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Preview of Sacred 2: Fallen Angel

 

July 9, 2008

The University Club-San Francisco, California

 

The original Sacred was an RPG for the PC. Released in 2004 it went on to sell nearly 2 million copies and become the number 1 selling RPG in the history of Germany. The developers' plans for Sacred 2 are much bigger. This game is coming to the PC in September and will have a simultaneous release on the XBOX 360 and PS3 in November.

 

The holiday 2008 season may boast the strongest line-up of RPG's in history. However, Sacred 2 is doing a lot of things right to stand out from the pack. First, it is has embraced the massive open world theory. It will take 6 hours of real time to walk from one end of the map to the other. Thankfully, the developers have installed ways to fast travel across the map.

 

The game will have 6 unique playable characters. Each will have a unique mount that they can ride to go across the map, quickly. Players will be able to attack from their special mounts, something many games do not allow. However, the most exciting thing is that one of the mounts players can ride will be a dragon. The full features of the dragon have yet to be shown off, though.

 

Sacred 2's world will evolve with the way the player plays the game. The player can choose to play the game as a good or evil character. The way they play will determine how they are received in different areas. However, some characters can only be good or evil. The Seraphim character is an angelic female elf character, and can only play the game as a good character. Conversely, the Inquisitor character is a corrupt high priest bent on power and will always be an evil character. In reverse TNA booking, the female characters are predisposed to be good characters and the male characters are predisposed to be evil. Again, players can change what their character turns out to be from their predisposition. As a player who has only played as female characters in Metroid and Portal, but tends to create good characters, it is not an issue.

 

The main story of the game can be finished in 15-25 hours if a player wants to only focus on the main quest. However, they will be missing the majority of the game. There will be over 100 hours of content, between the main quest and side quests in the final build of the game. It will feature online multiplayer in every version of the game. The game will have co-op play for the story mode and side quests, where players can seamlessly drop in and out seamlessly. It will also feature several online versus modes as player vie for loot. The developers are strongly considering post-release downloadable content that could keep players playing Sacred 2 for years. There is even talk of making downloadable content free for everyone on the PC and console versions of the game that could add hours and hours more content.

 

The game's character models and visual style have clearly been inspired by Blizzard's Diablo. The game will feature a top down third person view that players can zoom in and out on depending on the view they need of the map. However, this is where the game takes a big turn and makes itself very unique. Even though it will probably boast the largest world of any game this year and potentially more total gameplay time then any game shipping this year, the game will have full voice acting. This is my favorite feature of the game, not only will the game have voice acting, but when it launches they are going to have localised voice acting to multiple regions to ensure a successful world wide release. That means no matter where people buy Sacred 2, they will not have to turn on subtitles or read through pages of text. Many journalists at the press event where the most recent build of Sacred 2 was on display, assumed that was not possible with a game this large. The voice acting was not in place on the build I viewed. If Sacred 2 can deliver with quality voice acting this should be another strong multi-platinum release for the franchise.

 

There will be a follow up event for the media to look at the progress of Sacred 2 for the XBOX 360 and PS3 in September or October. Details are being worked out of how and when we can bring you a review of the PC version of the game. I will also be bringing you coverage of several of the other games that were on display at that event in the upcoming days. Thanks, to Mario Kroll, a great man, for inviting me to this event and being patient that this article has not come out sooner.