Drakan II Preview

If there's one thing that Surreal Software president Alan Patmore wants to make clear about the first Drakan game for the PlayStation 2, it's that it's "a true sequel to the original Drakan and is absolutely, positively, not a port."

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It's hard to tell where the rumors--which stated, somewhat illogically, that Drakan II was to be a PlayStation 2 version of the Sony-published Drakan for the PC--first began, but Patmore wants to lay them to rest for good. "Let me assure you," says Patmore, "we've spent two years developing this game, and it is completely original. There seems to have been a lot of confusion about this, and seeing someone refer to it as a port can be very frustrating to the team who have all been working extremely hard building the entirely new worlds of Drakan II."

That said, anyone needing further proof need only spend a few minutes with the game to see that much has changed. We got a chance to play the game at the recent E3 in Los Angeles, and it's looking like a huge improvement over the original. If the environments in the first game seemed like they'd make ideal vacation spots, then you'll love the environments in Drakan II: They look good enough that you'd consider setting up more permanent residence. It's a staggeringly pretty landscape with snowcapped mountains and deep valleys, marred only by roaming packs of monsters and the occasional burning building. Even then though, you can see the smoke rising up into the sky, partially blocking out the sun in thin, wispy strands. This was one of the best-looking visual effects that we witnessed at the show. A layer of mist settles into the horizon far into an impressive draw distance, which seems to be there more to establish atmosphere than to hide pop-up.

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The game, of course, focuses on the female lead character from the original game, Rynn, and her dragon companion, Arohk. The two characters share a bond, and if one dies, the other will follow soon afterward. The storyline for the game picks up immediately after the end of Drakan. Now that Rynn has reestablished the Order of the Flame, she and Arokh are called to release the immortal Spirit Dragons from captivity and free the land of its oppressors, an alien race called the Desert Lords who are overrunning the populace.

Both character models have undergone drastic upgrades, with Rynn looking much more realistic and Arohk looking much more fantastic. Patmore says that the character model for Rynn in the original Drakan was composed of 300 polygons, while her model in Drakan II is made up of 4400 polygons. Arohk has experienced a similar jump--from 320 polygons to 4200. And it shows. One immediately noticeable change was that the skin that stretches between the "fingers" of your dragon's wings is now a thin almost translucent membrane. If that sounds impressive, that's because it is. Arohk looks great and animates well.