E3 2010: Arcania: Gothic 4 Preview
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Combat has been "streamlined" (an RPG enthusiast's favorite buzzword), with the game's combos being pulled off with various combinations of three buttons and abilities being triggered with up to eight player-selected quickslots. More powerful attacks can be performed by holding down the necessary button and watching as a number of red dots begin to glow in succession. When all of the dots are lit up, your charged melee/ranged/spell attack is at maximum power. Bow/crossbow and spell attacks have to be aimed at an opponent with a thumbstick or mouselook, though you can lock onto an enemy with the press of another button (a trigger on the Xbox 360, for example) to make precise aiming much easier. Each attack drains a certain amount of your character's stamina, though stamina regenerates by default, and you can increase its regeneration rate by allocating points to certain skill trees or by wearing certain equipment. Health does not regenerate by default, though I'm told that some items are imbued with health regeneration properties. Eating food, using bandages, or quaffing a healing potion will also restore lost health. The crafting system is broken up into two sections within your journal - "equipment" and "alchemy & food". Unfortunately, the press demo I was playing didn't have any crafting recipes available, but I was assured that there are "a lot" of items that can be crafted as long as you've learned the appropriate recipe from a scroll. Speaking of items, Bryan told me that there are over 100 weapons in the game (which seems a bit low for an RPG), and these are broken up among one-handed melee weapons, two-handed melee weapons, bows, and crossbows. There are also 3-4 unique sets of armor for each of the game's six cultures, though armor is only comprised of two pieces - the suit itself is one piece, and then you can pair a helmet with it. There are also shields, bracers, necklaces, and rings, and all of these items can obviously sport various magical effects. For example, my character was wielding a two-handed sword called the Storm Sword of the Obsidian Guard, and it had a 25% chance to both paralyze and inflict 90 extra points of damage on each successful hit.
In addition to keeping track of all your crafting recipes, the game's journal system also records all pertinent information about your current and completed quests. A bestiary section is also included, though this only gets fleshed out as you encounter each creature type. For example, killing a "Shore Slime" along the beach will add a "Coastal Goo" entry to your bestiary. Such an entry features a 3D animation of the creature and a brief description of it. Other creatures I encountered were a Snapper, a Swampshark, and a Lizard, and all of these had separate entries within the bestiary.
And that's about everything I could digest during my brief time with the game. The game certainly shows promise in some areas, but it's tough to tell how the final product will turn out in such a limited amount of time. In particular, the combat animations seemed a bit rough on the Xbox 360 build I was playing and the console-friendly feel of the game makes me think that the PC controls are going to suffer. Hopefully Spellbound takes the remaining few months to continue polishing the game so that Arcania: Gothic 4 is the AAA release they want it to be.
