Gothic 3

[Daddl 10]

Just got the mail from Amazon.de: my preordered Collectors Edition is in the mail and should arrive today or tomorrow. Yay! Now I can ease the wait for ArmA a little!

Seeing that there's quite a few more Gothic fanboys out here in these forums I can't wait to see your opinions on this sequel and it's story. From the test I've seen so far this promises to be a worthy successor to Gothic I & II - although they had to withdraw the first release version after tests came up with a lot of bugs. Let's hope the now released version is fixed. At least Piranha always had good support for they games.

Official release date is tomorrow for most of Europe and the 20th of October for the US.

from the game description at play.com:

Quote[/b] ]You have saved your home island from the forces of evil in Gothic I and Gothic II. Now it is time to travel to the realms of the mainland.

Invading Orcs have enslaved the human kingdom. There are but a few free humans in the icy north and the southern desert and a handful of rebels hiding in the forests and mountains of Midland.

You may either join the rebellion or serve the Orcish Usurpers but you will ultimately tip the scales and decide the outcome of the last war to save humanity.

There is no simple linear story in Gothic III - every game will be different and unique - but all will ultimately lead to you deciding the fate of humankind.

* Specially designed easy combat system

* Clear main goals - story driven yet dictated by player's choice

* Huge free-roaming world - virtually no boundaries

* Advanced human behavior AI for hundreds of individual characters with full audio dialogues

* Countless side-quests for the player to choose from

* Over 50 different monsters and animals and dozens of human enemies

* Over 50 different powerful spells and over a hundred different weapons

* Unique class-free character development

Here's a link where you can get live footage commented by one of the developers, showing the world and telling something about the story and environments. Looks really nice!

[Placebo 29]

Gothic2 was the best RPG I've ever played so I'm really looking forward to this

[Journeyman 0]

Is this game a bit like Oblivion (first/third person mythical fantasy shooter)?

[berghoff 11]

Is this game a bit like Oblivion (first/third person mythical fantasy shooter)?

I think so. Looks to be nice game, I'll keep an eye on it.

[XCess 0]

Gothic2 was the best RPG I've ever played so I'm really looking forward to this

Better thann Fallout?!?! Never!!

Haven't played any of the Gothic series so far, but if they are better (or as good as) than the good ol' isometric Fallout series and Baldur's Gate games (playing through Throne of Bhaal right now) I'll definately give em a try.

[Daddl 10]

Gothic2 was the best RPG I've ever played so I'm really looking forward to this

Better thann Fallout?!?! Never!!

Haven't played any of the Gothic series so far, but if they are better (or as good as) than the good ol' isometric Fallout series and Baldur's Gate games (playing through Throne of Bhaal right now) I'll definately give em a try.

Better than Fallout? Different (although, considering they never fixed that bugged safe in Fallout - nor all those other pesky bugs - I'm tempted to say yes).

Better than Baldurs Gate? Yes (although I liked the Baldurs series very much), but it's also very, very different.

The Gothic series has it's own style and I find it's atmosphere much denser and more refreshing than that of the similar Elder Scrolls series or traditional RPGs like the BG series. TES and Gothic are both each a great game experience, having great visuals and effects, full of things to discover and good story telling. Still the Gothic world feels much more natural and lively. The different factions are never really good nor bad, and it's your descision whom you support.

For my part I can just second Placebo's statement - and that is without disrespecting any of the other great games in that genre. I very much enjoyed Morrowind and Oblivion, and all parts of the BG series (and also Fallout 1 & 2 a long time ago), but Gothic is something special to me.

If you have the chance try get the old games somewhere (they are dead cheap by now). While the first game is technology wise quite dated by now it's story is still quite good - and Gothic 2 and the Addon Night of the Raven might be two to three years old, but they still are visually quite pleasing. While knowledge of the old games definitely isn't required, it's nice to meet characters from those games again, seing them develop and follow their own goals (for example I can't wait to see whether Lee - one of the characters that's been part of the story since Gothic 1 - finally gets his revenge).

[sanctuary 19]

I only played the first Gothic game, and enjoyed it very lot, more than i enjoyed Morrowind, despite the awfull interface that is featured in Gothic (one of the less user friendly one i ever see in a RPG).

While the 3rd game is not for my system yet, is the second game really as good on the possiblities , story and length as the 1st one ?

[dmarkwick 261]

Is this game a bit like Oblivion (first/third person mythical fantasy shooter)?

Crikey I hope not - Oblivion was the biggest disappointment this year. And a terrible step down for the series in general.

[Daddl 10]

I only played the first Gothic game, and enjoyed it very lot, more than i enjoyed Morrowind, despite the awfull interface that is featured in Gothic (one of the less user friendly one i ever see in a RPG).

Mhh, while I admit it took some getting used to, I never had any problems with it. But this is one of the changes in part three, exactly because many people complained about that.

Quote[/b] ]While the 3rd game is not for my system yet, is the second game really as good on the possiblities , story and length as the 1st one ?

You should definitely try the gold edition of Gothic 2 (includes the addon 'Night of the Raven' which is an additional area that you can play anytime after advancing somewhat in the normal campaign). It's just as great as the first part - if not even better (there's an old thread about it - the addon has been translated since then).

[Journeyman 0]

Is this game a bit like Oblivion (first/third person mythical fantasy shooter)?

Crikey I hope not - Oblivion was the biggest disappointment this year. And a terrible step down for the series in general.

Not wishing to hijack this thread, but in what way is Oblivion a disappointment? So far I've only played it for a few days and have a long way to go with it. I never played Morrowind or the others so cannot compare.

I'm not a great fan of these sort of games but felt inspired to give it a try on grounds of graphics and also my wife was interested although she has now stopped playing it as it is a bit 'over magical' and somewhat confusing mission wise!

I like the medieval setting though but am a bit put off by all the magic and myth! If Gothic 3 is a similar game I don't know whether I will bother with it unless the graphics are outstanding and the storyline is a bit more credible and realistic! Is Gothic 3 also set in medieval times and is it also full of myth and magic? .... Hmm, maybe I just need more imagination and fantasy in my life!  

[morgwin 1]

Is it out in the UK yet?

[XCess 0]

Is this game a bit like Oblivion (first/third person mythical fantasy shooter)?

Crikey I hope not - Oblivion was the biggest disappointment this year. And a terrible step down for the series in general.

Not wishing to hijack this thread, but in what way is Oblivion a disappointment? So far I've only played it for a few days and have a long way to go with it. I never played Morrowind or the others so cannot compare.

I'm not a great fan of these sort of games but felt inspired to give it a try on grounds of graphics and also my wife was interested although she has now stopped playing it as it is a bit 'over magical' and somewhat confusing mission wise!

I like the medieval setting though but am a bit put off by all the magic and myth! If Gothic 3 is a similar game I don't know whether I will bother with it unless the graphics are outstanding and the storyline is a bit more credible and realistic! Is Gothic 3 also set in medieval times and is it also full of myth and magic? .... Hmm, maybe I just need more imagination and fantasy in my life!

The only problem with Oblivion was that most creatures were levelled the same as the player, you could finish the game as level 3 if you wanted to (I think I finished it as a level 6 acrobat or something).

But a "Random Oblivion" mod was released which spawns creatures regardless of the player's level. Making hiking through the countryside a lot more enjoyable, as you could bump into some level 30 creatures at the beginning of the game.. I remember battling against a minotour lord before even going to that pplace that gets attack, and fighting it off with arrows.

[karantan 0]

Gothic3 is out? Aw, that's good news! Despite I'm not an RPG fan, Gothic series are one of the best games (not just in RPG gangre) I ever played, and I warmly recommending it to enyone who didn't try it yet; Gothic2/Gold Edition must be now so cheap that hurts, and it have the 'Night Of The Raven' expansion in it.

XCess, in my scorecard Gothic2 is better than Fallout and  Baldur's Gate together. And Morrowind, and Oblivion, and ...

Anyone who's interested: http://www.worldofgothic.com

[Placebo 29]

Gothic is to RPG as PES/WE is to football as Opf/ArmA is to FPS

[berghoff 11]

It is out right now .

[Balschoiw 0]

Just watching a friend playing Gothic 3.

It looks great but it´s very demanding for hardware. Although he has a really fat dual-core comp with state of the art gfx card the game lags when streaming terrain. I doubt it would run in any way on my XP2800.

Apart from that it looks like a great game. Now I only need to get my friend away from the comp...some simulated call on the handy maybe ?

[karantan 0]

Yes I read the reports that the game is hardware demanding, that's the price to an awsome graphic Gothic 3 is suposing to have (what do you think how the things with ArmA will be    ), but I also read that it runs quite satisfiently on 'older' machines, not on full settings of course, so your buddy should consider to lower the details a bit, and go down with resolution maybe, and above all to reduce the view distance.

The predictions were that the map in this game would be/is huge (the land of Myrtana) in relation to a previous Gothic's maps. Is it is so?

[Daddl 10]

It looks great but it´s very demanding for hardware. Although he has a really fat dual-core comp with state of the art gfx card the game lags when streaming terrain. I doubt it would run in any way on my XP2800.

I'm playing on an Athlon XP 2800+, but of course not on full details, but still with 1024x768, Shader 2.0 and full postprocessing (GFX is a AGP ATI 1600 with 512MB RAM, the comp has 1GB RAM) and most settings on middle. The game looks fine (not as good as it could with better hardware, but good enough), and is playable so far.

There are quite a lot of complains about bugs in the forums atm, but apart from some (most likely gfx driver based) minor clipping errors I haven't encountered any problems so far.

I feel like !!!

[kavoven 4]

I have massive performance problems...

Gothic 1&2 were the best RPGs I've ever played and part 3 looks to me very, very, very, very cool, too. Seems like the best of the three parts... I love the soundtrack...

But I'm reading a book during the loading times and I have great difficulties with the performance, although I have turned everything down to middle or minimum.

(AMD 64 bit 3500+, 1024 mb ram, GF 6800GT)

Oblivion ran on high settings with no problems, but the really developers need to improve this...

[Daddl 10]

But I'm reading a book during the loading times and I have great difficulties with the performance, although I have turned everything down to middle or minimum.

(AMD 64 bit 3500+, 1024 mb ram, GF 6800GT)

Try defragmenting your hd (worked wonders for me) and set the resource cache to maximum. The loading times are tiresome, but as I've got my notebook right besides my desktop I use that to do some work or browsing inbetween.

[dmarkwick 261]

Is this game a bit like Oblivion (first/third person mythical fantasy shooter)?

Crikey I hope not - Oblivion was the biggest disappointment this year. And a terrible step down for the series in general.

Not wishing to hijack this thread, but in what way is Oblivion a disappointment? So far I've only played it for a few days and have a long way to go with it. I never played Morrowind or the others so cannot compare.

I'm not a great fan of these sort of games but felt inspired to give it a try on grounds of graphics and also my wife was interested although she has now stopped playing it as it is a bit 'over magical' and somewhat confusing mission wise!

I like the medieval setting though but am a bit put off by all the magic and myth! If Gothic 3 is a similar game I don't know whether I will bother with it unless the graphics are outstanding and the storyline is a bit more credible and realistic! Is Gothic 3 also set in medieval times and is it also full of myth and magic? .... Hmm, maybe I just need more imagination and fantasy in my life!

Well I don't want to turn this into a bashing thread, but as I was directly asked...

There are many things wrong with Oblivion, but at the same time it's subjective. I've heard of people who enjoy it like it's the best game ever. My problem with it is that it's aimed at people who don't like RPGs.

It has a built in walkthrough. You hear that? A BUILT IN WALKTHROUGH

At every step in the game you are:

told where to go.

an arrow always shows you where to go

always told what you just did

always told what you should do next

always told what you think

always told what you need and

where to find it

etc etc etc. You don't ever need to think any problem through. Ever. It's for people who like to look at pretty things while following a walkthrough, seriously.

But anyway, Gothic sounds interesting. I've never played any of the previous games, but I'm willing to give it a go. After lots of reading from the actual players first, natch.

[Daddl 10]

Ok, I took advantage of the weekend (and the fact that my wife was away) to play Gothic 3. What shall I say, it's just the good Gothic feeling all over again. Great dialogs (all spoken by good voice actors), the typical feeling of sitting between all chairs, nice visuals (even on my old Athlon XP2800) and a very vivid environment. The quests are entertaining, and starting a rebellion after trying to cheat allmost everyone is simply a good feeling!

The bugs that are said to plague the game have yet to present them to me. After installing the game on friday I immediately added the patch and started playing - no bugs encountered so far. The game crashed once or twice (in two and a half days and about 30 hours of gameplay), and there were a few clipping issues when I had the graphics on Shader 3.0 (now back to 2.0 for performance issues), but that's about it. With my machine (at least CPU-wise) being near the minimum specs I'm rather surprised how well the game performs. There is the occasional stuttering, but it plays fine.

So far I've finished Aruna, Reddock, Kap Dun and Montera (the latter two are now in rebel hands, too), and I'm now in the middle of ridding Trelis from the Orc Invaders. Not sure if I'll go to the southern lands first or continue with Geldern next. I want to recommend you to choose very well what you spend your learning points on - it's hard not to mix them too much, as everything - from smithy to hunting is actually very usefull. You only get 10 per level (which equals to just 2 extra abilities, spells or ability increases, basic stats cost 1 lp to raise by 4 - with 100 being an average to low value in most).

The good news: enemies don't level with you like in Oblivion.

The bad news: you suck. That is, until you get your skills and abilities up somewhat - but by then you meet real oponents, too...