Reviewed by Brandy Shaul
If any one company embraced the new video game arena at this year’s Gen Con, it was Sony Online Entertainment. With four back-to-back demo areas, and lines filling up each station, there was no shortage of gaming to be done. In the end, I saw three games in detail, with the first being EverQuest II: Rise of Kunark.
I spent quite a bit of time with one of the designers of this new expansion, and even having never played EverQuest II itself, I can tell you that I was deeply drawn in by this massive new land. Players can enter the continent of Kunark, through the new starting city of Timorous Deep, as either their existing character or start fresh as one of the new playable race, the Sarnak.
The Sarnak look very much like men who have been morphed with dragons. Standing upright, you can customize much of this new race, from the color and pattern of the scales on their body, to the armor and other items you equip them with.
Many centuries have passed in the land of Kunark, and whichever character you choose to embody, you are thrown into a land wrought by war between the now reborn Iskar Empire and the Sarnaks, who have been tortured and used in experiments to create an ultimate race of weapons. There are few Sarnak left, but those that survived the torture are trying to reclaim their rightful place in the world, by finding artifacts that were thought to have been lost years before.
There are essentially three islands to this new expansion, but don’t think that means the area is small, far from it. While riding an eagle like creature from the first to the third island, in real time, the journey took a few minutes. During this time, I was able to take a look at the beautiful environments that make up Timorous Deep.
Broken aqueducts from a society long since past litter the landscape, and huts line the tree lines as homes for the inhabitants that stuck around after a catastrophe that sent a giant piece of the moon falling into the ocean off of the coast of one island. The giant piece of the moon, and the revival of the Sarnak nation are connected in some way, but exactly how wasn’t made clear in the demo. After all, what’s the fun in the game if you don’t get surprised along the way?
Unlike many of the other EverQuest environments that are filled with more realistic colors in many shades of tan and brown, EverQuest II: Rise of Kunark is filled with lush landscapes that allow the game to take on a more fantastical appearance. Deep reds and burgundies make up not only the enemies and Sarnak themselves, but the roofs of the huts and the walls of caves. Dozens of shades of green make up the forests, and the oceans themselves are a rich mixture of blue and grey, depending on the time of day.
That being said, it’s safe to say that the game looks incredible. Even on a lower graphical setting, to allow the game to run at normal speed (since Sony was limited in terms of servers and power – this is just a convention, after all), the entire game looked crisp and finely detailed. The Sarnak themselves have intense features, and with no two scale patterns being exactly the same, there is an almost limitless amount of detail to be found within the land of Kunark.
In terms of technical aspects, gamers will be happy to know that there are hundreds of quests lined up for this new expansion, as well as a new rise in the level cap, allowing characters to get to level 80 in their Adventure, Tradeskill, and Guild classes. Dozens of new NPC’s dot the land, and new weapons and armor have been added to round out the package.
EverQuest II: Rise of Kunark is set to release on November 13th 2007, at a price tag of $39.99.