Sacred 2:News from Expo

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= Stepping Into Sacred 2: Fallen Angel Universe

=

http://i169.photobuc

ket.com/albums/u222/erialc_photo/SFA-GCEvent-1.jpg

During the

[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Games_Convention Games

Convention in Leipzig], the awaited

Sacred 2: Fallen Angel has

appeared fully. A version specifically conceived for

the multiplayer event organized by [http://Ascaron.com

Ascaron], simplified at most to show principally the

engine and the gameplay of the game, has been

accessible to some lucky guys. There's been quite a

bunch of people to be able to test this version, as

there was 16 of them every 10 minutes during the all

fair: few minutes of hacking & slashing monsters,

playing either the Seraphim, the [[Shadow

Warrior]], the Dryad, or even the High Elf,

all identical except for their look for the occasion,

and then the 16 players met in the arena to fight each

other. Meanwhile, in another hall of the Games

Convention, other visitors could assist to a quick

presentation of the Xbox 360 version of Sacred 2:

Fallen Angel.

Personally, after having participated to the

multiplayer event during the Business Day, I have been

lucky enough to see the PC version of Sacred 2: Fallen

Angel, shown to me by Jens Eisched, Marketing Manager,

and Torsten Meier, Public Relations Manager, who

answered as well a bunch of my questions as a Hack &

Slash fan and amateur, as well as player of the

original Sacred.


== 2,000 years ago, the Seraphim were already

ready to become heroines ==

http://i169.photobucket.com/albums/u222 /erialc_photo/artwork-sacred2-010.jpg

At first, there was the Creator, who created worlds

and populated them each with one unique intelligent

race for them to worship him. The Seraphim, and their

leaders the Archangels, were one of those. However,

one day, they decided to use the ethereal creative

energy to create their own world, Ancaria, and to

populate it with several races, giving them the

freedom of choosing their own fate. When the Creator

found out, instead of destroying Ancaria, he

banished the Seraphim on this world with the charge to

protect it. He would interfere only if the

Seraphim were not able to unite all the races.

But that was not meant to happen, and before long the

High Elves, favourite race of the Seraphim, started to

use the creative energy to their own benefit and rule

the world. Not every High Elf agreed with this plan,

and soon a civil war burst, costing lives of many

people and many Seraphims, and leading to the division

of the High Elves between the one trying to use the

creative energy to give Ancaria and its people their

lost greatness, and the one wanting to purge Ancaria

with a cleansing fire and then arise as uncontested

rulers. A second civil war was soon to be started...

2,000 years before Sacred 1's story, Sacred 2:

Fallen Angel brings the player to a time where the

creative energy is still active. Humans are yet the

servants and slaves of the High Elves, Dwarfs still

enjoy their recluse life, and the world of Ancaria

is far different and unknown of the events that will

occur in Sacred and Sacred Underworld. The player will

have to chose between the Path of the Light and the

Path of the Shadow, except when playing a Seraphim

who can only follow the Path of Light, or an

Inquisitor, who can only follow the Path of the

Shadows. This choice the player make at the beginning

of the campaign will affect the whole world and the

various NPCs he'll meet.

In addition to these two sides of the main campaign,

each proposing roughly 40h of game play to the user in

the first difficulty mode, Sacred 2: Fallen Angel

offers an incredible variety of secondary quests, with

overall over 800 quests for the player to fulfill.

A world full of diversity

http://i169.photobucket.com/albums/u222 /erialc_photo/screenshot-sacred2-035_tb.jpg

Sacred 2: Fallen Angel brings us to a very large as

well as very disparate world; 11 totally different

regions, from jungle to desert, from Mediterranean

climate to icy mountains, are then open to exploration

for the player. Each of these regions have their own

climatic environment, their own sounds and lights

effects, and fauna and flora as well as architecture

of the buildings adapted to the races populating them,

their social culture, and their technological

development. Furthermore, the world of Ancaria is made

of one single piece, and will appear to the player

through streaming. Thus, you will never have to wait

for the game to load an area, as even when you'll

enter a dungeon or a cave, the transition will be

completely natural and smooth, without any loading

time.

The world of Ancaria shown in Sacred 2: Fallen Angel

follows the rhythm of night and day, with a day/night

cycle every 50mn or so, and so do the numerous

inhabitants of the world. Depending of the time of day

or night, the NPCs inhabitants of the world will go

one of the 50 trade available for NPCs in Sacred 2:

Fallen Angel. Exploration of the world will be even

more diverse thanks to the advanced weather management

in Sacred 2: Fallen Angel; you'll happen to get

yourself into a sand storm, get lost in a deep fog,

being wet by the rain, frozen by the wind, and so on.

The world map itself is quite huge, as it is 30 to 40%

bigger than the one available to the player in Sacred.

To get on foot from the top left corner to the bottom

right corner, it will take you around 6h, if you don't

stop to do something else. But don't be afraid, there

will be as well some transport system, although it

won't be the classical portal system we had in

original Sacred and other games. If there will be

central locations akin to the actual portals, journeys

between them will no longer be instantaneous. Instead

in Sacred 2: Fallen Angel, travels between those

points will be done riding dragons or sailing on

boats.


New look and feel

http://i169.photobucket.com/albums/u222 /erialc_photo/screenshot-sacred2-045_tb.jpg

We must admit that the original Sacred was quite

old graphics wise when it was released over 3 years

ago in 2004. This can't be said of his big brother

Sacred 2: Fallen Angel. The graphics engine, entirely

developed in-house by [http://www.Ascaron.com

Ascaron], shows a really good graphics rendering.

Additionally, this graphics engine can do most

everything, from using any resolution (included the

very old ones), or disabling nearly any graphic

effects. Then a low end computer should be able to

still be able to run the game correctly with good

framerate, as long as it's using a lower resolution

and toggle off most graphic effects. Particularly, the

engine itself asks only for

DirectX9, but

people with DirectX 10 will benefit from it and get

better graphical effects. It goes the same for the

Ageia PhysX.

At the moment, the minimal required configuration is

estimated to a simple 1.6 GHz CPU, 512 MB of RAM, and

a true GeForce 4 with 128 MB of RAM. With such a

computer, as long as you use a low resolution and

toggle off all graphic effects, the game engine should

be able to provide around 100 FPS. We still don't know

yet which minimal resolutions and minimal graphic

effects will be used in the game itself, but Sacred 2:

Fallen Angel should run correctly and relatively old

computers anyway. Before we get our hopes too high

though, let's wait to actually try to run the game on

such a computer when the time of preview versions will

come, or simply the time of beta test, as a closed

beta test is planned for next October, and an open

beta test in January 2008.

Sacred 2: Fallen Angel will provide a completely free

camera, which will let the players change

independently the horizontal orientation of the

camera, the pitch, and the level of zoom. It is not

defined yet which levels of zoom will be proposed in

the final version, but it's likely that there will be

a large width of zoom available, allowing the player

to zoom closely to the character to admire the

details, or, for the perverts, the forms, and on the

other hand to get far away from the character to enjoy

more visibility.

Last but not least, the world map in Sacred 2: Fallen

Angel is no longer a 2D map like in Sacred, but will

allow us to view the relief of the regions of Ancaria

in 3D (note: however, we will always see the map from

above, with a fixed angle of view, but that wouldn't

have much of interest to be able to change this).

One of the main enhancements in Sacred 2: Fallen Angel

compared to his little brother is the shortcuts

management. While it was very limited in Sacred, with

most players using AutoHotKey scripts to improve the

game ergonomics, Sacred 2: Fallen Angel will feature a

completely customizable shortcuts system. And if the

system of weapons slots and combat arts slots is still

there, with however the combo slots being dissociated

of the combat arts slots, it should be possible to

assign a hotkey to place a combat art into the art bar

from the combat book.


The Seraphim and her new friends

http://i169.photobucket.com/albums/u222 /erialc_photo/screenshot-sacred2-x360-008_tb.png

From the character pool in Sacred 1, only the

Seraphim can be found in Sacred 2, 2,000 years

before. The five other characters are completely new,

and at the same time quite diverse. The first

characters to be announced to the public were the

Seraphim, of course, then the Shadow Warrior.

More recently, the High Elf joined her two

friends. During the Games Convention and the

multiplayer event, people could see the Dryad as

well, although we still don't know much about it,

unlike the other three. Lastly, the two other

characters have been announced to the press: the

Inquisitor, and the Temple Guardian. If we now

know the background history and part of the aptitudes

of the Seraphim, the Shadow Warrior and the

High Elf Adept, we still know very little about

the Dryad, the Inquisitor and the [[Temple

Guardian]].

The Seraphim is very similar to the one in Sacred 1:

fighter with a bunch of heavenly magic, she represents

the good itself in the world of Ancaria. The

Inquisitor is kind of her evil opposite. Fond of dark

magic, the dude only wears robes and uses twisted

hand-to-hand combat techniques. The Shadow Warrior

masters all forms of combat, from hand-to-hand to

powerful armed techniques, and, having been in contact

with the underworld in the past, can call on some of

his old comrades for help. The High Elf Adept is the

classical sorceress, well-versed in three powerful

magic disciplines, but she can nonetheless be an able

fighter when using her magic in conjunction with

hand-to-hand combat. The Dryad Scout will be the

character all fans of Sacred's Wood Elf will want

to play, as she's a very proficient archer, and a

master in the magic of Nature. She practices as well

some kind of voodoo, which she can use to harvest

shrunken heads from her enemies!

Let's now conclude this presentation of the 6

characters of Sacred 2: Fallen Angel with maybe the

most peculiar of those, which should be detailed to

the public later on: the Temple Guardian. This

character is an archaic cyborg with a jackal head,

able to alter his head and his arm. He is extremely

dangerous in hand-to-hand combat, and has mastered as

well the use of technological weapons. Due to the

nature of his own origin, he has mastered the powerful

T-Energy, and can use it to change his environment.

http://i169.photobucket.com/albums/u222 /erialc_photo/rendering-sacred2-hellhound_tb.jpg

Additionally, we'll find in Sacred 2: Fallen Angel the

horses which were already present in Sacred, some of

them being faster or more resilient. But the real

novelty here is that in Sacred 2: Fallen Angel, each

character class will have access to its own specific

mount: for example, the Shadow Warrior will be able to

mount a powerful Hellhound, while the Seraphim

will mount an agile Tiger. Furthermore, these

mounts will not only be for fast travelling around the

world: they will really affects the fights if you

fight mounted, giving you advantages and

disadvantages, each having their own, while in

original Sacred you could only use very few of your

combat arts while mounted, and there was not much

interest to fight while mounting a horse.

On character creation, the player will have the

ability to change some of its physical

characteristics, like the hair colour, and some of

those will be alterable further on in the game with

dies for example. The player will also have to choose

between 6 gods of Ancaria, three being evil gods, the

other three being good gods. The Seraphim and the

Inquisitor will only be able to choose among the three

gods sharing their alignment, while the other four

characters will be free to choose any of these 6

divinities. Each of these divinities will grant a

special powerful techniques to the character

worshipping them.


You're never really alone

In Sacred, the multiplayer component had been added

relatively late in development. As a consequence, the

singleplayer and multiplayer parts were distinct, and

you had to export your singleplayer character to go

play online, and then start again the campaign if you

wanted to keep using the character you played online.

For Sacred 2: Fallen Angel, Ascaron conceived the

multiplayer component right from the scratch, and the

singleplayer part is in fact a particularity of the

multiplayer part: when playing singleplayer, you're in

fact playing multiplayer with only one character. On

the technical side, this means that even when playing

singleplayer, the game will use client-server

mechanisms. On the practical side for the user, this

means at any time he will be able to call a friend to

help him in his quest, much like in Titan Quest, or be

able to go play online in Free mode, and then go back

to where he was in the campaign.

http://i169.photobucket.com/albums/u222 /erialc_photo/SFA-GCEvent-Arena_tb.jpg

Sacred 2: Fallen Angel offers, like his little

brother, various multiplayer modes. First, we will be

able to play LAN, Open Multiplayer, or Closed

Multiplayer. In each of these multiplayer modes, we

will then have the choice between several sub-modes:

campaign, free, PVP, and of course we will still be

able to play Hardcore. Some people will surely notice

that we will be able to play in campaign mode on

closed servers as well, while this mode had been

removed from closed servers on Sacred 1 because of the

dupe exploits coming with it. Exploiting the campaign

mode to dupe will no longer be possible in Sacred 2:

Fallen Angel, thanks to a small difference: on closed

servers in campaign mode, it won't be possible to save

and load games. Of course it means it will be really

difficult to actually complete a campaign on the

closed servers, but it's still better than not being

able to play the campaign at all, or open the closed

servers to massive dupe exploits. As for the campaign,

as we could have guessed, everybody in the game will

have to do the same campaign, either good or evil,

which means that Seraphims and Inquisitors won't be

able to play campaign together. Of course, as the main

quest is not in the Free mode, any class will be able

to the other in this mode.

As PVP was only in specific games in Sacred, we could

see that not that many people used this possibility.

In Sacred 2: Fallen Angel, there will be no need of a

specific game to fight each other, as there will be

PVP Arenas in the world of Ancaria, allowing players

to fight each other one and one or in group, up to 5

vs 5!

Sacred 2: Fallen Angel will offer a trading system,

although we don't know yet how it will be done: it

could be through a trader NPC, or through a direct

trade interface, or even both. Regarding the

possibility of exchanging items between characters on

the same account (or characters on the same computer),

there's nothing sure here as well. Maybe will there be

a shared stash, maybe not, we will have to wait until

later to know this. But what is sure is that Sacred 2:

Fallen Angel will improve the contacts between players

on the servers, with a more developed buddylist,

accessible through a GUI rather than through command

line. Although no official information has leaked

about it, it might as well include additional features

like a guild management, but then again we'll need to

wait for more informations. After all, the very

anticipated Sacred 2: Fallen Angel is still nearly 9

months away from release.

In a multiplayer group, XP and loot management will be

similar to the one of the first Sacred, both

increasing with the number of people in the group.

Levelling speed is still being tweaked, but all in

all, this should be again similar to Sacred's system.

To close up on the multiplayer system, one question is

asked, or has been, by a large chunk of Sacred's

community: Will the accounts still be linked to the CD

Key? Will we still need to type in our CD Key when

logging in? Unfortunately, there's still no answer to

this question, the matter being still worked on at

Ascaron.

The perfect setup to slay monsters

Sacred had few massive bosses, apart from the dragons

we would slay all across Ancaria. For Sacred 2: Fallen

Angel, Ascaron decided to introduce massive bosses who

will ask to think about strategy to defeat them. The

player will be as well confronted to frequent

mini-bosses, met randomly across the world of Ancaria.

But this focus on the need of strategy won't stop to

the bosses and mini-bosses; indeed, each group of mobs

will have a leader, and when this leader will be

slain, the group will retreat and gather, and define

their new leader. But the most interesting feature is

that the group strategy will depend on the group

leader abilities: for example, if the group leader

happens to be a magic user, then the monsters may

regroup in front of him to protect him, or, if it is a

melee fighter, they might try to cast protective

spells on him.

http://i169.photobucket.com/albums/u222 /erialc_photo/screenshot-sacred2-044_tb.jpg

To face such monsters, we need equipment, and we will

have quite a large choice: helms, body armours,

shoulder armours, arm armours, gloves, leg armours,

boots, as well as amulets and rings, the number of

which is still not yet defined. And for the Seraphim

only, there will be wings as well. Like the first

Sacred, Sacred 2: Fallen Angel will bring its lot of

unique items and sets, but Sacred 2: Fallen Angel will

go further, and implement a crafting system, allowing

the player to modify or even create new items. That's

however all we know about this crafting system at the

moment. A part of the Sacred community hope there

would be one day some modding tools for Sacred, and of

course that there will be some in Sacred 2: Fallen

Angel. Once again, there is nothing much to see here

at the moment, but it has been said possible there

would be such modding tools added in the future,

although most likely not for the release of the game.

Time will tell.

Now, what pleasure would it be to slay monsters again

and again, if we didn't have powerful combat arts to

do so? Like Sacred, Sacred 2: Fallen Angel will offer

combat arts and skills. Combat arts will be divided

into three categories for each character, and are on

their own already pretty much diverse and will allow

for a huge number of different builds for each class.

Those specificities will be of much importance when

fighting other players in the arena, as it will be

needed to careful think about which art to use and

when and how to counteract the arts of the opponents.

And here, Sacred 2: Fallen Angel innovates, as each

and every combat art will be customizable by the

player during his progression. For example, the player

will be able to make the Jump Attack of the Shadow

Warrior a short jump with area damage attack, or on

the opposite a long jump but less powerful, to go

straight at the enemy caster or archer, or even to fly

away from the combat faster in case of troubles.

PC, or Xbox 360?

http://i169.photobucket.com/albums/u222 /erialc_photo/screenshot-sacred2-x360-020_tb.png

Sacred 2: Fallen Angel will be released on both PC

with Windows and Xbox 360. What shall we expect from

these two different versions? Graphics wise, they will

be more or less the same, with maybe a slight

advantage to the Xbox 260. Of course, with the Xbox

360, no way you could control the character with a

mouse and a keyboard, which will have a noteworthy

impact on controls. Control of the character will then

be done with the analogical stick, and the player will

mash the buttons of the pad instead of the buttons of

his mouse. The use of skills and combos will

apparently be managed by keeping pressed a trigger.

All in all, those controls seem very similar to the

controls in the few other games of the genre available

on gaming consoles.

http://i169.photobucket.com/albums/u222 /erialc_photo/SFA-Xbox360Presentation_tb.jpg

On several points however, the PC version will be

better than the Xbox 360 version. Indeed, while with

the Xbox 360 you will only be able to play up to 4

people in the same game, the PC version will allow to

play up to 16 in the same game, just like in Sacred.

The PC version will offer higher resolutions as well,

as long as you use a display supporting them, and have

a computer powerful enough to manage it, and will

offer much more graphical settings to adapt the game

to the computer running it. Meanwhile, due to the

difficulty of editing characters on an Xbox 360, there

will be no difference between closed and open

multiplayer on the Xbox 360

For those who still wonder at this point of the

article, it won't be possible to play in the same game

with a player on Xbox 360 and another on a PC, and it

won't be possible either to transfer a character from

an Xbox 360 to a PC or from a PC to an Xbox 360.

However, an Xbox 360 player will be able to bring his

character with him to play over at a friend, and on a

single Xbox 360, two players will be able to play on

the same screen, while joining two other people

through Xbox Live.

Thanks

I would like to thank Stefan Hinz (Manager Online

Marketing), Jens Eishched (Marketing Manager), Torsten

Meier (Public Relations Manager), and Markus

“PowerPyx” Kobbe (Moderator on the German forums) for

all the informations they gave me on Sacred 2, as well

as for the presentation of the PC version of the game

and the time they spent answering my questions.

Reference:Gork

[http://http://darkmatters.org/forums/index.php?showto

pic=5676 Stepping Into Sacred 2: Fallen Angel

Universe, A complete preview of Sacred 2: Fallen Angel

after the GC2007] and in French:

[http://www.sacred-fr.com/index.php?txt=art_comment&id

art=306 Dans l'univers de Sacred 2: Fallen Angel ]