He who controls the T-Energy, controls creation. And controlling creation naturally grants a wielder the ability to inflict (on the opposite side of this powerful coin) destruction. Therein lies the dichotomy of journeys available in Sacred 2: Fallen Angel -- the path of Light versus the path of Shadow.

Role-playing gamers are perhaps overly familiar with these two well-trodden paths, neither of them feeling anymore like the road less taken. Robert Frost would be nonplussed. But after all the choose-your-own-adventure options we’ve been enjoying in games like Oblivion, BioShock, and Mass Effect, not having the disjointed options would come off as a limiting oversight. These two paths don’t converge in Sacred 2 either, so you must decide from the onset whether you’re traversing the land of Ancaria to restore yin-yang to a world stricken off balance, or to tip those scales of power in your favor. There’s no room for ambiguity in Ancaria. You’re either for it, or against it.

During CDV Editors Day ’08, I enjoyed spoonfuls of a very tasty hands-on demo of German developer Ascaron’s healthy little baby. Although “little” becomes an obvious misnomer the moment you stare at the immense map, stretching across 22 square miles (35 square kilometers). This is boldly approaching half the size of World of Warcraft’s Azeroth, but remember: Sacred 2 isn’t an MMO, it’s a single-player action RPG.

But “single-player” is also a tad misleading when up to 16 players (on the PC) can drop in and out throughout the course of my travels. In fact, Sacred 2 is heavily-geared towards seamless multiplayer interaction, allowing extra players to pop in and out on-the-fly, with monster populations and stats scaling up and down behind the scenes, playing up to its player-character competition. Sacred 2 is prepared to match any challenge you and 15 others can throw at it, allowing you to save your progress by any means necessary. Not only that, Ascaron is working feverishly to make ad hoc connections happen for online players. You might be sitting next to someone on an airplane, and be able to jump into a multiplayer match with them right then and there, as quickly and easily as other portable gaming devices like Nintendo DSes and Sony PSPs. We’ll see just how ironed-out this feature is by the time the game goes gold, or if they had to ultimately abandon this incredibly rare feature for RPG gamers.



The Xbox 360 and PlayStation 3 versions (trailing the PC’s release date by a couple months) shrink this small-form MMO action to a rate that consoles can readily handle -- due to “memory issues,” publisher CDV Quality Assurance Manager Mike Tata informs. The less beefy 360 and PS3 are limited to four-person multiplayer, with everybody restrained to holding hands on the same screen, Gauntlet-style, whereas the PC version will allow its cavalcade of players to roam wild and free across its canvas. While it would be ridiculous to have 16 players tethered to a single screen, a lot of time can be spent trying to pinpoint and catch up to one another on the PC.

As far as localization progress, only the early-game story is translated into English so far, and the rather talkative Shadow Warrior -- a bulging bicep of a resurrected fighter, and my character of choice -- was throwing out epithets in full-on German with a governator accent. I haphazardly suggested that the developers keep the German dialect for the Shadow Warrior in the English version of the game. You know, for some pride and authenticity in Sacred 2’s Deutschland roots. My request was duly noted and disregarded. Every line of text and voice acting will be carefully ...