Why Risen 2 will be better

We didn't do it in this game. We just hint at things and go around this and try to make dialogue around that; play with it, play with the subject. But we don't go into it. We felt that you do it in the proper way or you don't do it at all. It's not possible to do that now.

We rebuilt the combat system to fit our new needs. With have many, many, many combat animations that fit together. They're done in motion capture. What we improved mainly is the look of combat.

The integration of guns meant putting them on an abstract level. These are the old one-shot guns; you would not like a game where you could fire a musket and wait five minutes to fire another shot. We needed to find different mechanics, one of which is allowing us to wield sword and pistol at the same time.

We restructured the system in a way that allows the player to develop his own character more freely and not so story-bound. There are certain aspects that result from which faction are your friends, but you can divide your points between swordfighting or gunfighting how you like. The pirates, for example, can teach you certain things.

There is no limitation to character development in our games whatsoever. You can carry as much as you want, you can wear and use everything you find as soon as you find it. We have no restrictions. You can even raise certain skills above the value of 100, which gives no advantage until you get to difficult situations.

The level-cap isn't really relevant.

Weapons: yes. Armour: no. We have decided to have the character combine his own armour this time, so he can have his own boots and shirt and earring and ring and whatever stuff. There are many different slots.

Nope. It's not an issue for us. We are a small team, and what we wanted to focus on was improving our assets and do a good console version. Maybe after that we think about multiplayer.

No. Not really. There might be some aspects of the game some people wont' like, but this won't be among them.

Risen 2 is as Risen 1: a very core game. You will have long play sessions. You are looking at a game that has a lot of play hours. Right now we're looking at between 40 and 60 hours, something like that. It's a huge game.

What you see in Dragon Age II, for example, is that the game is designed to be consumed in chunks; when you go home at night, when you're finished with your work. You play one or two hours of Dragon Age II and that's OK.

You're not going to sit down and play one hour of Risen 2. You're going to sit down and realise, five hours later, that you're still playing Risen 2. That's the major difference and we're not going to change that for the console at all.

What's also important is that we have no loading zones. If you enter a house you just go in - you don't have to load. Same with dungeons, same with a path over the mountain. You only have to load when you go to another island or another coastal region.

Another criticism of Dragon Age II is that BioWare reused dungeons and material: they recycle a lot. In Risen 2, almost every location is unique.