Panzer Dragoon II Zwei: Remake's developers are listening to the Internet's impressions of the first batch of screenshots - you can share your feedback on our Discord.
It’s been just under a week since the first screenshots of Panzer Dragoon II Zwei: Remake were released to the public.
We’ve been fortunate enough to have Sebastian Kijaczko, the CEO of Storm Trident, join the Panzer Dragoon Legacy Discord and read the feedback we’ve posted so far. Storm Trident is developing the game alongside MegaPixel Studio, the developers of the first Panzer Dragoon: Remake. Sebastian has confirmed that “it’s almost a fresh project with expertise from first game” and that the teams are once again developing the game in Unity “but with a lot of custom upgrades and modifications”. The number of people working on the game depends on actual development phase, but he believes there will be around 40-50 people involved in total who will be displayed in the credits. Regarding the use of AI generated content, he confirms that there is none: “I can assure, there is no AI art in Zwei, we do not use that.”
Unfortunately the reception to the first screenshots across the Internet hasn’t been positive, but I’m hopeful there’s still time to make improvements before final game is released. If we look at the first screenshots of Panzer Dragoon: Remake, the overall look of game turned out to be quite different, and we know that this was at least in part due to fan feedback.
My own thoughts are that, while there are some notable technical improvements here, the art style looks like a continuation of the first remake which I had some concerns about, particularly around the use of colour and overall departure to the feeling of flying though a desolate world that Team Andromeda were going for. As with the first remake, the tunnels in episode 4 include their own lighting on the walls and beneath the water to get around the fact that it would otherwise be pitch black (Tomb Raider 1-3 Remastered solved this another way, by adding holes in the ceiling), but as a result, it feels more high tech than it did in the original.
I think the vibe differs quite a lot here. The areas feel less dense. Particularly the shots of episodes 3 and 4 which feel more open and visually lighter, whereas the originals of those stages had a closed in “claustrophobic” feel to give the impression that you were deep under the forest or underground. Episode 6, the Shelcoof stage, feels very clean in the remake, whereas the original ship looked dirty and textured. Technically it looks improved over the first remake, and some of the brighter aspects are toned down, but still feels too removed from what it could be to match the original’s tone. The differences in art style of the original remake were considered an artistic choice, so that is likely the case here as well.
In some respects, the art direction looks better than the original game, with a more earthly colour palette that was absent from the first remake. But as Lagi, the creator of The Art of Panzer Dragoon noted on Discord, “I think it feels worse than PD1 remake because Zwei had such amazing direction”. Panzer Dragoon II Zwei was the first Panzer Dragoon game I played and introduced me to this fictional world, so to see such a departure is hard to swallow, while at the same time I will likely still enjoy it for what it is, rather than what could have been.
What did you think of the first batch of screenshots? Share your thoughts on Discord and Bluesky.