Gamernode: Previews - Drakensang: The Dark Eye

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The world of Arkania, DSA's setting, is mostly standard high fantasy, with humans, elves and dwarves providing the player characters. Orcs, goblins and the like are your opponents, though they look slightly different than standard. The orcs, for instance, are not bald with green skin, but they covered in a thick layer of black fur. The world contains some other unusual features and has a deep, expansive lore, backed up for this game by the fact that the original 1000-page script for the game was written by official DSA PnP authors, who also worked on the dialogue. But basically, the world should look highly familiar to most gamers.

At a budget of 2.5 million EUR, the graphical level is obviously not on par with major titles, so if you consider any RPG that does not look like Oblivion to be unplayable, this one might best be left on the side. They do the best they can with what they have and the game looks good, just not as polished as its bigger contemporaries.

The setting is crafted with quite a bit of attention. Despite being behind the graphical standard of the real AAA titles, this attention to detail shows in the well-crafted environmental art. The developers promise 40 hours of gameplay from the main quest and some side quests. The gameworld promises to be large and detailed, with the developers basing the design of some locations on real world medieval buildings (castles).

So far it all looks decent to good, but the real question of quality depends on something we can't take a closer look at yet: the dialogue, the storyline, the quests. If these live up to the promised high standards, this game will be one to watch, if these don't, the whole game will be somewhat forgettable as the rest offers nothing new or special.

But for us, the English-speaking market, we also have to wait until they announce a publisher for NA and the rest of Europe. It does not seem to be a high priority for the company, which automatically builds the fear that we'll have a terrible localisation, with bad voiceovers and annoying mistranslations.

This game is one too watch, but it's worth waiting to see how the above issues are dealt with before getting really interested. For those who just can't wait for an American (or English) release, the game is due out in Germany in Q1 2008.

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