Corven: Path of Redemption Announcement and Updates

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Written by ValH on January 1st, 2017

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Ultima-style games have been getting some love lately with Albion Online and Richard Garriott's Shroud of the Avatar: Forsaken Virtues. Now, there's another contender for Ultima fans' attention - Corven: Path of Redemption

The recently revealed game boasts a story-driven open world with a focus on immersion and interactivity. The game's website seems to be receiving frequent updates and already has a few of the potential players' questions answered:

• The reveal trailer was a “proof of concept”. We worked on the shown content for 8 months now and not every feature is implemented yet. That is why you did not see action (combat) or crafting. We will show the progress in future updates, stay tuned! We will show all features we mentioned in the trailer in 2017.
• This is not a multiplayer game. It will be purely single player.
• Corven is being developed primarily for Windows and Linux PC. With the Unreal Engine we have the possibility to port to other platforms like PS4 or XBOX ONE but we will not make any promises now. This will be something we will review at a later date. Our primary goal is to use the power that a PC provides to give you the best looking and best working game possible.
• walk speed: in the trailer the walk speed is intentionally slow to show off the gameworld. The actual implemented system however is that the further away from the character the curser is the faster you character is – from sneaking to sprinting. You will see this in the next gameplay video.
• the player character in the video is just a placeholder.
• such a small team should be able to create a RPG like this? Yes! We might be a small team, but we are not one trick ponies. That we managed to do what you see in the trailer should be some proof of that, but don’t take our word for it, we could promise you anything right? So just check our updates in the next months and see for yourself! Also: our game is not about a complex skill system with tons of loot. We want to provide a rich story with puzzles to solve and secrets to uncover like Ultima or to some extend like in the original Fallout games, not a complex class system like you have in Baldur’s Gate or Skyrim. Our story will also not have 5 endings with 10 different branches. This saves development time and manpower BUT that’s not why we do it, we simply want to tell a coherent complex and engaging storyline. It will not be completely linear, there are decisions to be made, but don’t expect several story branches. The highly interactive world however will give you the tools to solve things differently than your friend might solve them. Yes it’s the same problem and the same outcome, but it might not be the same way you get there. Also: the Kickstarter will allow us to get more people involved. Not full time, but for certain tasks.
• some of you asked how big the world is and how long the play time will be. While we cannot give you a final play time before the game is further along in development I can promise you that it will not just be a 10 hour adventure. As for the world size: it is intentionally smaller than, for example, Skyrim because we want to fill the world with things to discover. We decided that we rather have a smaller world than a huge world with lots of empty spaces. The world is 3 km x 3 km in size. For Ultima fans: still way bigger than Ultima 7 was. Here is a map with the lake that you see in the trailer marked in red, so you get a better idea of the size:

On top of that, not two weeks after the initial announcement, the team has grown and now includes two additional members. A promise of features soon to be added and a recreation of an Ultima landscape in the new game's engine are in the update as well. An excerpt:

I wanted to create the prototype with as few people as possible to avoid any complications that come from managing a team. Now that we go into full production mode our team grows as planned. I am happy to announce our 2 newest members:

• Patrig “Sicabol” Droumaguet will compose music for us. He is hard at work already and as soon as there are results I will post them for you
• Daniel Kiechl has gathered quite some experience with the Unreal Engine and will be helping with quest implementation and with testing

I am very very happy about our 2 new guys!

Over the next few months you will first get a few landscape updates and then game feature updates. First features will be the quest system, dialogue system and inventory system. Stay tuned!

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