Risen 2 video interview

“It’s about putting the ‘role-playing’ back into the RPG,” says Deep Silver’s Pete Brolly as he explains how you have the option to use a cannon to blast a hole through a wall in order to break someone out of a prison in the upcoming pirate RPG Risen 2: Dark Waters. NPCs hint at the usual options RPGs offer for solving a problem, like stealing a key or using voodoo on the captain guard. According to Brolly, “The cannon’s just there for the gamer who goes to it and says, ‘Well, here’s a cannon. Why don’t I just blow a hole in the wall?’”

It’s one of the hallmarks of the sorts of games developed by Piranha Bytes, the folks responsible for the Gothic series and the original fantasy-themed Risen. As with those games, there’s little hand-holding and less linearity in Risen 2 (you don’t even start off with a map); it’s all about the details, listening closely to NPCs, reading between the lines of dialogue for hints, find your own path to success, and paying attention to your surroundings for visual clues (like giant cannons pointing at prisons).

But despite the extra helpings of seriousness and realism in Risen 2, the pirate RPG isn’t shy about embracing absurdity. Whether you’re bribing drunks with rum, exploring the world from a parrot’s point of view, or using the powers of voodoo to make two giant gorillas wail on each other, Risen 2’s open world is still a great place to find a barrel full of laughs.