Risen 2: Dark Waters Previews

Risen 2: Dark Waters isn’t getting a ton of coverage from GDC, but here’s a handful of fairly short looks at the upcoming pirate-filled RPG sequel from Piranha Bytes.

Ripten.

Luckily, in order to kill things like that you’ll be presented with an array of pirate-y weapons such as swords, daggers, blunderbusses, and yes, dual pistols. (pewpewpew)

The whole demo gave me a very Two Worlds II vibe, which isn’t a bad thing, because as you know, I loved Two Worlds II. While Risen II doesn’t exactly look like a AAA title, it does look like it may be a hell of a lot of fun, especially since an open world RPG focused on Pirates simply hasn’t been done before.

Dual Shockers.

Not much else was really shown, but there were reassurances that this time around, the console versions wouldn’t suffer such technical problems. The main complaints of the first game were that the 360 version was bogged down with bugs, glitches, and things of that nature. This was due to the hasty decision to port to consoles with only six to eight months before launch. This time around, they’re building the console versions from the ground up alongside the PC version, so the game should run smoother. Along with that, they’ve done some clever things to increase the efficiency of the cached and stored data on consoles and fully utilize the processing capability.

Goozer Nation.

Another cool thing they showed was the day and night cycles and how it affects NPCs and Monsters. For example, let’s say a monster is guarding an item attached to your current quest, but your level is too low to fight and win in a battle with this monster. You could wait until it goes to sleep, sneak in, and steal the object. All NPCs sleep at night just like many monsters, and you can use this to your advantage.