Surreal Software developed a rock solid graphic engine, that succeeds in creating a living, breathing world. In a fashion similar to Soul Reaver 2, the game seems to stream the data off the disk most of the time, thus creating a continuous world, not interrupted by loading times. Loading times occur only when you enter dungeons and certain buildings, and they are always very reasonable.
From the very beginning of the game, you’ll notice the astounding beauty and the wealth of details of the environments. Drakan has probably the most massive environments ever to grace a 3D fantasy adventure. You can look at entire valleys, mountains, and every single thing you see can be actually reached, in some way. The textures are quite varied, and always of good quality, and all the polygonal objects are built with rare skill. Trees, grass, buildings, flowers are just beautiful. Birds flying in flocks and feral dragons populate the skies; all is so vivid, real.
And the same can be said of the enormous dungeons and buildings you’ll have to explore in Drakan. From dark caves to secret tombs, from swamps populated by Trogs to gloomy sacred places, all is built not only with fantasy and imagination but also with meticulous care of details.
Light effects and particle effects are all magnificent too, from sun flares to the flames of the torches illuminating the darkest environments, but a special note should be made for the smoke. Yes, smoke. It’s something you’ll notice also in the introductory scene, Drakan has simply the most realistic smoke I have ever seen in any game on any platform.
Character models are also very detailed, and magnificently animated. Rynn can perform an impressive series of different moves, and many of them, like backflips and combat moves, are a pleasure to look at. Arokh is a big red dragon, a beautiful creature built with an elevated number of polygons. The enemies, the creatures and the main non playable characters you’ll encounter in Drakan are all surprisingly defined, animated, and very well designed. On the other hand, secondary non playable characters are based on a limited number of models.
All this is done always maintaining a smooth framerate, with no aliasing problems at all, and just with a bunch of little issues. There are occasional pop-up issues, and the most noticeable occur while you are flying with Arokh. Clipping may also occur when you try to walk on places where you are not supposed to go, and the camera can give some problem when you are on your back to the wall, as I’ve said in the Gameplay section. Anyhow, all these issues become unnoticeable, when the visuals of Drakan are considered on their whole. Surreal Software’s developers have created an engine able to create a world worth of Tolkien and Ende’s descriptions.
