GB Feature: Drakensang Content Overload
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The setting of The Dark Eye, the continent of Aventuria on the world of Ethra, is an old one, having been enriched for nearly 25 years with added modules, world lore books, and novels. There's a lot to pick and choose from, but before it can appeal to us, the consumer, there's a bit of a mental barrier to cross.Check back over the next few weeks as our walkthrough and companion pages are expanded.
Aventuria is not the recognizable standard high-fantasy fare, though it is deceptively close to it, and it is diametrically opposed to the currently popular (dark gritty fantasy) as visualized in The Witcher or Dragon Age: Origins. Instead, it is best described as (whimsical), a kind of mix of the standard high-fantasy settings as known from The Lord of the Rings and a more ebullient approach, close to fairy tales.
This is not the same thing as approaching everything with a sense of comedy and dismissive disinterest. TDE as a setting and Drakensang in itself have plenty of darker subplots and distinctly human motives of folly and evil, but it will easily come out of left field to approach a topic like murder or political scheming with a kind of light-hearted step, sometimes crossing the boundary and joking about it, which can be a bit jarring. One can criticize this approach wholesale, and if you're more purely into (dark 'n gritty), it will obviously not appeal to you. If you do take in the setting and it clicks with you, you can approach it with a new, if critical eye. Because while this setting might sound like a piece of cake to get through, it isn't. Beyond having to juggle a lot of setting details and canon as a designer, you have to constantly balance on the thin line of being whimsical or just being ridiculous, and have to ensure that your approach is consistent as not to jolt the player from embracing the game's world.
Does Radon Labs do this well? Yes, for the most part. There are a few moments in Drakensang that feel lightly out of place as you are faced with rather dramatic characters and situations (the first moments in Moorbridge marches, the elf in Tallon), but they are not so dramatic that they ruin the overall feel. NPCs remain identifiable individuals through the use of delightfully recognizable archetypes, without falling straight into the stereotypical, while the story design approach outside of the main quest has a fitting light-hearted approach for the vast majority of situations.
