Xbox 360 Preview: Sacred 2: Fallen Angel

by nestlekwik

Making some of its first appearances in public, Sacred 2: Fallen Angel, an effort of Ascaron Entertainment and CDV Software Entertainment USA, was on hand at Gen Con Indy at the event’s Atari booth. Michael Tata of CDV had the alpha build of the upcoming Xbox 360 version in tow, giving convention goers a first playable glimpse of the multiplayer action RPG. With the label of “2,” obviously the title comes as the follow-up to 2004’s successful release of Sacred on the PC. The second installment actually serves as a prequel to the story, occurring 2,000 years prior to the events of Sacred.

The main focus of Sacred 2’s plot revolves around a substance known as T-Energy – a powerful blue goo that serves as the source of life and prosperity and powers magic. Given how powerful the substance was, it didn’t take long before the allure of such power divided the people, who then turned against each other in an attempt to control the T-Energy. What originally began as a civil war between the Ancient Elves who once harnessed the amenity soon drew the attention of all of Ancaria’s races, also wanting this energy for themselves. Through the battles, the land has been ravaged and the spilling of T-Energy into the environment has mutated everything existing in it.

While temporary peace had surfaced in the wake of a destroyed land, war is looming once again and the situation provides players with two motives. Sacred 2’s light campaign sees players looking to restore order to the land and prevent the impending war while players can also opt for the game’s shadow campaign in which players only care about their own desires of controlling the T-Energy for themselves. Only one character class returns from Sacred, the Seraphim, with the new entry adding in playable versions of the High Elf, Dryad, Inquisitor, Shadow Warrior and Temple Guardian races. While players can opt to choose either the light or shadow campaign with four the game’s characters, the Seraphim can only be played via the light campaign and the Inquisitor can only follow the way of the shadow.

Each character has its own strengths and weaknesses, of course, with the High Elf excelling in ancient spell craft, the Shadow Warrior being the game’s hand-to-hand expert and the Temple Guardian being able to use long-range energy attacks. Each character can also choose to follow one of several deities and eventually obtain a unique mount from which they can battle. With six characters and varying options, Sacred 2 is already proving to feature a satisfying amount of depth.

The land of Ancaria will also give each character a ton to do through the course of the game, sizing in at one-and-a-half times the size of the original Sacred and its Underworld expansion combined. Michael Tata disclosed to us that the land covers 22 square miles and takes around six hours to traverse by foot, however, some areas can only be accessed by mounts, teleportation, ships or other special means. Within the land, a number of regions divide Ancaria to include a High Elf region, Human region, Orc region, Troll region, Marshland region, Desert region, Seraphim Island, Jungle region, Dryad Island and the wasteland canyon to provide a different environment with unique inhabitants in every region. Every region will be further highlighted through dynamic weather, which provides the game with varying wind and rain along with day and night cycles.

Each character has 15 combat arts available to them from the onset of the game and must be purchased as runes or received through trade or exchange. These arts are supplemented through skills and every move, spell or buff has a complete tree that allows players to improve or modify these actions. With the advancement of characters, more “preload” slots open up for the character, allowing players to create custom combos, acting much like macros to eventually execute four actions in succession. All characters also have a slot to host a permanent buff such as the High Elf’s ability to summon a hell spawn or the Shadow Warrior’s ability to summon the undead.

While players can tackle the game solo, players will miss out on a number of fleshed-out multiplayer modes. The campaign mode will allow players to follow the storyline together with shared loot and experience and unique party drop items may be found. A free mode drops the storyline to give player access to the full map and side quests, creating an ideal mode for power leveling. Players can also tackle waves of enemies together in an arena to build leaderboard points. If working together just isn’t your thing, though, PvP will be featured along with a leaderboard and those who are completely competitive can enter the “hardcore” mode where only one player leaves and losers are permanently destroyed [nasty!]. According to Tata, players will be able to jump in to your game or leave at any time with up to two players on the same console sharing the same screen, with up to four players enable on Xbox Live (the PC version, however, will allow for up to 16 players).

On the surface, Tata is estimating Sacred 2 to provide 40 hours of play in the main mode alone. The story progresses through around 300 quests, but when you toss in side quests, there is going to be more than 1,000 different quests. The enemies won’t make your quests easy, though, as the full version will promise beefy AI in the baddies. In an interesting twist, given the player’s chosen path and alliances, some monsters may even support the player. Morale will also play a part in enemy performance as the death of the group’s leader will result in enemies losing their courage in battle. If you are stronger, the enemies will run away and avoid you or even possibly return with backup in order to even the odds a little. When you throw in massive boss monsters, players will definitely have to think twice about their game plan.

At GenCon, we were able to wrap our hands around the Xbox 360 controller for an alpha-based single-player romp and the experience has us looking forward to the title. While PC players have access to a mess of keys and mouse commands, the 360 version makes simple use of shoulder and bumper combinations, along with menus, to map every feature and command onto the controller. A lot of work is going to be put into the title until its upcoming release, but even at this stage of development, all of the workings of an action RPG are already in place. In a genre dominated by PCs, it’s great to see such an effort being made on a console and with what CDV Software Entertainment is promising us, it seems few other games on the console will be able to match its longetivity and replayability when it releases.

According to Tata, the PC version is just around the corner with a scheduled September 30 release with the Xbox 360 version following up with a November 4 release. Tata also revealed work is being done on a Playstation 3 version, but no specifics were available for that format’s release as of GenCon Indy.