Incline Gothic turns 15 years

[thesheeep]

So, is Gothic 4 playable by now?

Spoiler

 

[ERYFKRAD]

Eh? I don't know of any Gothic 4. If you're talking about Risen, it's been patched okay.

 

[Joni Odin von Hassenstein]

Eh? I don't know of any Gothic 4. If you're talking about Risen, it's been patched okay.

He's talking about Arcania.
It's not developed by PB and nobody likes it, so probably not really worth playing anyway.

 

[Darth Roxor]

nobody likes it, so probably not really worth playing anyway.

i disagree on both counts

 

[ERYFKRAD]

Heresy

Once again, I don't know of any Gothic 4.

 

[Old One]

My only regret so far is that Gothic's early game on a first run is a one-of-a-kind experience, since I know I won't be as incompetent in my second run.

After you finish the game, wait a year or two before you try it again. It's still quite fun to replay.

Besides, you have Gothic 2 to jump to after you finish Gothic 1.

 

[Sigourn]

My only regret so far is that Gothic's early game on a first run is a one-of-a-kind experience, since I know I won't be as incompetent in my second run.

After you finish the game, wait a year or two before you try it again. It's still quite fun to replay.

Besides, you have Gothic 2 to jump to after you finish Gothic 1.

It's true. Guess that's a big advantage Gothic has over Morrowind: there's a sequel that's even better. I did try Gothic 3 with the latest community patch and it feels like shit, somehow it manages to sound dead despite a huge fight going on. But it will be a looong time before I play it, and by extension, Risen 1 as well.

I've finished looting Gomez' castle. Now I'm going to read the books I've accumulated (no bonus for reading them, right?) before I go to the New Camp to continue with the main quest.

 

[Orobis]

Guess that's a big advantage Gothic has over Morrowind: there's a sequel that's even better.

Gothic is just a flat out better game than Morrowind, and this is coming from a fan of Morrowind.

 

[Sigourn]

Guess that's a big advantage Gothic has over Morrowind: there's a sequel that's even better.

Gothic is just a flat out better game than Morrowind, and this is coming from a fan of Morrowind.

Yeah, Morrowind is a game that I can't seem to stay focused on for very long, whereas Gothic is much more fun. It just feels better in a lot of ways: atmosphere, animations, graphics (character models), voiced dialogue, real-time dialogue, COMBAT, sound, lively NPCs, actual climbing. It's funny how I've always said Skyrim's only advantages over Morrowind were thanks to its technology, yet Gothic managed to do everything better than Skyrim, and with almost a decade of anticipation (and one year before Morrowind to boot).

It's a shame because I picture Morrowind playing like Gothic with all the elements mentioned above and I jizz my pantsu. As it is, Morrowind's NPCs could be replaced with computers and nothing would be lost.

 

[Orobis]

Morrowind is a game that I can't seem to stay focused on for very long

Yup same thing happened to me last time i played it. Spent like 4 hours modding the shit out of it and than i only played it for like 2-3 hours, got bored than uninstalled, that was more than a couple of years ago.

yet Gothic managed to do everything better than Skyrim, and with almost a decade of anticipation (and one year before Morrowind to boot).

It's a shame because I picture Morrowind playing like Gothic with all the elements mentioned above

Not sure if i said this before but, all current gamedevs can learn a lot from Gothic 1/2, esp Bethesda. In a way, Gothic pretty much ruined Morrowind for me as well, cause of all the things you mentioned. Though Morrowind is still playable, it's aged very badly, and i don't have the patience to go through the modding process for it again so it's doubtful i'l ever play Morrowind again or any Bethesda trash for that matter.

 

[CreamyBlood]

I envy anybody trying out NoTR for the first time. I'm pretty sure somebody said the exact same thing to me in these forums a few years ago.

 

[thesheeep]

nobody likes it, so probably not really worth playing anyway.

i disagree on both counts

Surely, you must be joking.

 

[ERYFKRAD]

I envy anybody trying out NoTR for the first time. I'm pretty sure somebody said the exact same thing to me in these forums a few years ago.

Truly, few things beat the feel of 1st time gothic, especially when you go and beat the crap outta Bullitt.

 

[Sigourn]

So I just finished Gothic 1. My observations about the game, having played it for 32 hours. I'll try not to repeat anything I've previously said. I'll be comparing Gothic to Morrowind, given the latter was (until recently) my standard for open world RPGs.

Controls:

- The controls are bad, but you do get used to them. Just because I got used to "CTRL + Forward" doesn't mean than "Key" would be much better for picking things up and interacting with NPCs. Especially when one of those keys is a movement key and pressing them incorrectly means moving. I ended up settling for keyboard + mouse, as I like to be able to move the camera around. Like I expected, part of the issue is finding the right keys and sticking with them.
- I never needed to use the strafe keys. Pointless garbage.
- Swimming is awful. Probably the worst part of the controls. Thank God it's limited to a few parts of the game.
- Getting Acrobatics was probably the worst decision I ever made. Mainly because, for some reason, sometimes my character would jump and roll while other times he would dive into the air and roll... using the same keys while running. This meant that some places of the temple of the Sleeper were annoying to sort out because my character's movement was unpredictable and the place was filled with lava.

Combat:

- The progression system is fantastic. In Morrowind you get better, but you don't feel better despite being clearly OP by the end of the game. In Gothic you do feel better. Marvelously so.
- The combat is nowhere near as good as the rest of the game is. It's certainly much better and entertaining than Morrowind's, but it has many quirks that could be ironed out and I hope to see that in Gothic 2, which I'll play whenever I finish the other many games (PS:T, Wasteland 2, The Witcher, Fallout, Deus Ex) I've started playing.
- I despise the "lol I move backwards and I'm immune" shit the NPCs pull off. Given their retardation, I guess this is a necessary evil, otherwise battles would be very easy to breeze by. Incidentally, the Fanatic Templars were a huge pain in the ass (must have died 15+ times) until I realized the pattern. Afterwards, I never died once against them, despite using the same equipment and having the same stats.
- Overall, despite how unpolished it is, it really is one of the best aspects of the game.
- I didn't use much magic at all, but it's commendable that there's a difference between scrolls and runes and the existence of Circles of Magic. I could see myself playing this again as a mage.

Interface:

- The best part is how simple the HUD is. Just health bar and nothing else.
- The worst part is everything else. Having to scroll through thousands of items is not my idea of fun. Why don't weapons stack? Why can't I select more than 10 items of X at a time? Makes getting 5000 pieces of ore in a trade a huge annoyance. The inventory resetting whenever I moved from one place to another was even worse. The game was designed for a keyboard, but there were better ways of making a keyboard-based inventory. Hell, it's not difficult: grid based inventory, more items at a time on the screen, weapons stack, done.
- I really liked having to buy maps, and I would have liked it even more if the main places had a fucking name on them, like every map in existence. Pic related, my wallpaper.

Sound:

- "Atmospheric" is such an overrated word that can mean vastly different things, so I'll just say that Gothic's sound and music are atmospheric. I felt like I was inside the colony as opposed to playing a videogame, something that is very noticeable in Morrowind: the tracks loop all the time and you can tell easily when they have started looping.
- The sound effects are neatly done (different sounds for different surfaces, for example).

Story & World:

- Surprisingly engaging, though like Morrowind, the ending is shit. And it's even worse than Morrowind. I may be wrong, but it really feels like the game was designed with a sequel in mind. When I got to the end of the Sleeper temple and started buffing up with potions found inside of mummies, I expected the final battle to be of colossal proportions. It was a total disappointment, sadly.
- Gothic's world is a world where the events unfold like chain reactions. And that is good. The effects of the main quest are seen and felt in the game. Places collapse, guilds turn against each other, you make new allies, old allies are against you, etc.
- Bonus points for allowing me to murder Gomez BUUUUUUUUT making it optional. Not being allowed to return would be lame and would leave that end loose. Being forced to return and murder him would be even worse. My motivation was real: I just wanted to see the bastard die and I knew exactly how to return.

Overall: this is a better game than Morrowind. It is much smaller in scope, but so much care went into it that really makes it stand out. I'm not talking about lore books, which are books and nothing else, and they just stay there (whereas Deus Ex's newspapers, for example, allowed you to understand the context of the game. This is the reason why my favorite books in Morrowind are those related to the main quest). The animations, the voiced dialogue, the lack of loading screens for 99% of the game, the guilds, the progression, the interactions. They really make a wonderful RPG and I know now why it is so beloved by the Codex.

 

[ERYFKRAD]

When trading, using ctrl/shift + action + left/right lets you move tens/hundreds of stacked stuff at once. Don't remember the exact keybindings but it was there. G2 has much better controls in quite a few ways. And you could bind all weapons and magic to number keys.

 

[Sigourn]

When trading, using ctrl/shift + action + left/right lets you move tens/hundreds of stacked stuff at once. Don't remember the exact keybindings but it was there. G2 has much better controls in quite a few ways. And you could bind all weapons and magic to number keys.

I know I could use Action + Strafing keys to move 10 items at a time, but dunno about moving hundreds. G2 has better controls and it actually has a grid based inventory. It feels so creepy in a way, as if it was another game wearing Gothic's clothes.

 

[T. Reich]

- Getting Acrobatics was probably the worst decision I ever made. Mainly because, for some reason, sometimes my character would jump and roll while other times he would dive into the air and roll... using the same keys while running. This meant that some places of the temple of the Sleeper were annoying to sort out because my character's movement was unpredictable and the place was filled with lava.

For me, it seemed like a result of some mod or other fucking up the acro. I've had the same problem in my recent modded replay of G1, yet I recall that I'd never had the same problem in my earlier plays of G1, where acro played like it was supposed to - jumping forward made you do the long lunges 100% of the time.

 

[Kahr]

Wow, he did really shut up and play the game.
And also his conclusion does make sense.

 

[ERYFKRAD]

Lucas9 I salute you for having manned up thus.

 

[zwanzig_zwoelf]

Another retard turned into a normal human being.
As a person who also hated Gothic, but eventually got into it and loved it, I know dat feeling. Congratulations!

 

[Sigourn]

Wow, he did really shut up and play the game.
And also his conclusion does make sense.

Lucas9 I salute you for having manned up thus.

Another retard turned into a normal human being.
As a person who also hated Gothic, but eventually got into it and loved it, I know dat feeling. Congratulations!

Thanx bros.

On a slightly related note, I installed Gothic 2 and began playing (though I will leave it for later), and god damn, the game is gorgeous even without any texture packs or the D3D11 renderer (that runs like shit in my computer). I don't joke when I say the game looks much prettier than vanilla Skyrim. The folliage, the textures, it really is a huge step up from Gothic 1, and I'm actually surprised back in 2002 these were considered "bad" graphics.

 

[Anthedon]

Who called Gothic 2 ugly when it was released? Performance was shit alright (still is in some areas).

 

[Sigourn]

Who called Gothic 2 ugly when it was released? Performance was shit alright (still is in some areas).

I read the Reception section at the Wikipedia page for the game. Granted, there wasn't any site linked to it specifically.

 

[Maggot]

Remember to take advantage of backstepping in Gothic 2 since it also counts as a block and works against monsters.

 

[Doktor Best]

Lucas9 Amen brother!