ELEX II - Interview With Piranha Bytes

Farflame spotted an interview of Piranha Bytes by Game Pressure. Thanks!

Elex 2 Is The Biggest Game We Ever Made. Interview With Piranha Bytes

There's quite a treat coming for fans of Gothic and games by the Piranhas - Elex 2 - the sequel to the studio's latest IP. We've asked two of the devs, Bjorn and Jenny Pankratz of Piranha Bytes, about what it was like to develop a game like this.

Piranha Bytes’ games are quite popular among certain Western RPG fandoms, all thanks to the crude classic, Gothic, with which many a player back in the day discovered the genre. They only remaining trace of the former glory, however, is mostly the fact that the fandom is willing to shrug off more bugs and mistakes than people are generally willing to accept in AAA blockbusters. We just ignore stuff like clunky animations and weird behavior of characters, instead taking in the atmosphere, heroes, and the game world.

The following is a conversation with two main developers of Piranha Bytes – Bjorn and Jenniifer Pankratz – where we asked about their ideas about Elex 2: what did they like the most about making th game, what was the process, where does the signature Piranha style come from, and how is it possible that the game was rated T in Germany (at least 12 years old).

Dariusz Matusiak: What was the best thing in the first Elex game? What were you proud of the most and is it the same in Elex 2 or maybe it’s something different this time?

Bjorn Pankratz: I think it is always the team we are proud of. But when I think of our previous game, I think it is the fact, that we have achieved 95% of what we wanted to in it. Most of our ideas found their way to the game in the end. And it is the same with Elex 2, because the features we planned, i.e. the jetpack upgrades or the new combat system – we finished those things, so we are proud of that as well.

Jennifer Pankratz I also think that we are very proud of that we could show in Elex that we are able to do a really huge open world with this game as we had one big landscape – and yes – it will be similiar in Elex 2. And another thing we were really proud of was that we had some nice story twists, which is something we are also going to continue in the second part.

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