Originally for the PC, Deep Silver has been given the task of porting the RPG over to the Xbox 360. The ultimate question here is, does the translation compute?
Risen was not on my game radar for 2010 and walking into this game preview with enthusiastic PR reps, I began to wonder if it should be. With little media promotion in the United States and the endless line-up of AAA titles coming out from now till March Risen has fallen under the radar. But don't let the B-movie poster art fool you, this game is a true unfound treasure.
The Risen universe is that of Gods and men with a spin on the mythology. Man, since the beginning, had been under the thumb of the Gods, which ruled as tyrants. Eventually, humankind discovered magic and found a way to banish them from their world, but with the Gods left man's protection from something far more ancient.
Without the Gods a new supernatural power began to envelop the earth and cause catastrophic storms everywhere, except for on one particular island. It's on this island that the user's story begins. Here there are two factions the Inquisition, a band of outsiders who have come to discover why this island is unaffected by the supernatural storms; and the island's natives who have been pushed to live in the swamps by the Inquisition.
As you've probably guessed, Risen is a game of choices with these two factions at odds you will have to choose, which one to side with. In the beginning of the game you will be handed conflicting quests by each group to earn their trust and will, in turn, have to decide which quests to take. As you earn the favor of one of the factions you are not bound to them for the rest of the game. If you think it right, you can change side's mid-game.
As the game progresses players with have options to choose what kind of class they want to specialize in. These specializations go beyond the standard mage, warrior, and rouge classes. In your typical RPG mages wield staffs, warriors wield swords, and rouges deal damage in stealth, but Risen goes beyond these preconceptions that have been molded by popular RPGs. Mages are not limited to floating about in their lily robes left to fend off enemies from afar. They can now deal damage with big sharp pointy objects and magic. Powers are a series of mix and match within this universe.
How you gain training in swords, stealth, and magic is also different than in other games. Normally, one would level up and choose their skills from a tree, but in Risen players must cultivate relationships with NPCs that would be able to train them in the various martial and magical arts.
So much of this game is driven by your interactions with other characters for instance, if you go into someone's home they will ask you to leave if you haven't been invited in and if you take from their home they will attack you. Each individual NPC remembers their interactions with you. Admittedly, there is a "get out of jail free card" that helps to gain favor among towns-folk you may have wronged. By using a "tell joke" spell scroll you can make people forget about your wrong-doings. Players will need this in case they fall out of favor with quest-specific NPCs.
The translation from PC to Xbox controls was well managed. Developers used RT as attack LT to block and the X, A, B, and Y buttons to hot-key specific items and summons to use in battle.
In terms of graphics, Risen comes up wanting. This game makes Dragon Age Origins look like a beauty queen. It's awful to think that a game with so much depth could be held back by the amount of pixels on the screen. If you can put standards of next-gen graphics aside then there may be hope for underdog, Risen.
So much of this game is driven by your interactions with other characters for instance, if you go into someone's home they will ask you to leave if you haven't been invited in and if you take from their home they will attack you. Each individual NPC remembers their interactions with you. Admittedly, there is a "get out of jail free card" that helps to gain favor among towns-folk you may have wronged. By using a "tell joke" spell scroll you can make people forget about your wrong-doings. Players will need this in case they fall out of favor with quest-specific NPCs. 
