Ahoy: Risen 3 Gets A Free Graphics Boost

O Risen - The ol' girl gets accused of being what's called "low fantasy" (fiction elitist-speak which I think essentially means it has pirates in it). But even in the face of years of apathetic reviews (we called Risen 2 "deflating" and devoted nine diary posts to the threequel to saying the game was really weird and vaguely sexist though charmingly ambitious) Deep Silver have devoted quite some time to the series since 2009.

That extends to earlier this week when the publisher revealed a big graphical update to Risen 3: Titan Lords [official site] as part of a free update. Read about it after the jump.

Here's what the the old lords of Deep Silver have to say about it - the update gets you:

- Improved texture resolution for items, objects, foliage, terrain, particle effects, characters, monsters and other in-game models.
- Improved draw distance & viewing ranges
- Larger caches leading to smoother frame-rates & less LOD streaming
- The introduction of new state of the art post-process effects such as bokeh depth of field and HDR bloom
- Addition of a new physically based, more visually realistic cloud rendering technique that adds even more spectacular skies and sunsets to the dynamic day-night cycles.

These are also included in the 64-bit version of the game upon purchase, for those who don't already own it. Keep in mind that if you're running a 32-bit operating system then you'll just be getting the original version. More details here.

Just to recap, in case you can't be bothered with the diaries, Risen 3 stars a nameless hero with a piratical background, who winds up getting his soul stolen and embarking on a series of not particularly piratical fantasy adventures to get it back and rid an island continent of assorted great evils. There are monsters to fight, there are quests to complete, and there is a semi-open world structure which permits hitting the main objectives in an order of your choice, as well as signing up with a faction of your choice.

It's unclear whether this suggests the publisher is quietly paving the way for a fourth Risen - there's been some faint murmuring about it on the Internet but nothing official. I've reached out to Deep Silver for word.