I have a sizable soft spot for Piranha Bytes’ creaky, German RPGs. I once convincingly argued that Gothic III was better than Oblivion when I drunkenly overheard people talking about Gothic at a party. Sure, they were discussing architecture, but I left them more knowledgeable about PC RPGs.
The studio’s other property, Risen, doesn’t engender as much love. I rather enjoyed the first one, for all its flaws, but its sequel, Dark Waters, was a poorly-constructed, endlessly dreary experiment in making pirates pretty damn dull.
Third time’s a charm, they say (who, I don’t know), so Piranha Bytes is going back to the series with Risen 3: Titan Lords.
Risen’s third outing is still a bit of a mystery, but Piranha Bytes is promising that it’s making major changes compared with their soggy second game. What we do have is a batch of leaked screenshots.
It looks like the Titans are still getting up to no good. I’d suggest that the main change Piranha Bytes need to make is giving us a half-decent protagonist who can actually save the world instead of just letting the Titans continue causing a mess for yet another game.
Cheers, CVG.