VD's Gothic 3 impressions

[spacemoose]

no, I am entirely correct in what I've said, its you who is wrong

 

[elander_]

no, I am entirely correct in what I've said, its you who is wrong

You are a loler and roofler and i despise you.

 

[spacemoose]

 

[Claw]

Killed scavengers (very easy), a couple of tirtles (super easy),

What did you kill the turtles for? Do you plan on hunting hares also?

 

[Atrokkus]

VD, keep it coming. I think I'll even make a special newspost on your "interactive review".

Of course, what interests me deeply is the choice&consequence and faction relations.

and the difficulty in seeing some of the enemies (unless they are moving) just like in the previous Gothics.

That's what I feared... the blithering idiots apparently forgotten the lessons of the great Bethesda and didn't add enough bloom and brightness to the area, or, perhaps, a large pointer overhead each monster, for player's convenience.

Tell me, when you're walking down the street in the night and get ambushed by some muggers, do you clearly see each of their ugly mugs in the distance? Or you think you should see them, but it's some sort of a bug in the Game?

 

[Excrément]

except maybe the atmosphere, with all the review we have right now, gothic 3 is like oblivion : a cool action rpg with shiny graphics and a big world.

 

[Jasede]

We will wait and see what our revered VD tells us in the near future. Though the bugs are a huge turn-off and though I lack exactly 1536 MB of RAM to play that game, I might become mildly intrigued if VD gives the game positive judgment.

And Shit: Oblivion did NOT have a big world. Morrowind did, Oblivion did not. Besides, it has already been established that the graphics are not "shiny". They are gritty, like in Gothic 2. A good thing.

 

[StraitLacedDeviant]

Jasede, a quick and stupid question. As a German do the german discs come exclusively with german language, is there any easy way to patch to English or should I just buy online.

 

[whatusername]

Just replace everything 'German' inside ge3.ini, and replace it with 'English'. The voices will still be German though.

 

[StraitLacedDeviant]

As long as there are subtitles don't care about the voices, I never give them time to finish anyway. Are you sure this will work. If I spring for the game after work and it doesn't you'll have broken my fragile heart and sapped what little money I have left.

 

[Vault Dweller]

Killed scavengers (very easy), a couple of tirtles (super easy),

What did you kill the turtles for? Do you plan on hunting hares also?

At first I thought they were some kind of turtles of death who will definitely get me unless I get them first. It's a tough world.

VD, keep it coming

Sure.

except maybe the atmosphere, with all the review we have right now, gothic 3 is like oblivion : a cool action rpg with shiny graphics and a big world.

Uh, no.

First, the atmosphere affects a lot of things. Oblivion looks like a happyland, not a place under attack from a hell-ish realm. That makes those gates, that nobody takes seriosuly, look kinda silly at best.

Second, the main difference between the games is that G3 factions are locked in a conflict, unlike the Oblivion factions that love each other and live in peace and harmony. In G3 you have to make decisions and think of consequences (not sure to what degree at the moment).

I challenged an orcish chieftan and defeated him. He is resting on the floor, not dead yet, 3 guards are outside. Do I finish him or let him live? A slave hunter asks me to find an escaped slave. Do I side with the orcs, accepting their rule over the land, or should I help (I'm sure I'll find that slave eventually) the rebels? Such little choices alone make a game much more interesting and engaging that what Oblivion had to offer.

 

[Vault Dweller]

They are gritty, like in Gothic 2. A good thing.

Much more gritty. The details are really excellent. From the art point of view the game is a marvel.

 

[Jasede]

SLD:
I wish I knew. I know no one in my immediate vicinity who bought the game. (Hey, we are all poor Mathematics students who eat nothing but dry biscuits and who only drink rain water).

My advice: Buy online. But you will have to live with the quite surely horrible English voice acting. Not that that matters; I just read the text.

post scriptum: On a sidenote, games should come with multiple language versions, like CIV 4. But I guess that is NOT the case with Gothic 3 because of the rather large amount of voice acting that would not all fit onto a single DVD.

post post scriptum / ninja edit: Do what whatusername said. You will have text you can read and voice acting that sounds tolerable, even if you will not understand a word. German is not really a beautiful language, soundwise, but English is much worse. (I have studied many languages, so I can attest that this is purely a subjective statement.)

post post post scriptum: VD, really? What are your detail settings? Seems like I will have to eat even less biscuits now, having to save for a new graphics card... unless it works on a Radeon 9600SE with minimum settings. (Years of replaying classics have made me immune to graphics).

 

[Excrément]

We will wait and see what our revered VD tells us in the near future. Though the bugs are a huge turn-off and though I lack exactly 1536 MB of RAM to play that game, I might become mildly intrigued if VD gives the game positive judgment.

And Shit: Oblivion did NOT have a big world. Morrowind did, Oblivion did not. Besides, it has already been established that the graphics are not "shiny". They are gritty, like in Gothic 2. A good thing.

VD is the more biased reviewer I ever seen.
If he review Gothic 3 based on his proper RPG principles (choices and consequences / dialogue/ storyline...) he will arrive to the same conclusion he had for Oblivion.

he just decided for marketing purposes to define this website as the anti-bethesda and the anti-oblivion place, so he decides to review video games in function of this philosophy and ot in function of their quality he pretends to defend.
Gothic 3 = potential competitor which can piss Bethesda off so Gothic 3 = Great Game (with great arguments like "I love the graphics!!" and "the combat are not that bad...")
For the moment Gothic 3 looks to be an excellent action RPG with the specific atmosphere the gothic fans enjoyed but in terms of pure role-playing, sorry to say that, but all the people who played the game didn't show me the famous "consequences" we all want!

so Gothic 3 is only different from Oblivion because of the atmosphere of the game.
but that's a question of taste, some can prefer the gritty graphics and the less childish G3 others prefer shiny graphics with the elderscrolls lore depth.

from the art point of view this game is a marvel

RPG Codex has the honoour to announce the beginning of the "Graphic Whores Contest 2006"
let's initiate to the rules :
shiny = bad, xbox kiddie graphics
gritty = art!

 

[Jasede]

.
.
.

No.

 

[Sentenza]

For the moment Gothic 3 looks to be an excellent action RPG with the specific atmosphere the gothic fans enjoyed

That's exactly what I want from it, nothing more and nothing less; if it turn out to be a better RPG than Oblivion (and it's not diffucult) all the better...

 

[Magistrator]

... my old buddy Xardas had allied with the orcs...

Please don't give away too many spoilers, Vault Dweller.

 

[Jasede]

The hero dies at the end after sacrificing himself to stop Xardas' secret plan to plunge the kingdom into war to use the enery released by so much killing and violence in order to gather enough magical energy to ascend this state of being and become god-like.

 

[whatusername]

... my old buddy Xardas had allied with the orcs...

Please don't give away too many spoilers, Vault Dweller.

You find that out in the beginning of the game.

 

[Rina]

Damn you VD.
I think I'm going to throw my gender bias aside and give it a try since I have nothing to play while waiting for NWN2.

 

[Magistrator]

You find that out in the beginning of the game.

Yes. What's your point?

 

[whatusername]

It's still not really a spoiler.

 

[Drakron]

Its not a spoiler when its within the first 5 minutes of the game.

 

[Inziladun]

My advice: Buy online. But you will have to live with the quite surely horrible English voice acting. Not that that matters; I just read the text.
. German is not really a beautiful language, soundwise, but English is much worse. (I have studied many languages, so I can attest that this is purely a subjective statement.)
.

Well according to this guy English voice-acting ain't all that shabby. So unless you have some sort of biased hate against the way the English language sounds, it shouldn't bother any native english speaker.

On another note, i'll probably have my Copy today, so i'll find out soon enough.

Now to the voice acting. There is good news and bad news.
First the bad news: All the voice actors for the main characters have been replaced . The hero, Gorn, Diego, Milten, Lester, etc... are all new guys.
The good news is that the new actors are good and in general the overall quality of the voice acting is high. The new Diego is loads better than the G2 one. Hee is actually closer to the feel of the original Diego voice.

English translations are good too. No complaints in the dialog but a few little e nits in some of the item and skill descriptions. Nothing outrageously bad though.

 

[Mefi]

Its not a spoiler when its within the first 5 minutes of the game.

I was gutted when everyone spoiled the surprise that Patrick Stewart was reprising his Lands of Lore role in Oblivion. Gutted.


VD - how is the combat exactly? Is it as twitchily clunky as previous Gothics?

How about the bugfest? As bad as people have made out, now the patch has been released, or actually not too bad?