birne

Gameplay footage coming soon! Also there are a few new gameplay screenshots ... (http://kotaku.com/http-www-youtube-com-watch-v-8yu0xuntmvy-sacred-3-bri-1526026859) What they did change are the AI buddies ... they're gone.

S3 will not be released in 2013, of course http://forum.deepsilver.com/forum/showthread.php/68438-Sacred-3-end-of-year-update The big question here, why not?, is a little more complicated I guess. Since there is absolutely nothing of news since the first previews, there is nothing we can do but speculating. Which, to be honest, leads us nowhere right now ...

Ok, I'll have to doublepost here :S I just came across a link to a Polygon article about Ride to Hell: Retribution. A game published by DeepSilver just recently and a game recieving extremely bad reviews. Metascore of 20 / 100, userscores between 0.9 and 1.6 ... Look it up via youtube, it's kinda hilarious. Anyway, the article is from end of May, before the game was released and so before those reviews came out. In the article DS creative director Guido Eickmeyer gives a little insight into what DS is trying to do with its small franchises. And finally I'm actually a little stunned by this. What I read and heard about Sacred 3 and its direction I always thought they needed and wanted to appeal to more than just the old audience because from their point of view there wasn't much left anyway. But reading this ... they were actually trying to aim Sacred 3 at its core audience? Wow ...

It's also a good example for a case where information or in that matter distribution via proxy leads to false impressions.

You're missing my point by an inch It's not about the amount of fans overall. It's the number of people that actually saw the game. Not screenshots, not previews on gaming sites or in magazines. I'm talking about first hand (hands-off) footage of the game. Well ... no. I don't know how many copies of Sacred / Underworld / 2 / Ice&Blood were sold, maybe it were 2 mio maybe less. Whatever it is that number is not of importance right now. Because how many of those 2 mio are "fans" really carring for the franchise? A mere fraction of that. I can't speak for the SIF but the german board has an active user count of 183. Meaning in the last 30 days 183 different users logged into their accounts. I doubt the numbers at SIF are much higher. Not everyone visiting the forums logs in just to check out if there are news. Right now 70 Users are reading the german forums. Minus some search engine bots, let's just say there are 60 people. And this is were actual calculation stops. You can't go on from here without a huge amount of speculation up to a point where it's just geussing. I don't know whether, tomorrow at the same time, if there are again 60 people, those are the same or others ... and so on. I'll ask around to get some google analytics data but even then ... Again, as I said above, the "us" was not referencing every fan ... but just those who actually saw Sacred 3. I get that. I do ... But there are some things to consider: Back in the day when Ascaron was still around we were talking to the developers. Now we're trying to talk to a publisher. That is a huge difference. Additionally, Ascaron was small. DS might not be big, but bigger than Ascaron nonetheless. Ascaron didn't so much care about PR and such on the forums. DS has soem kind of masterplan and sticks with it. Although I don't like that I can at least understand their motivation. edit: As I see this is an emotional topic and even I don't like to argue in DS' favor because I actually don't like some to most of their decision either, maybe we should give this thread a rest? All we can do right now is speculating anyway. Which leads to nothing but high blood pressure. After all we'll have to wait and see what's ahead of us. Maybe there's news at gamescom ... I just don't see any good coming from just speculating and getting worked up about it

Afaik the "us" is very limited right now. Some press at gc and some visitors of PAX east last year. That's it. And there were not few sites / magezines providing false information. So, DS has shown "us" next to nothing. Screenshots and some second hand info via press. Plus some interviews with producers. What I'm saying: I've seen the presentation at gc12 and even I don't think that is enough to judge the game just yet. Yes, I've wrote in my preview that it doesn't "look" like much of a Sacred game. But I wouldn't go so far to just say it's something like Street Fighter. We know so little about so many aspects of the game that judging it right now isn't worth the bytes. Being sceptical about it, yes, criticising DS for not communicating, yes, saying what we don't like of what little we know, yes. But dumping it before further information?

I should visit more frequently ... The threads were moved to the archives after finishing ... german: http://forum.deepsilver.com/forum/showthread.php/45298-Aufruf-Wünsche-für-Sacred-3 english: http://forum.deepsilver.com/forum/showthread.php/45297-Suggestions-and-Wishes-for-Sacred-3 I'll look into it For the open world: I don't know any facts so take this with a grain of salt ... I can aimagine some reasons for the lack of open world. One might be the engine. Keen already had an engine ready for development that they developed on their own. Since Keen has had little to none experience with large desktop development the engine might just not be able to handle an open world. Another cause might be the difficulty an open world brings to development. You have to fill the world with life. Something Ascaron struggled with as well ... And as I've said before I think one of the key goals to development for DS and Keen was a budget not suddenly exploding. An open world is something that can blow up pretty quickly. I think this is something DS had in mind. They just came to another conclusion. (whether they are right or not is up for debate ...) The problem imho is the obsession of PR and that lot with numbers and just numbers. How many likes did we get in the last week? How many people are talking about us? How can we increase that? That doesn't take into account the quality of those numbers. Just by looking at the numbers of visitors on the forums and so on you could conclude that there was not much left of the community. So, DS might have thought, well, there is hardly anybody left to "please", let's do something else. Afaik Citadel was aimed to lead some new players not knowing Sacred to the franchise. That didn't work out ... So in conclusion I don't think DS forgot about fans. They just underestimated them. The numbers of them. The quality ... About replayability: Different paths within a level, different solutions to those ecounters, paths you can opnly take if you have a specific combat art equipped and so on. How well that works remains unknown untill we get a hands-on experience but just from the sound of it ... I can see replayabilty there. It was / is. No official word about any change there. Personally I highly doubt it will be released this year. For various reasons ... DS recently bought the Saints Row franchise and its developer Volition. That is the only development studio currently owned by DS. There was a studio in Vienna before but it was closed due to economic reasons a few years ago. But: It's not like DS hasn't a word in the development. Creative Producers and such from DS are involed in the development of Sacred 3 as well. It's not just Keen games on their own. A few former devs are working on it. Or were working on it. I don't know what the current count is but there were at least three I know of. I don't think Birne is underestimating how INVESTED people have become to the Sacred series. Without a doubt, almost no one will argue that they loved the games when they played them and would love to see similar (and better) versions and sequels come out. There's certainly a lot of heart there from those who play. What I think Birne is getting at is the AMOUNT of people who are invested. I agree with him on this point here. Earlier you said that DarkMatters has about 27-30 thousand members. I'd wager about 2,000 of them come from something completely unrelated to Sacred (guild wars, Ogame, etc.). And even saying that maybe Clan DA has the same (doubtful because we are a lot of duplicates over there), and then the SIF, you're only looking at somewhere around 100,000 caring players. I'm sorry, but heart can only carry you so far with a triple 'A' publisher and the economy. Am I being pessimistic? Yes. But I am being pessimistic because the facts scare me. Yup ... I was only looking at numbers there. I know how invested people are in the Sacred games. I'm one of them Estimating numbers here is difficult. Since we don't know at how many the game is aimed at and how many copies they need to sell before breaking even it's not really something we can talk about without huge speculation. I agree with you that you have to take in account what the hardcore fans want to use them as the word spreaders. But you still need to please enough of the none harcore fans to sell the game to enough people. Finding the right mix there is the difficult part. I'll try to get the comparison between the threads and what I know about Sacred 3 up quickly ...

No. They could take the map and rebuild it in another engine. But I don't think thy could just take the Sacred 2 engine. Again, those tools and servers are absolutely vital for working with the engine. This is a custom engine after all. There are no standards you can just attach to. Those tools were written and developed by Studio 2. Plus, even if they had those tools and servers, they had no idea how the engine works. They'd need to analyse and learn it, which consumes a lot of time. That's still up for debate. Since it's only semantics I'll just leave it there You'd end up with hundreds of opinions. Contradicting opinions. And even those which are not wouldn't make a good game just tossed together. You need to have a vision, you need to have art direction and so on ... It's not just "let's look at what they want and make that happen". You need to choose from so many options ... And this is not even taking in account what the developers want to do. I see your point from a player's perspective wanting the developers to be mere servants to the demands of the fans. But that's not how games development works. Yes, developers should get opinions from the players, look at the legacy of the game. But let the players dictate the new game? No. Until what point? It's not like you can just change the direction the game is headed middevelopment just because there was a good idea on the forums. You have to make decisions early on in development and stick with them (mostly). Which brings me to ... did someone actually look at the thread in the official forums at DS where they asked for ideas? Yes, I know there are tons of threads around other forums about that but for some legal reasons they couldn't use that (their statement). So did somebody check that list and actually compared tht list to what we've seen so far? I didn't ... but maybe I should and come back with some analysis. True. Sadly ... I can't say too much of anything because NDA and such, so you just have to believe me that I'm constantly trying to hammer "COMMUNICATION" into the heads of those involved with community and PR over at DS :/

I actually don't think so. They have the rights to the brand Sacred and its assets. But I wouldn't be so sure about the code itself. They could redo the map and everything from Sacred 2 though ... Again, I'm not that sure about this. Ice & Blood was done by Studio2. The patch was done by one or two former Studio2 employees. I don't know how they did it, but they did not have the server and tool infrastructure Studio2 had while developing the game. And how many hardcore players would that be? Not nearly enough to pay for the development ... "Failure" in a financial manner. Yes, it wasn't only because Sacred2 sold poor, it was mainly because it was just too expensive. That is your point of view and I can see what you mean. But that's not the only truth. Evolve might have been a poor choice of words, but I still stand by what I meant: You can't redo just what you've done before. You have to take it further. Whatever that means is up to the producers and developers. Whether you or the audience agree with them in the end is another story. Again, this is your opinion. And I know it is shared by the majority of the old Sacred fans. But then again, how much of them are left? It's common knowledge that on the internet those with a negative opinion are the loudest which often leads to the impression of a majority against the thing in question. Whether this is really the case is hard to determine. But it might not be that easy just by looking at the internet. I don't want to argue so much in favor of the Sacred 3 we've seen and read about although one could argue I'm playing the devil's advocate in this case. Because introducing new franchises is always more dificult, expensive and risky. Sacred is at least a known name. Plus, it's still in Ancaria and so on ... Doing what they want might be easy, getting to know what "they" want is not. Even figuring out who "they" are is a scientific field on its own. Doing what the hardcore fans want might alienate the casual players and vice versa. If this was so easy, don't you think every developer with a right mind would do what "the players" want? But they don't. Because it's extremly hard to tell what is the right mix between getting old fans on board and open it up for everybody else. The only way to do what the hardcore fans want is to develop a game that fits axactly in its niche ... and nowhere else. You don't make profit with those games if you're bigger than a little indie studio. What fan base? I was there when Sacred 2 was released, I knew the (german) fan base when Sacred2 was released. Most of the people active on the forums after the release were not those, who hung around for years before. Nope ... Those most active were those drawn to the forums by the new Sacred 2. Yes, most likely there won't be much more of the old fans around. When they don't like the new game, they're going to search something new. But there will be new users and players. If that new community will be bigger than the old one is something that might be argued about. And even I think it's going to be smaller ... for various reasons. So again ... I didn't like what I saw in 2012. And I'd really like to see that changed to something more "sacred". But I also know it is not that easy. It's impossible to make everybody happy. You need to find the mix. We agree on Sacred 3 not beeing the right mix. So, please, don't take this post too personal or anything. I just want to put things in perspective from my point of view which might be a little more moderate than that from a hardcore fan. (which does not mean I'm not a fan, I played Sacred1 1.0 ... I'm just used to balance my opinion and the knowledge about the stuff.)

Well ... it's not that easy (with the source code). Sacred 1 had and has nothing to do with DS. But that's too old anyway ... Even if DS managed to find a hard drive with "the code" on it, they couldn't do much with it. To decompile and analyse it, it's required to have a whole bunch of tools and servers running those tools. All of which died with Ascaron and Studio 2. There are however some things they could look at, just like the CM Patch guys do, but not more. Also, I don't think a game mirroring Sacred 2 would be that succesfull. You need to evolve the genre. Many players were alienated by Diablo and sort of made the ARPG genre a little harder for everybody else. (At least that's what the DS producers told me at gc 2012 when we were given the Sacred 3 presentation.) As for the lack of news ... hard to tell what's going on. I don't think we'll see extremely big differences between the hands-off preview version from 2012 and what it might look like whenever it resurfaces. Simply because it's pretty expensive to start nearly again from scratch when you're already 2 or 3 years into development. I personally don't think DS planned to make a huge amount of money with Sacred 3 anyway after the "failure" of Sacred 2. Without digging it up again, Sacred 2 was way too expensive to be profitable, so DS' first aim needed to be a development without exploding costs. But going back to the drawing board would mean exactly that. There might be some smaller changes to some features we've criticised but I really don't think that's going to be something major like an open world ...

Remember these screenshots are very early footage of the game. I don't know what it will look like in the end but I wouldn't lose all hope for the art design just now

DS actually is at E3, but shows Saints Row IV mainly, I guess. No news on Sacred3 so far :/ But, well, do the math. We haven't heard anything about the game in almost a year. If they still want to release it this year they'd better be beta testing right now. Since we didn't hear anything about that - which imho would be something noteworthy PR-wise - I doubt they are. We'll see whether we're going to have another look at it at gamescom this year, but if they do not show Sacred3 there ... Bear in mind though that I'm just speculating here!

As I have said before, Sacred 3 looks like "Lara Croft and the Guardian of Light".

That was the absolute first thing I said during the presentation at gamescom and afterwards while talking to the producers. "It looks like Lara Croft and the Guardian of Light ..."

Well, at least the camera is oldschool It's like it was with Sacred1 and I'm actually okay with that. Imho it helps keeping track of everything easier and to not lose focus on enemies or yoruself during action driven fights.

Because there are a lot of previews out there, that are ... let's say at least not necessarily accurate or representative, Maurice has assembled a list with hard facts: http://forum.deepsilver.com/forum/showthread.php/67357-Sacred-3-previews-thread?p=551763#post551763

I might need to get into that a little: The fights in Sacred3 are designed to be more tactical and direct. Having only 2 CAs available at a time makes it necessary to think ahead before a mission. Some CAs might work perfect for some creeps but fail when confronted with others. Having the ability to just switch CAs like it was in Sacred 1 or 2 enables the player to just correct these disadvantages. I guess that is what the producers meant. You have to think ahead and if you thought wrong, you can't just - overpowered by being able to switch CAs - kill them easily anyway. So while being more powerfull than the monsters around, you still can't just go on every mission without taking at least a little time in between. Plus, there are different ways to each mission which might require different CAs to be completetd. As for the PS3 as lead. I think you're right. The PC will suffer from this way of developing. It's just a matter of how much ...

Gogo asked whether I could translate one of the german previews. Because I didn't know whether they were okay with just copying and translating their work, we decided to go with my own preview, which I wrote for the RAD Community (http://rad-community.org). I had the opporunity, along with some other folks of the community, to get to see one of the presentations of the game behind closed doors at gamescom. Dark, from the GSF / DS forums, who was also there for the presentation, did most of the translation, so credit goes to him as well Beware, though, wall of text ahead! Enjoy ... --- GamesCom. Thursday, 6pm local time. In a few moments, we will be some of the first to see Sacred 3 in action. The long awaited, desired (and, in some cases, thought dead) sequel to the Sacred series of video games. There's no business like ... video games business As arranged with Kerstin Brüggemeier (DeepSilver's German "Online Communication", and thus, more or less, our CM), we arrived punctual at the DeepSilver booth in the business area. In stark contrast to the general bigger-louder-more-colorful booths in the entertainment area, booths in the business area are all white, silent, closed doors. This is where business is made. Inside, a lounge was waiting for us. At noon, delicious sandwiches were waiting for hungry businessmen, and cold drinks are available all day long. A relaxed and welcoming atmosphere, compared to the stressful and crowdy rest of the convention. But we are not here to rest, we are here to get information. Aside from us (moderators from the German S1/2 forums), there were two more mods from the DeepSilver forums, as well as two people from the Sacred Legends community. And another old face who opened the door to the presentation room: Sebastion "Buddy" Fleer. Old friends Buddy, who worked for Ascaron/Studio II, and was already responsible for Sacred 2, is now a producer for DeepSilver. The other two people in the room are Alex Toplansky, Creative Producer, and Prachya "Isaac" Prakhen, Senior Creative Producer. All three are working on Sacred Citadel and Sacred 3. Parakhen was a Creative Producer on Sacred2 as well. Then the presentation starts, Sacred Citadel is shown. Since it's the same version that could also be played in the entertainment area, and we have done so thorougly, it's nothing new. It seems to be a nice way of spending time, but nothing we haven't seen before. After that, it gets interesting. The big screen changes to a PS3 menu. Toplansky, who leads the presentation, explaines to us that the PS3 is the lead plattform. The reasons for this decision are mainly the difficulty of programming for the Cell processor, and the (nowadays) lackluster hardware. This way, by having the hardest plattform to develop for as lead, a better quality can be assured for other plattforms. However, we still have to see how this decision will influence the PC version concerning graphics and controls. They promised us that they are still working on the PC controls. Changes While Toplansky is talking about the game, Parakhen and Buddy demonstrate it. The known characters for now are a mighty Safiri-Warrior, who also plays a pivotal role as a player character in Sacred Citadel, and the Ancarian Lancer. The camera is isometric, but at certain points of interest zooms in to highlight the background, or your next goal, etc. There seems to be no manual control as in Sacred 2, though. Other things have changed, too. Ancaria is now home to many different cultures and races, such as the previously mentioned Safiri tribe. They are a conglomeration of pirates, seafarers, and merchants who revere the sun and gather their powers from it. These different cultures lead to disputes between each other, but there is something to unite them: The Ashen Wars, lead by the Ashen empire against everybody else. The world itself has changed in the 1000 years since Sacred 1/Underworld, too. According to Toplansky, there will still be recognisable places (such as the ruins of Braverock castle) that will be visited throughout the game. In the course of the level, Buddy and Parakhen slay through hordes of groups of smaller enemies, smart fiends that try to use their shield strategically (being only able to be damaged from behind), and Grimmoc shamans that buff everything that is out to kill you. Each fight has its own little strategic value, and button mashing often isn't the best option. These fights also go to show how much emphasis Sacred 3 puts on coop. While one player distracts the groups of enemies, the other may run around them and attack their (weaker protected) back side. The battle system, as far as we cam tell, is more direct than before. Position is important, parts of the world can be used as traps to hurt enemies or to hide from projectiles/push an enemy group back into a choke point to fight them one by one. It is heavy on lots of flashy action, which is not a bad thing. The level design is nice to look at and constructed to boost the replay value. Each mission has multiple paths how it can be solved. These paths, according to Toplansky, don't only differ in which way you're going, but also in enemies and loot. Some paths are filled with small hordes of enemies, while others may lead to a big boss fight or a fun-to-watch blender trap. Not all that glitters is Sacred This already shows some very fundamental changes in what defines Sacred. There is no open world anymore. The "world" and the story are divided into small segments, which are completed in missions. The missions can be solved in different ways, but aside from this branching, the way is still somewhat straightforward. Gone with the big, open world is also a noticable part of playing together; Only 4 people may be in the same game. Some missions require two or more players, and if you don't have enough friends, you will get AI companies to be able to still proceed. It is unknown if/how much you can control the AI, how many mission will require them, or how many AI companions you will get if you don't have a full game already. Buddy and Parakhen continue slaying hordes of enemies. The lancer uses a spell to knock over the big grimmocs, after which the warrior unleashes a jump attack, landing with the blade of his mighty axe in the fallen grimmoc. All in all, it looks very satisfying. The presentation already gives a good impression of Sacred 3's graphical capability. The animations are fluid, and the effects are nice to watch and fitting for a Hack'n'Slay. The level is designed with a special care for the fine details, and everything that can influence the battle has benn well designed. It was not long before we reached the end of the presentation. Another indicator that the game will make time go by quite fast. At the end of the mission, there is a breakdown of player success - most actions within the mission are rewarded with points, and each player can compare their achieved rank with that of their friends. Extra points are rewarded for coop actions. Picked up loot can be evalueted, equipped or sold in the places called hubs, before/after every mission. It's not possible to do so while on a mission - the developers think that it would be too distracting from the essential, which is slaying lots of things with style. The same goes for Combat Arts - you cannot change them in missions, you can only pick two of your CAs beforehand. The reason for this strongly limited customization is, according to the producers, to keep the player from feeling overpowered. Conclusion Sacred 3 looks nice, seems to be enjoyable to play, and will bring many gamers joy. But the legacy of its predecessors is mostly ignored and can only be seen in bits and pieces here and there. Most things that made a Sacred a Sacred game have changed for Sacred 3. It is still a Hack'n'Slay, but it will not fit the expectations of old fans. Too heavy is the lack of an open world, the limited multiplayer, the mutilated character skill customization, etc. Sacred 3 deserves a fair chance. But it will have a hard time convincing people that it is indeed a Sacred game, rather than just a random game with the name and the story slapped on. It is still up in the air how the opinions about the game will change in the course of the future. There are still some big questions (sometimes intentionally) left open: How will character development work, which will be the other available characters, how will the MP work regarding open and/or closed net, and, of course: Will there be a playable Seraphim character?

Afaik it happens periodically at the DeepSilver booth on 6th floor. I wouldn't expect that much, though, it's the same that was shown behind closed doors at gamescom and it's the same ign and the german magazine saw.

English Preview @ IGN: http://www.ign.com/articles/2012/08/29/sacred-3-hack-and-slash-co-op-whether-you-like-it-or-not

It is not the same engine as Sacred2, as far as I know. The game itself is 3D, but it seems to me, that you have to play in that standard isometric view.

Oh, well ... Neither the novel nor the radio play ist about Sacred3. The radio play seems to be "The Shadow Warrior" (german "Der Schattenkrieger"), a play telling a story prior to Sacred2. It's actually really well done and I liked listening to it. It's based on the novel with the same name by A.D. Portland. As far as I know, there is no english version of this play. The novel ... well, from the little picture on the cover my best guess is: it's the first Sacred novel "Chronicle of Ancaria - Angel's Blood" (german "Die Chronik von Ancaria - Engelsblut") by Steve Whitton. I think there is also no english version of this available :/ As for Sacred3: I recommend keeping an eye on ign.com as well

The game is scheduled for 2013, so there must be something But, dont forget: The game ist just shown! That tells nothing about the state or version of the game. Alpha versions can be shown, too. There has not yet been a beta test ...

Gamasutra has just released an interesting piece on Southend Interactive and Citadel: http://www.gamasutra.com/view/news/176502/Never_doing_the_same_genre_twice_with_Southend_Interactive.php

Well, as this is my first post I didn't want it to be a critique, but it will be. No doubt the international SacredWiki contains a tremendous amount of information about the game, which is quite impressive. But there is always more to think of when giving all information. In the article about Visperish Disease (http://www.sacredwiki.org/index.php5/Sacred_2:Viperish_Disease) it's stated that a big exploit works in version 2.34. So far, so good. But why on earth explains this article the exact way to reproduce it?! There are enough players on the gameservers using this exploit to race up the Sacred2 ladder. Why would you support that? Yes, I read the little sentence at the end of the article which says "oh please, don't use this information provided to cheat your way up to the ladder top". But - cherished your believe in honesty - that will not stop people using it. To be straightforward ... I don't think you want any more players using this exploit, so I think in this case, that article realy should get lost of this exploit information. I have no problem with giving information about the fact that there IS an exploit, but explaining how it works ... well ... a real no go from my point of view. Best regards, birne Edited by gogoblender: Changed Visperish Disease to Viperish Disease