There is currently a discussion going on as to how and if - to which extend - Radon Labs was going "against the zeitgeist" with developing Drakensang 1 and even more with Drakensang 2.
The point there is, that Drakensang 2 seemingly sold considerable less than Drakensang 1 - and that this might have had an influence towards Radon Labs getting into financial troubles.
The question is, inhowfar Drakensang REALLY i aginst the zeitgeist ... Some see it as a rather "old school" game, whereas there are some who still believe Drakensang 1 to be already too much streamlined - whereas others (like me) believe that the *majority* of RPG buyers *do* bu much more action-oriented an streamlined games - plus, the arrival of Dragon Age must ot be underestimated as well. I, for example, believe quite well that Dragon Age considerably hurt the sales of Drakensang.
Plus, that Dragon Age just fits into a current fashion of what I called (and which has already become almost kind of a trade mark within RPGWatch
) "dark & gritty". This is the kind of thing people want to.
I was browsing through a music & movies magazine (which is free) this morning, and I found that 80-90 % of all kinds of music presented there is dark and metal oriented. The fashion is clear there : No colourful musi, no colourful artists, please, everything shall be "D&G".
A similar thing - although not as similar - currently goes on for movies. Colourful stuff is meant to be for children (except Pixar, maybe, but I don't believe D&G fns would look at them anyway), and adults very much don't look at shiny and sweet and collorful stuff at all.
Even current animation movies have a slightly dark tone : Look at the en of "Cloudy with a chance of meatballs" and at "How to train your dragon", which are in principle quite dark, too. I don't know abbout the latest Shrek movie, though, and I don't know about Toy Story 3 as well. And this is the very first animtion movie starring a bad guy :
http://www.despicable.me/Well, obviouisly I see things differently than most others do ...
