In lieu of a review, I’m keeping a diary of my (mis)adventures in and thoughts on divisive new RPG Risen. The first part’s here.
The situation: I’m being followed by a physically impossible woman who’s moaning about being hungry, and I have a pocket full of vulture and rat meat. There’s probably a way to connect these two things. First, however, fighting.
Wandering up the hilly jungle path, I spot a cave entrance on my left. Impossi-woman expresses fear when I head in, and urges me to take another route. Banking on this being a game in which I can make my own decisions, I ignore her and sneak further in. It’s dark and unsettling, but – hooray! – there is treasure here, many mana-restoring mushrooms (though I have no way to use up mana as yet) and, a little further in, some gnomes.
These are not your common hat’n’beard gnomes, but instead pig-faced, goblinoid things that want my blood. It very quickly becomes a serious fight, much harder than my scuffles with beasts, and one death and reload later, I get a sense of why some folk have moaned Risen is too unforgiving. On my second attempt at the fight, my sympathy turns to a glimmer of contempt.
Granted, the game hasn’t told me how to dodge or block yet, but I’ve worked it out myself. If the gnomes hit me, most of my health bar disappears. So I don’t let them hit me. What’s the big problem here? I’m feeling cocky, and so far I’m getting away with it. I’m also understanding why Gothic/Risen’s fanbase can be a bit sneery towards other RPGs – it is satisfying to conquer something that’s a little unforgiving. Where I disagree with them is that I’m entirely happy for harder RPGs to co-exist with ones that show you every rope or have a magic compass that tells you exactly where to go: diversity is a good thing.
The fight takes a little while, as these ugly midgets turn out to be pretty hardy, but so long as I dodge as well as hammer attack, it’s thoroughly in my favour. I’m rewarded with access to chests containing gold, health potions, some food, a sword and a sickle. This latter ensures the next gnome-packed room is a whole lot easier, though the greater number of minimen in there makes dodging a little more complicated.
I don’t know what Risen’s combat is going to ultimately become, but what I’m enjoying so far (and is still the case later, when I’m fighting the hungry wolves that some demo players have complained about) is that it’s something I have to pay attention to. It doesn’t require awkward key combinations or a complex knowledge of statistics – it just requires not letting my guard down, and feeling as tense as focused as I would in a real fight. I mean, I guess. I don’t fight a lot of people. Only toddlers, really, and they don’t hit back very hard.
So Impossi-woman’s moaning was for naught. I emerge from the other end of the cave near to where the game began, and now I have pockets full of useful things. Back to my original goal – a way to link my frightening-shaped companion’s hunger to raw meat I’m lugging around.
That way turns out to be a frying pan lurking in a chest within an abandoned house. Once I have that, I can click on the weirdly huge firepit outside the house and fry my pocket-meat into something edible. She’s happy. I’m happy, because it heals the hitpoints I lost beating up giant birds and porcine gnomes. I’d previously tried to heal them by drinking from a barrel full of rainwater, like a dog, but gave up because each time I did, it involved a five-second animation but only refilled my health bar by a fraction. Click, click and click again. Booooring.
Risen does a lot of things like this – taking away your control and making you wait for a preset animation to play out for a few seconds. On their own, I wouldn’t notice, but I’m reaching the point where I don’t want to open a chest or drink from a barrel because I know I’ll have control snatched away just so the game can show me something boring for a just a little too long. I’m certainly not going to take 12 seperate drinks from the barrel just to refill my health bar – why can’t the game either spot that, quite obviously, I want to restore my HP and thus give me the lot with one click, or allow me to hold down the button until I’m done drinking? It’s unncessarily obstinate and time-consuming.
I’m enjoying the cooking, however. I’ve always liked cooking in RPGs. When I kill a beast, as i do often, all its carcass contains is meat. No gems, no swords, no gore-soaked blueprints for luxury armour. I also can’t just eat its raw, bloody, probably poisonous meat – it has to be cooked first. This makes sense, it creates a visceral link between me and this wild world, and it adds to the survival fantasy that Risen seems keen to create. Sure, there’s mysteriously nothing in the frying pan when I hold it over the fire, but it’s the thought that counts.
What is sligtly irksome is that this is the only cooking fire I’ll see for the next couple of hours, which means I spend a lot of time with a lot of raw meat in my pocket. I’m hoping there’ll be a system whereby I can create fires myself later, as there is no logical reason why I shouldn’t be able to. Most of all, I want to do guerrilla cooking – running into the middle of an enemy camp and trying to fry up a chicken drumstick before they get me.
Meanwhile, impossi-woman announces she’s tired and needs a sit down. It’s another vague hint that women aren’t considered all that highly by this world. So, I’m asked to leave her where she is and go find help. Seems unwise, given the jungle is brimming with angry wildlife, but I don’t seem to have any other choice. A short way up the hill, I find the grave moths I mentioned yesterday, and promptly demolish them with my sickle. A little further on, I find a man with a ginger beard – it’s a face I will see several times, on several different characters. While initially hostile, once I explain my shipwrecked status, he’s friendly. He even says he’ll go collect Impossi-woman and take her to safety, which pops up a ‘Quest Completed’ message and gives me a few experience points.
Now, I’m rendered deeply uncomfortable by this – I already know that Gothic and Risen’s worlds are full of people you can’t trust, and that there’s rarely a right or wrong choice. To leave my only friend’s safety in the hands of a scowling guy with a sword who I’ve only just met seems incredibly foolish, especially when she’s dressed like an erotic cosplayer. Perhaps it’s a decision that’ll come back to haunt me. I’ll be impressed if it is, but also annoyed, given I don’t seem to have had much choice in the matter. That said, I could have just tried to kill this guy. God knows how that would have altered my future in this world, or what fate it would have given to impossi-woman.
One choice I am given is where to go next. Beardyface really, really wants me to come back to the bandit camp he works for, but also talks of a harbour town nearby. If I go there, there’s a good chance I’ll be recruited by the – he says – sinister Inquisition. These are bad men, and I should avoid them. But, I reason, a harbour sounds like a place of trade and information, while a bandit camp sounds like a place of, well, bandits. So I ignore this chap’s insistence, and already it feels like I’m not having to do what the game tells me to do. That’s what I want from Risen, frankly.
He leads me close to some folk who, he says, can tell me how to get to the harbour, then heads back. Presumably to either help or abduct my pornographic companion. Still plagued by doubt, I head down to a quiet farm. In short order, a robed bloke with a Northern English accent has me harvesting grain for him. I’m not totally clear why he can’t do it himself, but right now making people like me seems like the right course of action. Next, I chat to his dad, who, I’m glad to see, hints that his son is a bit of a simpleton – which explains this grain-collecting business.
He also sheds some more light on the nature of the Inquisition. Sounds as though they’re not treating the island’s populace well, but their ultimate aim seems to be altruistic – fending off a volcano-related sinister force that’s up to no good. Like beardyface, he’s not a fan of the Inquisition, but does believe they’re working for the greater good. Who should I trust? Well, no-one for now. However, a major choice is becoming clear – join the Inquisition, join the bandits or, most appealingly to me, sneak past the Inquisition to become a mage. They’re intercepting and recruiting/batting away anyone trying to reach the mage’s monastery, but as far as I can tell, it’s the only faction that hasn’t yet demonstrated a hostile intent towards others. Also, I’d really like to learn some magic.
So, becoming a mage becomes my number one priority – and, frankly, it’s a relief to have a definite goal, but doubly pleasing because it’s one I’ve decided on myself. To achieve it, and to bypass the patrolling Inquisition, I need the help of this sombre farming family. I’ve already helped with the harvest, so next it’s the aforementioned wolf-killing time. Stay away from combat until you’ve been trained as a fighter, people in yesterday’s comments keep saying. Listen: I couldn’t fight my way out of a wet paper bag in real life. This, though – this is my chance to be a man.
I’m doing my own thing, to a point. I’m enjoying myself. Could really do with another fire to cook all this raw meat, mind.
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Are you able to become a ninja and practice hiding, Alec?
you can learn sneak and have spells for distraction. sneaking up on human enemies works wonders. btw, about the “hard” combat: try dodging (which gets you taught in the tutorial) (direction keys + space – although you can’t block while doing it) and hitting the enemy from the side or if you are good, in the back: vola double and critical damage. critical damage gets determined by adding your characters strength to the hitpoints of the weapon. and YES I LOVE TO DIE. if you are so careless and take on even 1(!) boar in the beginning you should learn that they can kill you in 2 hits.
about the waterbarrel: you don’t need it. just lie down in the bed (WHICH IS IN THE SAME HOUSE AS THE BARREL, MR. RPG REVIEWER) and 2 seconds later you are on full health. Well, you didn’t even get past the tutorial level yet, so we’ll see how you do.
Today I found a cliff edge…across a hugh deep chasm was another cliff edge… luckerly I had a levitation spell on me… I managed to get to the other side and found a nice item (won’t spoil it for you).
However, the only way out was back the way I came or jump to my death…DOH!
It just so happened I had an acrobat ring +1 which meant if I could slide part way down the cliff side I could maybe survive the rest of the fall…. not before attaining the ‘idiot’ achievment. :-)
On a side note… having followed these Risen threads… why are so many people hung up on women’s equality within the game?… my previous comment about large breasted ladies seemed to cause a reaction and yet it was a flippent remark based on the nature of the game.
Fellows in the game swear, drink, take drugs and kill with metal weapons. So what, it;s a game.
And I heard this game has been banned somewhere or other… it’s rated mature (18+). Do the government of those countries not trust their ‘adult’ popultation not to before raving lunitics? Seems strange to me,
Cheers.
I don’t understand that either…I mean, it’s a medieval world, Mr. Meer gets an aristocrat lady from a shipwreck and then wonders why she seems unable to adapt to a horror-infested wilderness…
FYU (minor spoiler)
Patty teach the acrobat skill.
The ‘it’s a medieval world/just a game’ defence for contemptuous treatment of women – i.e. as helpless, subjected sex objects – is pathetic, it really is.
What you’re also overlooking is where I observed in the first post that I’m not singling Risen out for it particularly – but the blow-by-blow documentation of my experiences and thoughts means it’s inevitably going to come up in these diaries whenever the game does make another chauvanist assertion.
Fair enough. I’m just saying, if you took Paris Hilton into the Rocky Mountains and expected her to get out of there on her own, you could a) have a nice reality show, and b) kill her.
And I’m not talking about the sex object thing here, just about the helplessness thing.
And while that may be the same with spoiled male aristocrats, medieval habitualisation was generally different according to gender…pointing that out is neither mysgynist nor sexist IMO.
@Alec…
Text can be read in so many different ways.
Im not for one moment critisizing your article…absolutly enjoying it… impossi-women et al.
Im commenting on the thread in general.
anyway, im now guilty of continuing the sub topic I’m really not interested in…so I will shut up.
Still I stand by what I said and finally say to all the men in the western world… men and women are different for a reason… sterotypes are not bad… stand up for own rights.. cause the way it’s going soon there will be no work for men, no reproductive reason for men, no men. lol.
Cheers.
You know, I get the feeling we’ll eventually find out that that woman was a courtesan/whore, in which case her clothes would be perfectly appropriate for her job.
It’s still not a very women-friendly depiction of a woman, but at least it’d not be glaringly out of place.
Just in case I got it wrong: Because Risen happens to contain a woman that is helpless on a dangerous island, whose weakness probably is just a plot detail to introduce the player to weaponry and defending himself, it’s offensive to women?
Based on the answer to this question, choose whether I call this laughable or not.
<div class="http://www.rockpapershotgun.co/wp-content/plugins/wp-ajax-edit-comments/php/edit-comment" id="edit-comment">While I suspect you’ll remain on your confrontational horse, this point has been exaggerated hugely by some guys overreacting to my casual mention of one of the very minor aspects of the game’s treatment of its female characters, perhaps to try and ignore/nullify the much larger concerns about its apparent attitude so far. Which is in itself worrying.
But, once a’friggin’gain – I am commenting on my experiences and thoughts as they happen. This is a diary, not a review, not a grand judgement, because I have not seen all the game yet. If the game’s later treatment of women is better, I will be quite sure to report that too.
</div>
Somewhat unrelated to the serious discussion about sexism, but: it seems there are various admin links (moderate/edit/delete/etc.) appended to your post when I view it in the forums, Mr Meer.
Edit: it's gone even worse, now (by which I mean I get random bits of HTML code in there, instead of the adminning links). D:
Well, I was not just aiming it at you, Alec, but I got the impression that the readership adapted the stance that Risen is evil and therefore outrages about sexism are in order. Good to see I was wrong!
“Still I stand by what I said and finally say to all the men in the western world… men and women are different for a reason… sterotypes are not bad… stand up for own rights.. cause the way it’s going soon there will be no work for men, no reproductive reason for men, no men. lol.”
No.
Fun things (small SPOILERS here)
– Hunting a “Gray beast” with a friend NPC
– Levitation spell, use Levitation spell from the monastery to “levitate” everywhere. The whole isle is a single map, so you can go anywhere from there.
– Theres a spell to convert yourself in to Gray beast.
– I have a stone rune to create “summon scheleton”. This call fred. Fred is my new best friend. He has not timer whatsoever, and try to follow you like a good NPC will do. He is a proactice/decent hunter. He is called Fred. Note to self: I *MUST* use a joke spell on Fred.
Note to self: I *MUST* use the joke spells on all the prostitutes of the game :*)
This game is a battlefield, where the “too complex for his own good and lack of polish” Gothic PC game and how a good Console RPG play. The result is a good PC game (and probably a poor console RPG game, but.. who cares?). The added polish to a Gothic game make it playable, and the lack of a real deep will not hurt the game. Theres even some replayability, i suppose, If you choose hunter, and later you want to play as magician.
Well if the combat is easier than Gothic 3’s was, then I might pick this up, as the frustrating combat was my main bug bear with Gothic 3.
Gothic 3’s combat was fucked up beyond belief. I can happily tell you that such is not the case with Risen. Combat is in my opinion better than in any of the previous Gothic games.
So have none of the Gothic series ever had a strong female character then?
According to IMDB, Risen was co-written by Rhianna Pratchett, so it would be interesting if RPS asked her for her views on this.
P.
Well, the Gothic series had a few “strong female characters”, like the leader of the thieves guild in Gothic 2 for example, or the old witch the villagers go to when they don’t know what to do, but none of that female paladin/female archmage bullshit you see so often. And I don’t think that’s unfair, because it’s a medieval setting. Yes, that’s my excuse, my excuse is that considering when women took the right to vote, the right to get educated or the right to fight, it’s flat-out ridiculous to portray feudal societies as beacons of equality.
I just wondered, as I’ve started Gothic 2 (bought it on GOG after having fun in the Risen demo and was curious to see a previous iteration of the series), got to the city, and so far only met whores and maids (including one woman who offered me a bed in her house, the trusting wench).
P.
Well, good luck with finding the Thieves Guild…I only found it on my second playthough.
I’m looking forward to the first catacomb exploration ;D
Per Vinraith’s advice, I tried the demo for this (which both installed, launched and actually worked! Be impressed), and…
…I don’t know why I hated Gothic 2/3. Maybe it was the outdated engine, and I had a brainfart or something; maybe the first few minutes weren’t as rewarding/engaging as Risen’s (I found a hunting knife on the beach within seconds of the game starting, which felt like a real weapon and actually let me fight rather than Gothic 2’s complete helplessness in combat at the beginning of the game); maybe it’s that unlike Gothic 3, this actually runs smoothly; I don’t know. All I know is that I actually quite enjoyed the demo, and wouldn’t be averse to picking this up in a few months when I have money.
Regarding the voice actors: I actually quite liked the person they chose to voice the protagonist. He manages to sound just monotone enough to make it clear that he’s essentially an avatar, not a character, while also managing to come across as suitably realistic for a medieval fantasy character, at least to my ears. I was far more annoyed by the thief’s voice, which struck me as exactly the sort of Dick-van-Dyke sort of fake Cockney that foreigners think anyone south of Scotland speaks.
As for Sara (the woman), I had no issues whatsoever with her. She struck me more as a pragmatic city woman rather than a helpless wench. The only thing they could have dispensed with was the whole “I am so tired that I will now stay in this abandoned house despite the surroundings being unknown to me and the wildlife being verifiably aggressive for I am tired! *swoon*” bit, which I did find rather gratuitous. I also suspect she would have gone down a lot better had she been dressed in more down-to-Earth clothing rather than a prostitute’s underwear, of if she’d at least commented on her appearance.
Good first impression of Risen for me. I downloaded the demo on steam and it won't start, just crashes over and over again ^_^ YAY I guess that helped me make up my mind pretty quickly, I guess I'll just have to keep waiting for TESV
Why people constantly have to compare The Elder Scrolls with Gothic/Risen is beyond me. You could just as well liken Diablo II to Baldur’s Gate II.
Alec, your experiences and thoughts are near identical to the ones I had of the game’s demo. Look forward to your experiences beyond the demo.
So far, I’ve a lot of fun in the game, and YES you can join the mages.
If you happen to buy from risen.nexway.com, play a bit with the language icons before clicking BUY or you will feel ripped off. Compare:
EUR 49.99 vs. GPB 34.99 (about EUR 37.80) vs. USD 49.99 (about EUR 33.97)
“The ‘it’s a medieval world/just a game’ defence for contemptuous treatment of women – i.e. as helpless, subjected sex objects – is pathetic, it really is.”
Are you serious? That’s like saying Left 4 Dead is a bad game we should be up in arms about because you can murder your friend if you so choose to, and doing that in real life is a horrible thing to do. It is a game. Playing a game that has bad treatment of women in it doesn’t mean we are treating women badly. We are experiencing something in a game and can have our own views on that subject. Sure if the game is trying to tell you that is what you should do in real life then maybe I can see where you’re coming from, but with the above statement you just sound irrational.
This commenting system is broken + annoying. Apologies for double post.
Please delete the first of the doubles, as the second one has “- Alec Meer” in it, which is an improvement over the first. Thank you.
“The ‘it’s a medieval world/just a game’ defence for contemptuous treatment of women – i.e. as helpless, subjected sex objects – is pathetic, it really is.” – Alec Meer
Are you serious? That’s like saying Left 4 Dead is a bad game we should be up in arms about because you can murder your friend if you so choose to, and doing that in real life is a horrible thing to do. It is a game. Playing a game that has bad treatment of women in it doesn’t mean we are treating women badly. We are experiencing something in a game and can have our own views on that subject. Sure if the game is trying to tell you that is what you should do in real life then maybe I can see where you’re coming from, but with the above statement you just sound irrational.
anyone else seen reports of the demo not working for whatever reason? I'm suspecting it is because my graphics card is some how to old. Says it requires direct X 9.1 support (I didn't even know they had that so I might be out of luck :P) I don't understand why more programers don't make their games more accessible to a wider market. How hard could it be to make your game compatable with Direct X 9.0 as well as 9.1 O.o CoH uses Direct X 9.0 and Direct X 10 and both work well.
It is strange that all the games pushing my system into out of date land are from foreign devs like ArmA 2 and Risen : ) At least I'll have Torchlight , muwahaha
And I don’t think that’s unfair, because it’s a medieval setting.
People keep saying this, but it’s just not true. In a medieval setting, there would be no mages. Or porcine gnomes. Because, during medieval times, these things did not exist. But hey, dumping on women? Well, we’ve got to keep that!
If the made dumping a women part of the local culture and gave the character a choice to agree or disagree with the local treatment of women I think it might have been okay but in this case it is kind of assumed this is the way women really are in every world :) (kind of like in Daggerfall every where you go you see women laying down half naked or sometimes totally naked with chains around their necks but that is part of the culture there, in Oblivion women seem to be much more well regarded locally and many powerful characters are women indeed the strongest and most just Daedra is a female.)
I believe that a proper review is needed and not a play-by-play of someone going through the game. It would be more entertaining and take less time to just play the game myself. Funny commentary aside, reading about someone playing a game is infinitely more boring than watching someone play a game. Also, it escapes me why anyone would want to read through this prior to playing the game as a means of judging whether or not they wanted to play the game themselves; they would be spoiling much it. Just give it a review and be done with it.
“No.”
Be a good boy and conform to this setting or i will not like your originality.
Can someone please tell me where to find the key for the chest in the abandoned house at the very beginning of the game? I feel very stupid for asking, but I am at a total loss. Thanks! :)
@JibberyJew i think your best guess is to run around the house a few times before it appears. So far, first impression is, i like the game … not too kiddie, last rts i played was like click twice and was the level unfold, i like my rpg to be a bit of a challenge too
@ Railick:
Try off someplace like Gamer’s Hell, or something. I’ve found downloading from different servers sometimes makes all the difference as far as corruption. I’ve had stuff on Fileplanet end up corrupt after an hours-long download, where Filefront had a pristine copy.
Based on a few friends’ experience with Steam, I’d only get an account if I absolutely had to.
Risen is fairly well different from TES series, IMHO, once you get into it. On the surface it may appear similar, but Risen has a fairly well-developed combat system (unlike vanilla Morrowind and Oblivion) and none of the MMO-style grinding is required to rise in level.