Drakensang is set on the continent of Aventuria (the name was changed to Arkania in earlier English translations). The small city of Ferdok in the Kosh region of Middlerealm is being terrorized by a series of ritualistic murders in which victims from all levels of society have their hearts cut from their chests. This seems to coincide with the establishment of a new temple dedicated to a goddess of science and industry. The player, however, is initially ignorant of these events, having been drawn to Ferdok by a letter written by an old friend. When they arrive and find their friend is the latest victim, they'll be drawn into an ancient conspiracy that may very well change the face of Aventuria for all time.
One of the first things we noticed playing our near-finished preview version of Drakensang is that the world of The Dark Eye is an interesting place. While it shares many features with more Tolkien-standard fantasy universes (it contains the usual array of dwarves, elves, humans, orcs and goblins), the sensibilities of the place are fairly distinct. Orcs and goblins, for example, are savage fur-covered beast-men more akin to their pre-Tolkien origins as mythic forest monsters than their modern interpretation as primitive tribesmen.
While the world has its share of fantastic beasts, many of the "monsters" (at least in the early areas of the game that we played) were no more than bears, boars, wolves and rats -- albeit much larger than normal. This no doubt reflects the outsized mindshare such creatures had on the standard medieval peasant, but it doesn't take long to realize that even the lowliest beast in The Dark Eye can be dangerous to the unprepared.
Indeed, if there's one outstanding attribute to Aventuria, it's just how "ordinary" the place is. The Dark Eye is a very low-enchantment fantasy universe in which magic of any type is fairly unusual. Player spellcasters will not be lugging around spellbooks filled with 174 different incantations. Instead players will have a few different categories of spell available that a real medieval citizen might need -- strength of body, for example, or healing or a light source. Indeed, the biggest "bang" in a spellcaster's arsenal will come from a small group of direct-damage spells based on things like fire and thunder that are far less showy than most fantasy world's smallest fireball spells. Magical items are similarly rare. Most "upgrades" comes from finding better-quality but otherwise ordinary equipment. Adding actual magical effects to items will have to be done through the game's crafting systems and will often come as the result of long and difficult questing.
Much like the universe it's based in, the gameplay of Drakensang also feels like a return to an earlier era. Min/maxers who love getting deep into numbers will appreciate The Dark Eye's old-school stat-intensive role-playing system. Characters have eight attributes that are combined together whenever a skill is used, and experience points can be pumped into either improving basic attributes or focused on improving a specific skill. The kicker is that with so many combos, depending on how a player wants to develop a particular character, points spent in a particular attribute might not help every skill, while points spent in a skill are more immediately useful but aren't as economical as attribute increases.
Players can also develop skill combat abilities or spells or use points to increase the ones they have, creating a character that's either broad or deep. Fortunately the game itself handles all of the dice-work and calculations and provides a large number of pre-made templates for those who just want to get to the hacking and the slashing. The game also uses the classic BioWare-style order-while-paused combat system and allows players to acquire a retinue of traveling companions of various classes, three of which can be used at any one time.
Still, if there's one aspect that can't be skimped on in a great RPG, it's the quality of the storyline and dialogue. Here at least the game is off to a good start with a rich body of RPG lore to pull from and a storyline that -- according to the developer -- runs approximately 1,000 pages in length. That being said, it remains to be seen how well the game will be translated from the original German (too many text-intensive games suffer from poor translations). The version we had, while decent, had dialogue that seemed a bit verbose and stilted and not every major character had a full and complete voice-over. We'll see how the whole thing turns out when the game is released on February 18.
