Realms of Arkania: Blade of Destiny

Bugs

The first release of the game was bug-pestered. They didn't even get the copy protection right. Included was an annoying doc check from the manual and a large color map ("what town is north/south/east/west of that town"), but the manual was misprinted so some questions had the wrong answers. They included a correction sheet which made the protection even more stupid. In some cases, even correct answers to the map questions were accounted as wrong.

Guido the Druid

One of the pre-made characters, which are stored in the temple, is a druid called Guido. In an interview with Guido Henkel on crystals-dsa-foren.de in September 2007, he commented on the subject:

That's a relict, I believe. Of course we had all kinds of standard and test parties during the development and the testing phase of the game. Looks like the one or other character wasn't removed correctly.

Intro

It's an interesting fact that the Orcs in DSA are generally black instead of the usual green as seen in nearly every other fantasy product. But during the intro sequence they are shown also as standard orcs with green skin. That is due to the fact that the intro has been drawn by external graphic artists, who weren't familiar with the DSA world. And because changes would have been too expensive and too complex at that time, Attic used the already drawn intro.

Origin

The three founders of Attic Entertainment Hans-Jürgen Brändle, Jochen Hamma and Guido Henkel used to play the original P&P DSA years before they developed Blade of Destiny. However, only the later director of Attic Entertainment Brändle was a hardcore player in his youth and played in several groups.

Save Function

Realms of Arkania: Blade of Destiny featured an unusual save function. Anytime the player saved the game outside a temple, all characters lost one experience point (which is not much, but still noticeable in the Schwarzes Auge RPG system). Saving a lot would weaken their characters considerably. That was implemented by the developers on purpose to prevent people from using the save-mode as a cheating device and to immerse the player more into the game's world.

Awards

• Amiga Joker
  • Issue 02/1993 – #2 Best Game of 1992 (Readers' Vote)
  • Issue 02/1993 – Best RPG of 1992 (Readers' Vote)

Information also contributed by phlux and SimonG.