TinyChan

SHINY NEW WING

A LOOK AT DRAKAN'S PLAYSTATION 2 SEQUEL

While Drakan: Order Of The Flame wasn't a mega-hit, it was successful enough to warrant a sequel which was released exclusively on the PlayStation 2. "Psygnosis was owned by Sony Europe and was run fairly autonomously at the time. They were free to of do what they wanted, so launching on PC wasn't a big deal. But by the time Drakan finished up, Sony was getting more involved in what Psygnosis was doing and they wanted to focus on Playstation exclusive. The PS2 was on the horizon and Sony was very interested in us building a Drakan game exclusively for the system. We felt like this was a great opportunity to launch on this next-gen console. The result, subtitled The Ancients' Gates, was released in the summer of 2002 and was very similar to its predecessor: lots of melee combat, lots of flying on Arokh. The graphics were significantly improved, Rynn was now allowed to cast magic, there was a larger world, simplified combat and even experience point system that led to a skill tree In short, it's a really good game that also received mostly good ratings But unfortunately, it also wasn't that big a success, which meant the end of the series according to Alan. "Sales expectations for first-party game on the PS2 were high. Ancients" Gates underperformed those sales expectations and so the franchise sort of died." We feel this is a real shame, as the series showed great potential.