Last updated on 01 July 2009 20:45 +0100

Journey to Azenera by Zeoc

latest update on this series

Download demo

Continued....

Note that the storyline of this series is completely different to PS2Drakan's and is no way connected to Surreal Software. Depending on what happens in the end though it could even fit in between Drakan1 and Drakan2 making it a sort of Drakan1 and a half if you know what I mean. The series is early in development so there will be a lot of changes but for the time being here is the backstory and a basic overview of a later part of the storyline plus one or two notes to explain the ending of Drakan better. (Story may be subject to change). 

Story

This story takes place after Rynn and Arokh have fallen through the rift, only to appear in a desolate valley. The runeblade disintegrated out of Rynn's hands upon exiting the rift, but all her other weapons were still intact. Rynn wandered around and finally met up with Arokh, but Delon was still nowhere to be found. Not knowing what else to do, they made their way through the canyons and around the tall mountains.
"Rynn," grumbled Arokh, "All your armor and weapons are making you too heavy to carry. Could you please just drop some of it?"
"I already dropped my dragon armor and plate mail, as well as all my weapons, and now you want me to get rid of this banded mail too? You're the great, mighty Arokh, who saved the world from the Dark Union, and you're letting a little extra weight bother you?"
"I'm still not fully recovered from my stone sleep," explained Arokh, "but don't worry, I'm getting my energy back. My fire is more powerful than ever!"
"What about your other breaths?" asked Rynn as she dropped the banded mail and put on her original light leather armor.
"Well, I kind of lost those a while ago. I'm a fire dragon, remember, so those other ones were induced by magic and had limited power. I'll have to absorb more magic energy to use those breaths again."
"Your fire is good enough for me," said Rynn. "It won our final battle against Navaros, after all!"
They flew south, across a short section of sea, until they came to the land on the other side. The path in front of them was surrounded by mountains, which got narrower as they went further inland, until it became a canyon. The ground in this place was covered with water, and they turned a corner and found a large circular gate at the end.
"That looks kind of familiar," said Rynn.
They flew carefully through the gate and landed on a small island to take a break. Rynn found a small club, like the ones the creatures that ransacked her village had used, and it fit comfortably in her hand She started practicing her fighting moves, when suddenly she remembered something.
"Arokh, I know where we saw those gates!" she yelled. "They were in that grotto, and the volcano, too! But weren't they usually blocked by some kind of force..."
The gate lit up with a mystical green light, and sure enough, a force field appeared in the middle of the gate, blocking it. Rynn and Arokh were suddenly trapped...

Overview

Journey to Azenera will be a large adventure starting where the game left off. The game will feature a reasonable number of friendly and non friendly NPC's which reveal the plot as you go along. This is done via text messages that you may have seen in other Drakan add on levels.

During your quest, you will eventually find out that there is an alternate dimension in which Drakan is falling into the sun and cannot be saved. The evil forces on the other side want to keep the rift between worlds open so both are destroyed by the resulting explosion. I don't want to give too much away but Ill tell you one thing; the world was split into two separate realities when Heron killed Navaros back in the dark wars. The Order of the Flame and Arokh did not win the battle in the other world and the Navaros you saw at the end of the game was the 'alternate Navaros' crossing over so he could escape and close the rift. Also its worth mentioning that Navaros required the rift crystals from both worlds in order to escape (remember that 'cap' on the mouth of the rift)?

I'm sure you have a lot of questions such as why is Drakan falling into the sun? How was the rift opened without the rift crystal? Why did Navaros want to take over the body of  a child when he had a draconic form? Most of all, who was that laugh in the mirror? Well, you will have to play it to find out. All will be revealed. 

Finally

You can check out the progress here and the demo can be downloaded here.  

There are various test versions over at Zeoc's site, but however these are not to be considered the final version as when the series is complete, it will be available as a single download with all 14 levels included and many things may be missing from the test versions. Final versions of levels will be available separately but these are for play testing purposes.

The series seems to be developing at a rate of 1 level per 2 months so you are probably looking at 1-2 years before its completed.

About the demo:- This includes completed versions of levels 1 to 4. There will be further releases of Azenera each with a new level tagged on until the final release will have all 14 levels. The review will be done when the level series is complete.

Update 29th August 2004

Zeoc (Salix) has posted on his site that the series is now effectively cancelled due to the main problem of little or no time to work on it; another being the dwindling Drakan community. From his point of view, what is the point in spending so much work on something that will be enjoyed only by a few? The final reason is that Zeoc wants to do so much more with the series but can't due to the limitations of Drakan's Riot 1 game engine and no publicly available source code.

I guess we all knew in reality this would not be finished, but if you want to send a few words of encouragement, check by his website and drop him an email... 

Update 27th December 2003

Just an update on the series so far; it looks to me that very little has been done on this series since the release of level four back in August 2002. So, no idea when this will be finished (if at all) but I guess we are looking at a couple of years at least. Ill try and get some more info if I can.

Update 30th August 2002

Level 4 has now been completed, you can grab the latest version which also includes levels 1, 2 and 3 from Zeoc's site.

Update 22nd January 2002

Level3 is finished! You can download the latest test version of the series at Zeoc's site here. When complete, all levels will be in one single download. Here is what Zeoc mentioned on the site regarding the latest version:-

"Azenera level 3 is done now.  At least, it's done in the sense that you can get through the level and do everything you're supposed to be able to do.  None of the Azenera levels will truly be done until I stop working on the series for good, because the entire series is a work in progress and I'll probably keep changing it around and adding stuff.  I probably accidentally left in some stupid bug in level 3 like a character saying the wrong thing or a visibility toggler not working the right way, but I'll play through it again and see if everything works."

Update 11th August 2001

Level2 complete, level3 70% complete. Expected completion date of series October 2002.

So, have you played the demo? Why not tell others what you thought of it in the level feedback forum.

Update 27th December 2001

Work on this series had stopped for a while, but work has resumed and currently level 3 is being finished up and should be available in a month or so. We have been assured that the series will be completed but I suspect  it may end up being cut down, maybe to 10 levels instead of the planned 14. Nevertheless, I can't wait till its finished!