for both factions and actively earn a name. Here we have a real role -playing game. And then the action begins with role -playing elements.
The same story with geography. As in the second "Gothic", there is one big city on the island and several smaller settlements. Harbor-Town is an almost accurate chorinis tracing paper from Gothic 2, where exactly the same division into upper and lower quarters plus port and brothels. Anyone who was in Khorinis will be able to take a prostitute in Harbor-Town with closed eyes and find a pier.
For experts in the series, there will be no surprise that access to the upper quarters, as well as to the leaders of the fractions, is closed for the time being: first you need to prove yourself and fulfill a dozen or two quests. At the same time, many tasks seem to have moved to Risen straight from the pages of the script to any Gothic. We still help farmers protect the crop, solve their problems with cows and pigs, personally collect potatoes from the beds, deliver fried meat to the cooks, and alchemists-mushrooms-firing firms, finding a population of local wolves, looking for missing hunters or peasants, we understand drug smuggling (or we sell them to the suffering) and t.D.
The role system, of course, has not changed either. It is still built around the diverse skills of the character, which is taught by the masters of their craft. Thanks to them, the hero will learn to better possess one or another weapon, steal, hack castles, tear skins from animals, write magic scrolls, forge swords or extract ores.
Oh, where are you, brother?
In Harbor-Town, you will meet treasure hunters who claim that they are three twin brothers. If only they: it seems that half of the population of this island were grown in one test tube.
What do you think are the battles in Risen? Do not work to answer: this is absolutely the same "Gothic" Nedoslasher. In close combat there is a main blow and a block, and as the skill increases in the possession of the weapon, it becomes possible to apply additional blows (for example, side – with a sword) and conduct simple combo. Almost all magical techniques, we also saw yourself yourself guess where. Both corporate telekinesis are available and the ability to turn into a small creature (in this case, into a snail) to climb into a place inaccessible to a person.
Cut off the excess
Piranha bytes can be understood. All their conscious life, they made the same game, and even now, having lost their rights to the name and the Universe, it was important for them to remind everyone that they (and not Jowood And Spellbound With his own Arcania: A Gothic Tale ) know what the real "Gothic" should be. Even under a different name.
To do this, they took as a basis the best, second part of the series and cut off from it all that, in their opinion, destroyed the third. First of all, they got rid of painful gigantomania: the game world has become smaller, and a lot of skills and perks that appeared in the third Gothic was cut off from the role system.
As a result, the game became more compact and more collected, and the game world is more saturated. A typical Gothic task-to achieve an audience with the leader of the faction-now includes not three or four quests, but all ten. Yes, as already mentioned, many tasks are borrowed from the previous parts, but there are really new exciting adventures stretched almost to the whole game. So, to help one charming girl find her father, old pirate, we first conduct an investigation in the slums of Harbor-Town, then we will organize the escape of the girl from the closed city (and for this you must first find a secret exit), and then we still come to the rescue when we come to the rescue when The former "colleagues" of her father appear on the stage ..
In addition, a huge number of tasks are solved in different ways. You can deliberately work for the Inquisition, etch all the bandits from Harbor-Town, cause tears of tenderness from the commandant of the city, get excellent recommendations and come to the Mendos monastery by a respected person. And at the very beginning, you can accidentally come to the monks too close, and then you will be forced to serve the Inquisitor, but they will be treated as a criminal. The monastery itself will also have a choice, who to be, warrior or magician. Yes, and with teachers you can behave differently: to dare and, as a punishment, scribble the floors in their rooms, dreaming of an escape, or humbly seek the location of the highest magicians.
Or here is another example. To get to the leader of the bandits, Don Esteban, you will not only have to take one of his subordinates to clean water, who builds against the head of the intrigues, but also decide what to do with the traitor: to hand over it with giblets or, conversely, start working for him. Or try to kill. Finally, you can not bother yourself with intra -corporate squabbles at all, but simply find and collect in parts the golden sword that Esteban needs so much, and then you will be allowed to be without any conditions.
In addition, the https://bof-gb-casino.co.uk/ authors brought a combat system to the sense, which fails in the third Gothic, where you could jam almost any enemy. Here, opponents learned even in the most patho situations to quickly counterattack and interrupt our combo. The opportunity to open the inventory and thus put the game on a pause right during the battle, to calmly restore strength and health with potions, disappeared. It is still difficult to call the fights ideal (there is not even the usual parameter of the endurance responsible for the consumption of forces during the matchmaker), but in general the battles turned out to be more vigorous and more interesting.
Finally, against the background of what was happening in Gothic 3, Risen works amazingly stable. And the engine is perfectly optimized: it, without stuttering, displays beautiful saturated landscapes and detailed types of a large city on the screen.
Of course, there is something to complain about. The inheritance from the ancestors of Risen went to several generic sores. For example, the tragic uniformity of persons and the lack of personal animation. There are also annoying conventions. For example, you can work at the commandant of Harbor-Tauna and hand over Don Esteban’s henchmen one after another, telling them about this. And then, as if nothing had happened, along with them to come to the bandit camp, get an audience from the leader and ask for him under the wing – everyone will deliberately pretend that it is necessary.
But these are all rather nit -picking, inevitable compromises. They do not cancel the main thing: Risen is an almost perfect, concentrated Gothic, the endurance of the whole best that was in the series, minus errors and experiments of the third part.
Travel notes
Some game situations are repeated in all Piranha Bytes games practically verbatim. In the pictures below on the left – Risen, on the right – Gothic 3. How many differences do you manage to find?
Life in your own juice
Perhaps you are tormented by a logical question: why, in this case, such a low assessment? Instead of answering, we, in turn, would like to ask the developers: “How much can you make the same game?!»Yes, you can remember an example BioWare , which since time Baldur’s Gate make party role -playing games with the same plot. But at the same time they regularly change the scenery, revise mechanics, come up with innovative dialogs (see. Mass Effect ), turn to famous settings ( Star Wars: Knights of the Old Republic ) or invent their own ( Jade Empire ), and now they climbed to do mmorpg ( The Old Republic ). At this time, Piranha Bytes has an awakening of ancient evil in the fourth time in eight years and the collection of artifacts. IN Oblivion Horses appeared in "" Witcher "There was a non -standard combat system in Divinity 2: Ego Draconis For the first time we were allowed to read the thoughts of absolutely any NPC, and in Alpha Protocol They promise adventures in the spirit of Jason Bourne … At the same time, Piranha Bytes add the opportunity to block shocks with a shield and again urgently offered to poke around in the gardens.
* * *
This, of course, is also a position that has the right to exist. Like Buddhist monks, Piranha Bytes have been working on themselves for years and seek perfection in one thing. And today, indeed, no one better than them will make a role-playing game about the problems of agriculture in a single area, about the survival of a lonely nameless man on a island fenced from the world, full of bandits-narcomans, hysterical magicians and mosquitoes the size of a bulldog. In the end, tens of thousands of fans were only waiting for that, and this game for them is solid named after the heart. But we, frankly, for eight years, are tired of pouring tears of tenderness over the same game. Risen is still out of competition in our field, but in 2009 we seem to have the right to expect something more than the HD-Remake of the original Gothic.
TRANSLATION: Thanks to the effort " New disk »We, as in the case of" Witcher ", Received a full Russian version of Risen simultaneously with the world release. The localization itself turned out to be good, but, as usual, by no means impeccable. So, next to the Inquisitor Mendosa, for some reason, a prostitute Olga, a criminal Vasily and a harsh pirate of Romanov appeared. And some characters with visible pleasure promise our hero to "wind eggs on the neck". Of course, we understand that there have always been enough criminals in the Piranha Bytes games, but in the fabulous adventure of the vocabulary of the lexicon of the treasury alcoholics, it still looks inappropriate.
Reigracy – yes
Cool plot – no
Originality – no
Easy to master – yes
Evidence of expectations: 50%
Gameplay: 8
Graphics: 8
Sound and music: 7
Interface and management: 7
Waited? Gothic changed the name and place of action, burst out externally, but in the soul she remained the same game as in 2001. It is good or bad – it depends on your attitude to the original and the desire to go through the same, albeit beautiful, the game for the fourth time.
Mania rating: 7.5
"Fine"