Former Sacred Devs Reveal Unbended, Kickstarter Campaign Coming
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Having realized that calling their upcoming action RPG "Unsacred" probably wasn't the best idea from a legal standpoint, the former developers from Ascaron Entertainment have now revealed Unbended, a new fantasy action RPG that will apparently be seeing a Kickstarter campaign in the not-too-distant future. Most of the website is in German, but there's a summary in English and two interviews already available on Sacred Legends and Niche Gamer. Quotes from all three pages are below:
What is UNBENDED?
UNBENDED is going to be a classic Action RPG, that drops the character of your choice into a world of constant changes. Each character experiences the story from his/her very individual point of view. And as the world is changing, so are the skills and possibilities of the characters.
The World
Huge changes rarely come out of the blue. The reasons, why things are going one way or another, are usually a result of cause and effect. If you take a close look at the history of mankind, you're going to find a huge trail of blood. In retrospect, we will always ask ourselves, how this could have happened and why this paradise slowly turned into a bizarre Pandemonium.
At the beginning of UNBENDED, you're going to find a world that's all nice and dandy. People are living next door to each other, everything seems to be quite in order. But as the story continues, drastical changes are going to happen. The Drift takes its toll, slowly but surely dragging all and everything into darkness and chaos. Why does that happen? Because rational beings always long to increase their power through gaining knowledge. In our story, you will experience the inevitable consequences of uncontrolled and naive usage of magic powers.
To understand the effects of the Drift, imagine a cheesy picture postcard with a colorful image being ripped into a thousand pieces. Then, someone puts all the pieces back together, roughly and with a lot of glue strips. THIS is how the world will look like after the Drift. The world in UNBENDED will change right before your eyes. And it's in dire need of heroes hopefully you will be one of them!
Gameplay
UNBENDED is going to be what it's supposed to be: a classic Action RPG with everything the genre needs. That includes a well-founded, charater based skill system, that does not just cover weapon and combat techniques, but extends to adjustments of the characters basic abilities. You will learn, you will develop, you will improve and gain power and finally under the influence of the Drift and your experiences become somthing you certainly didn't anticipate. You will learn special moves and forget them. And by the end, you will possess abilities that are powerful enough to move and shake entire continents. You will play a classic Action RPG just like how it should be: challengeing, full of action, perfectly controllable and subjecto to constant advancements. And before you pick up the gauntlet and become the possibly deciding factor in the fate of the entire world, you should take care of your own fate first and prove yourself in your personal campaing.
The Classes
UNBENDED certainly has some surprises in store when it comes to classes. The designed classes are absolute prototypes, pleasing the heart of the true ARPG gamer, but also containing a lot of real innovation. We're developing six completely individual classes for UNBENDED, all ready and waiting to expereince the world with. Find more information in the CHARACTER area on this website.
Technology
Just a few basics for a starter. We will gradually expand this part and keep you updated with facts about the technology. After a diligent proof-of-concept check, we can already reveal the following: UNBENDED will be presented in the classical ISO point of view. We will use a modern graphic engine, which allows a platform independant development. The world of UNBENDED will be seamless, allowing free movement of the character. World sectorizing will be invisible, there are no fixed borders or loading times.
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Is a multiplayer / Coopsystem planned?
Planned Yes. For me one of the most important "technology" features.
I love to play a campaign in the Coop, PvP, hardcore. With friendly fire, the Group simply sets the mood! As well as head-hunting in a world makes a lot of fun. An arena / MOBA we but don't plan mode.
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NG: Sacred was a really unique game at the time, since it combined the mammoth size of an open world RPG (and the freedom of it as well) with the approachable/addictive combat of an ARPG like Diablo. What drove you and the other folks at Ascaron to make such a game? Did you think it would succeed the way it did?
FS: In retrospect, it turned out that that team that created Sacred 1 and Sacred 2 was some sort of (one of a million). It is very rarely that so many different people are forming a team that's so balanced and full of positive energy.
Chaotic creativity against analytical thinking, boldness of the rookies against coolness of seasoned developers, everything in this team seemed to be in equilibrium. Get a load of this: we even had artists and programmers talking to each other! Mindboggling, isn't it? It was an invaluable experience to part of this team.
And now, almost eight years after Ascaron's end, we're still in contact with each other, having a party once a year and spamming each other's email and facebook accounts with mindless blather. I guess that's the reason for our success.
It was 100% a team effort and everything about that team was perfect. During the development of Sacred 1, we thought that we are about to create something pretty big. However, we had no clue *how* big it would be.
