The Games Convention 2003 in Leipzig was significantly bigger than the first GC in 2002 – and what’s more, this time a significantly larger amount of CRPGs (or games with RPG elements) were shown. Unfortunately, the two days I spent at the GC weren’t enough to cover all of the RPG/like games – in fact, I was really glad I glimpsed as many games as I did, because sprinting from booth to booth, from award ceremony to press center and back while elbowing my way through hordes of gamers took a considerable amount of time.

I spent a considerable amount of time at the booth of Russian publisher/producer/developer 1C which occupied a space right between several big booths, stalls and stages. The advantage was obvious, many gamers stopped to watch the trailers of the 1C games displayed on two big TFT displays. The disadvantage: even though we found a somewhat quieter place in the ‘backyard’ of the booth, the noise level was so high PR manager Anatoly Subbotin and I had to shout to converse. 1C had brought many promising games to the fair, four of which were either CRPGs or sported enough RPG elements to warrant coverage. One of them being Borderzone.

Borderzone (1C, PC)
At first glance, BorderZone might look like your average action-oriented, over-the-shoulder 3rd person fantasy CRPG. It is, however, set on a post-apocalyptic Terra: a cataclysm wiped out most of humanity. Now, in the year 9000 AD, some of the last surviving humans leave their bunkers to explore a world unknown to them.
It’s the same with Olaf, the protagonist, who may be either a thief, fighter or mage. He doesn’t know what awaits him after leaving his shelter, but he’ll find out soon enough. Mutated creatures roam the world, and the near-deserted planet has been settled by other races as well.

BorderZone allows the player to have up to three NPCs join his troupe. The game may be action-oriented, but there’s a lot of dialog (spoken in the Russian version, text-only in the English language version as of yet) as well. Combat is dangerous – at least in the beginning, when the hero is still young and inexperienced. Anatoly’s character for example didn’t survive the first encounter with a bunch of creatures which looked like a cross between wolf and armadillo.

Gameplay is supposed to be rather non-linear. Depending on the protagonist’s actions, several different endings are possible. That’s something I’d like to see – *really* different endings, not just a variant on a theme.

Unfortunately, the demo version shown came with a fixed resolution of 800x600 – not too impressive on the big screen. But even like this it was obvious that the backgrounds, landscapes and details were beautiful (baroque shrubbery, ambient flies and butterflies, clouds throwing shadows etc.). The protagonist and human characters were a bit chunky, though, while animations weren’t exactly smooth. I wonder how they will look in the finished product.

First Impression
Pretty graphics and an interesting setting– a bit like Fallout in 3D. If gameplay and story of the finished product turn out to be as open-ended/ non-linear as promised, it’s a CRPG one should watch out for.