Comments on: Gothic IV Gets New Name, Needs Another One

By: Halarion [me]

Halarion [me] — Sun, 23 Aug 2009 19:42:31 +0000

Finished Gothic I two times and played it 6 or 7 times. My favorite, i’ll never forget the feeling when i played it the first time( eg. swamp of the brodherhood, night, blue lights, sound of insects………).
Finished Gothic II three times now finishing 4-th (finnaly finishing as mage :D, twice as paladin, once as dragon hunter [ yes, i'm a sick man :) ] ) , played more then 10 times.. finished Night of the Raven (using cheats) too damn hard (say what u want it was boring, it’s almost impossible to play as mage, need to much learning points.)
Gothic II, also my favorite :D

Gothic III, barely finished once, i needed whole one year (not playing all the time of course), seen much, killed much, became avatar of Innos and a king of Humans. Even when i was level 60 i had trouble melee figting with animals ( that boars are MONSTERS OF HELL IT SELF, hate them so much), magic did the trick, comet strike-gift from gods, orcs flying all over the battlefield .

Now, when you think i’m just a big showoff and I have your attention let me say few words:

Fighting system in all three games is terrible, disastrous, abominable, only now when i played it for so long i can ignore it or, more likely ( lots of you may be surprised) enjoy it!!!
Magic system, and rune creation in G II, alchemy, role-play, level progress, chapter definition, story line, weapon creation, game collection, …. guilds, options, dragons, politics, IN-GAME FEELING (best quality in series) …. and so on. …. and so on…. aso ….

Lot of people wrote many good things here so i wont write about huge short-comings of the series, they are well known.
Just want to say…. I hope they wont let us down…. again…

P.S. If anybody knows where u can give you advices to game producers, let us all know :D

Thanks for “listening”.
BS

By: Unknown

Unknown — Thu, 22 May 2008 15:46:26 +0000

And the Gothic brand is utterly destroyed. This is just going to be another oblivion I guess. It’s not a Gothic anyways if it is not developed by Pirahna Bytes.

By: UncleLou

UncleLou — Wed, 21 May 2008 20:02:58 +0000

le, and they all had enough “issues” that I was not even interested enough to complete the demos. So, if your combat system and play balance are so poor that you can bore or frustrate people in 10 or 20 minutes, how many copies do you think you will sell after word gets out

The combat system and balance in G1 and G2 was far from poor. And they sold tons of copies in continental Europe, particularly the German-speaking countries. You can not overestimate the status G1 and G2 have here. Amongst the highest ratings given to games in mags, leading positions in reader polls ever since their release, etc. Gothic is HUGE here. The Halo-kind of huge.

And entirely justified, in my opinion.

Edit:

My point being, Gothic is not some kind of crappy niche game that noone bought and that needs to significantly improve. It never quite managed to do well in the US though – which doesn’t surprise me – it’s a, in lack of a better word, very European game – which is one of the things that make it so refreshing. That it didn’t do well in the UK – well, the UK isn’t exactly known to be a stronghold of PC gaming, is it?

Anyway, again, Gothic 3 really was quite poor. But somehow the whole series seems to be seen in a very distorted way, from where I am standing, by some of you. It’s a bit like coming into a parallel universe for me where people haven’t heard of Fallout or mostly think it’s a bit shit. ;-)

By: sinister agent

sinister agent — Wed, 21 May 2008 19:36:59 +0000

The 5th will reportedly be called “Generica: An utterly bland pointlessness.”

What is it with RPGs and lousy names? I mean, honestly.

By: Cogar

Cogar — Wed, 21 May 2008 18:35:11 +0000

I played all three Gothic demos hoping to find something worthwhile, and they all had enough “issues” that I was not even interested enough to complete the demos. So, if your combat system and play balance are so poor that you can bore or frustrate people in 10 or 20 minutes, how many copies do you think you will sell after word gets out? Changing the name or color scheme will not solve this problem.

By: CLLMM

CLLMM — Wed, 21 May 2008 01:11:47 +0000

I apoligize to the internet for mistaking Lionhead for a US company. You may have Peter Molyneux back, after he completes Black & White 3.

By: UncleLou

UncleLou — Tue, 20 May 2008 20:55:19 +0000

But – well, it isn’t. :) Gothic 1 and Gothic 2 at least were rather clever, almost political games, with different factions like conservatives, liberals and a green party, basically. They just also happened to be fantasy games, but thy were pleasantly far away from your typical high fantasy kitsch.

Let’s hope Spellbound understands this. :-/

By: Jonathan

Jonathan — Tue, 20 May 2008 20:51:03 +0000

Well in the indie tradition of Fuck Space and War Twat I declare this game Fantasy Wank.

By: UncleLou

UncleLou — Tue, 20 May 2008 20:35:03 +0000

I played Gothic 3 and found it to be a horrible Oblivion knockoff. The game didn’t even have a map IIRC.

Of course it had a map. To call it an Oblivion knockoff really is a bit cheeky though, especially as G1 and G2 were miles ahead of pretty much all the ES games.

By: UncleLou

UncleLou — Tue, 20 May 2008 20:27:07 +0000

I’ve got to admit, I didn’t finish Gothic 3 – and Gothic 1 and 2 are two of my favourite RPGs, and still years ahead of the flashier competition – still not seen another game with more believable factions and more convincing NPC behaviour. It was all scripted, of course, but oh how cleverly it was done.

I don’t know if this was ever news out of Germany, but the team basically admitted after Gothic 3 that they were way too ambitious, and cut lots of content out, just randomly dropping monsters on the map in the end so it wouldn’t be too empty in an act of panic before the release.

It’ll be interesting to see what the new team does with the franchise, and almost more intersting to see what Piranha Bytes next game will be like.

By: Matt

Matt — Tue, 20 May 2008 20:26:02 +0000

They should call it “I’m not a goth I’m an emo!”

I like the idea of the different lighting for Europe and USA. It suggests all Americans are sunny idealistic, optimists and the Europeans are pessimistic, “realists”. As a Brit that stereotype suits me fine.

I have never played any of the Gothic games, I have to say they all sounded poor to me. I can’t say I have played any of the games Spellbound entertainment have listed on their site either. It certainly seems this will be a departure for them, their other games looked to be predominantly isometric rts/rpg hybrid thingies.

By: Zac North

Zac North — Tue, 20 May 2008 20:25:01 +0000

I played Gothic 3 and found it to be a horrible Oblivion knockoff. The game didn’t even have a map IIRC.