Sacred Interview

Gamer's Hell has conducted an interview with Ascaron Entertainment's Alan Wild, asking the product manager several questions about their upcoming action RPG, Sacred. An excerpt to follow:
Q: Could you talk about the graphics in the game? How high is the detail level?

A: The graphics are stunning. Our artists have done an exceptional job in building the very visual Kingdom of Ancaria. We have a 2D gameworld complete with fully 3D characters, allowing for greater detail and flexibility. To do what we have done in full 3D would have caused the minimum spec to go through the roof, preventing a lot of PCs from playing it well, and on top of that Sacred would not have looked anywhere near as beautiful, thus losing the atmospheric feel you get when you play it. To solve the issues of disappearing or (getting stuck) behind scenery, Sacred has a cool transparency feature. When you run behind buildings you will see a filtered transparency effect surrounding your character and any active nearby characters/enemies. This maintains the level of graphical detail without hindering movement or forcing gamers to change camera angles as can happen in some of the 3D engines around at the moment. With Sacred we haven't forced the gamers' hands in any aspect. The whole thing about Sacred is playability. It's a game for gamers.