Two Worlds

Format PC

Developer

Publisher

Genre Action, Role Playing

9 Comments

There was a slightly weird moment when we found out that in Two Worlds the smoulderingly nubile young lady you can see on the left is your sister. We asked Dirk Hassinger, chairman of the game's US publisher, if he didn't think it was a bit... strange to make the sibling of your in-game character so sexually charged.

"It is important she looks like that," he said in his thick German accent. We were about to respond when he leaned in a little closer than we were comfortable with and spoke again. "It is important she looks like that."

Whether he meant it was vital to the plot or just useful as a selling point we've got no idea, but the exchange was oddly appropriate given the gritty, arcane setting of Two Worlds. Following in the footsteps of the Gothic series, this is a freeform third-person RPG breathing life into a more central European interpretation of fantasy, an interpretation that tends to favour blood, war, demons and other awesome things from '80s metal album covers. Two Worlds has in fact only the one world, but it's a world that's brutal in a way that should please anyone who thought Oblivion's simulation of Tamriel was disappointingly sugar-coated.

Monster ferocity isn't artificially scaled in Two Worlds; there are just indigenous creatures and local toughs. This means that while you have complete freedom, you'll want to steer well clear of areas you've heard bad things about.

If you do find yourself on the wrong side of the mithril tracks, your best chance for survival is probably fighting dirty.

Later on in the game you'll have a respectable mastery of swords and/or sorcery, but to begin with special moves seem spawned from common sense and desperation. Kicking dust up, for example, or thrusting your torch towards an opponent's face. Fans of Oblivion's horses will be pleased to know you can fight while mounted too, though don't expect to hit quite so much.

Much effort is going towards making the horse handle and act like an animal, and in our playtest that amounted to a lot of struggles for control that were mostly embarrassing and occasionally, if occurring during a daring escape, fatal.

The playtest also reassured us about a couple of less down-to-earth features. When you die in Two Worlds you're brought straight back to life at the closest Resurrection Shrine, with no penalty and all of your gear. While this strips away the gravity of combat a little, it's a small price to pay to be able to forget about saving your game.

More bizarre and even more successful is the ability to 'double up' equipment.

Traditionally in action RPGs, players are walking medieval magnets, stripping rooms of any equipment that isn't bolted down and ending up with a knapsack full of crap. In Two Worlds, two copies of the same item can be merged for a tiny stat increase, and this can be done dozens of times. It's as mad as cats but creates a rewarding subgame. Is the boss's sword going to be more powerful than collecting the matching spears of each of his servants? Believe us when we say Diablo 3 really needs to steal this system. It makes finding the mundane a joy as well as the rare.

Reality Pump are keeping quieter about the actual plot. We can tell you that it begins with your mysterious and prophetic sister getting kidnapped, then at some point a vast red pentagram appears across the sky as cultists go about resurrecting the God of War, Aziraal, who was slain one thousand years ago in a battle that turned a patch of the game world into a gnarled and lethal wasteland. Your decision as to whether Aziraal returns or not will deeply affect the rest of the game, but don't expect to get cuddly with the orcs who worship him and control most of the southern part of the world.

We had it gleefully explained to us that while there's a lot the player can do to enamour themselves with the greenskins (a path that leads to nice farming communities becoming charred ruins) all it'll do is make them hate you a little less.

But it might not be all doom and gloom. With Two Worlds nearing completion, the team are soon going to find out if they've got time to implement an idea for a multiplayer mode they had long ago: horse racing. Spectators could bet treasure. We hope they squeeze this in.

We're at the point now where our fantasy games are huge, stunningly real 3D portraits. The worlds are in place. We just need them to be worth saving.

Quintin Smith