Drakensang: The Dark Eye Developer Diary #6

Drakensang.info has posted a sixth developer diary for Radon Labs’ Drakensang: The Dark Eye, this time explaining why the game’s tatzelwurm creature doesn’t quite match tabletop players expectations.

…we moved away from existing illustrations and gave Aventuria another version of the tatzelwurm. Since the descriptions were supplied to us with very sparse information on the looks of a tatzelwurm, we permitted ourselves quite a few big liberties in designing the creature.

At this point, technology was more restrictive and that had a considerable impact on our design. For example, we chose not to give it any hair or fur, because it’s still very difficult to render them in a believable way.

So, the requirements for the first drafts were: no hair, at least six legs, credible construction, threatening appearance and a recognizable relationship to dragons. The last point led us to include the controversial wings, but we hadn’t been the first ones to draw a tatzelwurm like this.