Hello.
I've come to here ("sit down and listen for a while" <img src="/ubbthreads/images/graemlins/winkwink.gif" alt="" /> ) to tell you the sad story of Sacred's predecessor : Armalion.
You might have never heard of the German RPG system "Das Schwarze Auge" (DSA)
www.thedarkeyerpg.com , which is quite popular within Germany (and probably even known in the Netherlands), but totally unknown in the US, for example, except three games : What we here in Germany call "The Nordland Trilogie" , consisting of "Blade of Destiny", Startrail" and "Shadows over Riva" , three games which incorporated this system.
They were once - through a partnership - adopted and ported into the English Language by SirTech, the makers of Wizardry. They also gave these games their English titles (which are nothing more that literal translations of their German names).
The publishers (or "makers") of DSA wanted another German RPG for that system. After the downfall of LMK (please use the Forum's Search function and look out for the thread called "HIstory of the Lost Kingdom Books" written by me), Larian's first RPG, now forgotten except by a "chosen few" <img src="/ubbthreads/images/graemlins/winkwink.gif" alt="" /> they wanted to try to make another RPG incorporating that system.
Armalion is actually the "table top - variant" of DSA, which is a game like Warhammer or other products by the Games Workshop, using figures and a battlefield.
So, the company with the name Ikarion began to develop an C-RPG for the table-top-varian of DSA.
Through the years it developed. <img src="/ubbthreads/images/graemlins/winkwink.gif" alt="" /> and I was a member of the Forum community there. Rei / Sisaya was a member there, too (she appears in <img src="/ubbthreads/images/graemlins/div.gif" alt="" /> ) .
Eventually Ikarion came into financial troubles, and had to stop the project. The troubles were so severe that the whole company went bancrupt. RIP Ikarion.
DeathGuardian (that's his Forummember's name back in the Armalion Forum) was the one and only who has ever seen Armalion in works - still in the existing rooms of Ikarion, in Aachen, Germany. Only a relatively short time after that, Ikarion vanished. RIP.
You can still find the Logo of Ikarion as pictures on walls in Sacred : A blue picture with a winged creature, reminiscent of Icarus from the ancient Grek myths.
DeathGuardian and a few "chosen ones" created the "Order of noXQs" , because noXQs was one of the developers at Ikarion responsible for Armalion.
You can find the Order's Homepage here (completely in German) :
http://www.noxqs-orden.de.vuThe Order's History can be found here (again in German) :
http://www.noxqs-orden.de/noXQs/orden.htmlYou can find old screenshots of Armalion here :
http://www.zocks.de/article.php/Armalion_Interview_mit_Holger_Breitbach_von_Ikarion-156.htmlhttp://www.rpgdot.com/index.php?hsaction=10075&games=95http://www.noxqs-orden.de/Sacred/kundschaften/armalion/armalion.htmlAt some point, the German company Ascaron bought what was left of Armalion (the sad thing is that when Ikarion was in trouble, no-one cared about it and helped them, when it was died, the carcass was plundered, cynically speaking).
What was left of Armalion was changed into what is now Sacred. The developer team had to made a hack & slash (H/S) game out of it, which had
originally nothing to do with Blizzards products.
A very sad thing within German gaming industry is the huge influence of the few gaming magazines which tend to compare games towards other games that were a huge success. That means in fact that almost no review
ever is written without the name of Blizzards products ( I decide not to write down the full name here) , because German gaming magazines are notoruious for comparing
every RPG with them !
At one point that lead into the sad result of German gaming mags saying that "Sacred was a D2-clone". Thus totally negating the initial original environment of Ancaria.
Eventually Ascaron took that and used this as a marketing saying for advertising the game. As the Review by Sisaya
here shows, Armalion initially was
not a simply "hack 'n' slay" game, but evolved into that through the times (and thanks to the efforts by German gaming mags who seemingly were even involved in the betatesting process and thus could press their whishes into the game). It was intended as an RPG with H/S , but with a much deeper story (as it seems to me) than it is today. So much potential wasted ! <img src="/ubbthreads/images/graemlins/disagree.gif" alt="" />
As a summary, Sacred is built upon the ruins of Armalion, but has nothing to do with it anymore. (However, if you have sharp eyes and know where to look for, you can still find some remains of Armalion, like the Barbarian the Gladiator has to fight against, in the very beginning of the game.)
That's the History of Sacred, as far as I can see it.
Alrik Fassbauer.
