Risen - Review Flood #3

[Gorath]

Thanks, that's one I had already found.

 

[Konjad]

I suspect the porting was not very successful, though I have yet to try the XBox version myself.

 

[JonNik]

Ouch. And to think that they actually targeted the Xbox as a platform from the start
(hence the lower number of polygons in comparison to G3 and some other general
"corner cutting" in regards to gfx) …

I think they (PB) should consider to stop writing their own engines if they want to start
playing in the console ballpark…

 

[Anderson]

Ouch. And to think that they actually targeted the Xbox as a platform from the start [...]

I think they (PB) should consider to stop writing their own engines if they want to start playing in the console ballpark…

They need to do something different, that's for sure. Based on the reviews of the port, Risen has a terrible reputation in the 360 community at this point. I'd be surprised if it sold even marginally well. Then again, an equivalent disaster (Two Worlds) sold surprisingly well, so you never know.

 

[JDR13]

Viva PC!

 

[Gorath]

Does anyone of you have a statement or something similar indicating that PB wrote a single line of code for the XBox version? It was outsourced. We don't even know if it used the same engine.

 

[Anderson]

I think the buck probably has to stop with PB, since it's their game, but I'm not really interested in assigning blame. My frustration is that the game now has a reputation of poop, sales will be poor, this incident will probably hurt sales for the other European RPGs coming to the 360 (Divinity 2, Arcania, Venetica), and it will discourage other developers from bringing their RPGs to the 360. That annoys me. I wish they'd get their act together.

 

[Gorath]

Don't worry, the times of platform exclusives are almost over. Most games will come on multiple platforms. More often than not the XBox 360 will be the lead platform.

 

[aries100]

I think that Risen will sell well enouugh in Germany and in Europe for Piranha Bytes to be paid. The game is not as long and big as G3 were; thus PB does not as much money to come in before they're being paid.

As for the Atari comment, I briefly mistook PB for CDP. My apologies

For the record, I don't see anything wrong with the Xbox 360 graphics. (other than, in comparison to the pc visuals, there is no green layer and such on the Xbox 360). But then, graphics aren't everything to me as it might be for some on the xbox 360.
I would be very happy playing Risen on Xbox 360 with these visuals presented to me, but it might just be me

I'm not saying that all 360 owners are gwhat is known as 'graphics whores'; I just find it intriguing that so many reviews for the xbox 360 focus on the visual side of the game, not on the story, the gameplay, the dialogue, and the plot.

 

[Dhruin]

Bear in mind the X360 version has not been released in NA. Most players will have no knowledge of it at all -- the floods of reviews we have posted would be quite obscure for a typical NA gamer.

If the patches can get GameSpot, IGNSpy and their like to >7/10, I see no reason why it can't do modestly well in the NA market. Deep Silver doesn't have the marketing budget and the game is still too hardcore to have broad appeal but it should still find a nice niche.

 

[JonNik]

Does anyone of you have a statement or something similar indicating that PB wrote a single line of code for the XBox version? It was outsourced. We don't even know if it used the same engine.

You mean instead of porting someone wrote it from the ground up ?! I would find that
extremely hard to believe.

I know that the port was outsourced. The engine though was theirs and though I have
the utmost respect for them as game designers (G1 and 2 being all time favorites and
Risen expected to enter the hall of fame perhaps even at the top) as coders they are not exactly cutting edge.

Their engines are almost always disproportionally hard on the hardware and though
that may be a sideeffect of the large open ended world their games implement, that
should be taken into account when targeting such a resource limited platform as the
xbox360. The resource juggling necessary there would mean I guess a lot of technical
know how, experience and a huge amount of work.

I assume that such small studio like PB cannot go the way Bethesda went when
developing their multiplatform games (Oblivion used GameBryo and a bunch of other
middleware and they still took a 4-5 year dev. cycle and employed almost 100 people
staff at periods. FO3 used an evolution of the same tech).

So a multiplatform tested and established engine (that makes porting almost
superficial) should be the way to go for them…

Personally I only care about their continuing survival and their capacity to create High
quality PC games… I've learned to live with their buggy slow engines to get to
the great game beneath

 

[Dhruin]

I don't have sufficient knowledge on the subject but might it not be reasonable that an existing engine may not suit? For example, a staple of Gothic is a seamless world - indoors and out. Bethsoft doesn't do that.

Or perhaps the engine was designed with the X360 in mind but the outscource company was behind schedule and Deep Silver decided to release, anyway.

Too many possibilities without being able to just say "PB can't code".

 

[JonNik]

Oh I agree that may be the case. Regarding the specific requirements of their games
there may not be an Engine that fits Like a glove. There wasn't for Oblivion as I
pointed out because Beth had to do a lot of work too but they did it on existing proven
technology that they formed to their requirements and the same happened for Aurora
and the Witcher.

Also I doubt the usually miniscule "internal maps" of the Gothic games (I don't know
about Risen yet) would be a problem with Oblivion's engine. The internal locations in
Oblivion are larger and have a (jarringly) higher level of detail than the external (a
design choice I do not care for btw). I remember also than in G1 the Larger internal
maps were Loading zones and I was perfectly fine with that…

Anyway I never said that they can't code just that they cant optimize

Case in point: Looking at the Screens and vids of Risen and noting the lower polycount
and draw distance I was saying to myself that since I can play G3 maxed out at my
resolution of choise Risen should at least be playable with some compromises especially
since the Xbox was a target platform (hence the cutbacks and 1GB memory util target)
a slideshow is what I got instead… Not particularly encouraging…

 

[Anderson]

Bear in mind the X360 version has not been released in NA. Most players will have no knowledge of it at all — the floods of reviews we have posted would be quite obscure for a typical NA gamer.

If the patches can get GameSpot, IGNSpy and their like to >7/10, I see no reason why it can't do modestly well in the NA market. Deep Silver doesn't have the marketing budget and the game is still too hardcore to have broad appeal but it should still find a nice niche.

True. Two Worlds sold surprisingly well, despite reviews averaging in the mid 5's. There are a lot of 360 gamers who are hungry for good RPGs, so perhaps Risen will do okay after all. As you say, most Xbox gamers have no knowledge of Risen, much less of any negative reviews. So I'm probably exaggerating the impact. It's big news in my little corner of the Xbox world, but me and my RPG nut friends are a minority.

I hope they patch at least the framerate issues by the time it releases in North America. I can handle sub-par graphics, but constant framerate hitches really interfere with the immersion. I'm playing through Two Worlds right now, and every minute or so, the game stops to catch up to itself (and I don't mean a blip, I mean a good 5 seconds of streaming/buffering). No good.

 

[Gorath]

What I meant is the following:
If the port was outsourced to make sure PB doesn't have to bother much or at all with technical stuff they don't know much about, it's quite possible that Wizarbox used existing technology and modified it to make it look like Risen. As you might remember they also made the Arx Fatalis port, so it's not their first RPG.
Of course they could also have used PB's code base and convince it to run on the XBox. In that case PB would have had to acquire XBox knowledge to ensure the port remains technically possible.
It's also not sure how much budget was available for the port. But without the budget we cannot assess how good or bad Wizarbox's work was. In case of a low budget - meaning low priority of the port - one could even argue that not more than the current result could have been expected.
Nobody here can know this, and the details are certainly under wraps.

btw., does anybody remember which French studio got into the pissing contest with CDP last year over the failed Witcher port? That's a question, not a hint.

 

[Gorath]

Bear in mind the X360 version has not been released in NA. Most players will have no knowledge of it at all — the floods of reviews we have posted would be quite obscure for a typical NA gamer.

If the patches can get GameSpot, IGNSpy and their like to >7/10, I see no reason why it can't do modestly well in the NA market. Deep Silver doesn't have the marketing budget and the game is still too hardcore to have broad appeal but it should still find a nice niche.

My fear is that the purchasers for Walmart / Best Buy / GameStop will simply look at the usual review aggregators - as they always do - and then make their orders based on the average review score. AFAIK the guys making the deals for 90% of the NA market are not much more than a handful. If only one or two of them express doubt about a full price release for a game with a 60% average score, DS has a problem.

 

[JonNik]

@ Gorath: I agree I guess but if that is so then they messed up an opportunity to enter
the goldmine that is the xbox market on good terms and created a bad track record
from the start.

anyway about your question : Widescreen Games (french I believe).

 

[Gorath]

Thanks


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[wolfing]

looks like the average score is about 75-80

 

[Gorath]

For the XBox version?