WHAT DA FUCK? - a Gothic 4 thread

[Darth Roxor]

I few days ago I was telling about these news to a friend of mine, particularly about the combat stuff with drinking potions and fighting at the same time

and all he said was... "and what about it?"

I facepalmed

 

[A user named cat]

There was a new interview posted the other day with the community manager from Spellbound. He looks to dispell a couple rumors (no plans of mounts yet) that were posted earlier and also mentions that it might be PC exclusive, which is nice if they're focusing on said platform.
===================================

1. Why did you decide for official name Gothic 4: Arcania? Is it from the word arcane = mysterious, or perhaps is it a reminder of your previous RPG Realms of ARKANIA? What does it actually mean?

Well, it is a coincidence that "Arcania" reminds you of the fine old games "Realms of Arkania". The reason is more like you said yourself. Something very arcane is going on and magic has a lot to do with the story that will happen in the new game.

2. We will play 10 years after G3. Don't you think that our nameless hero will be too old for new adventures? What can you say me about his looks?

The nameless hero will be in his best years and will still be able to kick some ass. How he looks? Well, he will look slightly older obviously - but apart from that, you should be able to recognize him.

3. The forthcoming G3 add-on should have a connection with G4 story. Do you cooperate on it as well?

Our involvement in the development of the G3 Add-On is currently being discussed. While we will not be taking over the main load of development, so far we have been supporting the Add-On developer and we have provided some input / consulting where requested as well.

4. Which game engine did you license and which technologies are you going to use? The trees in the pictures seem like a product of SpeedTree...

As a developer we have not yet officially announced what technologies and middleware packages we currently use. We plan to confirm these decisions later this year. The trees you see in some of the shots are created using the fabulous Speedtree technology as a first basis and adding many features on top of it.

5. Your previous games are well known for their great video sequences. Can we expect something similar in G4 too?

Yes, JoWooD and we plan to come up with some cool movie sequences.

6. Where do you get the main inspiration, do you study this historical age? What countries did influence you in world modeling?

Yes - you are right. We have studied social and cultural development during historical ages which can be compared with the point in time to be represented in Gothic 4. The results from these studies do have influences on architectural styles, colors used for Gothic 4... And as we do have an international team, the various cultural backgrounds have influenced the look of the game. German, French and Russian are the nationalities with the biggest percentages in the team and thus their influences are probably the largest. And as the Gothic 3 world is also very much alike certain areas of Germany, Russia, Czech (and some regions of France as well) in terms of the colors - you can expect to see some continuity in regard to the colors in the game.

7. Can you disclose us something about the south isles? Are there different climatic zones? Will we travel from one map\world to the other like in G2?

Yes, there will be different climatic zones and different styles of the environment. We think it is important to let the player experience different environments during the game.

Also it is our intention to create a streamed world so there are no loading times and area changes as in Gothic 2 when you move from Khorinis to the Valley of Mines, but whether or not that will work exactly the way we envision it remains to be seen.

8. What about girls in world of Gothic? Will the "love theme" play any role?

Oh, yeah, there will definitely be more ladies in G4. It will be up to the player to decide what his relationship with the ladies in the game will be.

9. Could you give us some comment on the artwork with magical barrier? Is it important for the story? What about the dragon skelet. Are you planning dragons as a part of bestiary? Don't you think that it is a fantasy cliché?

Yes, the barrier is important for the story, but it is not the main focus of the plot.

And - yes dragons are a bit of a fantasy cliché, but in Gothic 2 we have seen that they also have a place in the gothic universe. We are critically evaluating whether they would fit into our scenario and story. They did make pretty cool Boss monsters in Gothic 2...

10. Do you plan to implement some secret areas like underwater caves, towers and dungeons?

We are planning a number of dungeons and other underground areas for players to explore.

11. Describe me a typical day at Spellbound... How many hours do you spend developing G4 per week and on what are you working at the moment?

Well, it is a pretty busy time. Work starts normally between 9 and 10 am and the time tables are different for every department. Some start with a design meeting, some do a technical meeting. Emails are sent back and forth, the studio manager has requests, the producer is always a pain in the butt and the whole hive is very active. The day finishes late, some folks stay for 12-14 each day. And when the next milestone is coming near, it is a living hell.

In regard to what we are working on it is never just one thing. The different departments are working in parallel on many things. For example, level design is working on quests, game design is hard at work on the combat system. The programmers are working on multiple things such as our sound system, the combat system, physics integration and of course the shaders that make our game look so cool. Also interface design is working with the art department on the interfaces and GUI elements in the game, such as icons. The art department is modeling many different things that will be in the game, such as houses, items (i.e. beds, benches, etc) as well as characters, and animating them.

12. Will be the orcs our main enemy or we can expect something worse? Are they actually necessary? What about their behavior - are they clever (G3) or primitive (G1)?

The orcs will not have the same importance as they had in Gothic 3 but they will be in the game. "Socially" they will be closer to the orcs of Gothic 3 than those of Gothic 1 or 2 in terms of their behavior outside of combat, i.e. being able to interact with some of them.

13. Could you describe me the riding system (horses, maybe dragons and it's usage in the game?

It is not yet decided at all if a riding system will be implemented in G4.

14. Will be any differences between PC and PS3\Xbox360 version? What about DirectX 10 support?

We as a developer have not yet officially confirmed that we are developing for any platform other than the PC. Some magazines seem to know more however .

Once we have given an official confirmation in regard to potential other platforms and DX-versions, we will start talking about them.

15. Are you going to implement more various story endings?

We will give more details about the story in the future.

16. Disclose us some new prepared game features... You already announced the climbing, and what about diving under the water?

We have a lot of ideas. Currently we are making sure that the combat is fun and engaging and that we are moving in the right direction there. Apart from that we do not want to put ideas out there that we have not been able to test yet. Swimming and climbing as well as diving are definitely on our list of ideas that we would like to include in the game (which is very long). So some of the features on the list will make it into the game, some will not.

17. How does it seem with guild system and career raise...

Leveling the character is a pretty basic RPG-feature and G4 will include that, of course. Every level gives you new skills and abilities and the character will grow and prosper. We will give details about "guilds" at some point later.

18. Does Jowood Productions have any effect on development and game content? How does to cooperation with them look like... Do they control you?

Within the game production department, JoWooD and Dreamcatcher have assigned some of their best people as publishing producers. During the last years, where our team and our team members have worked with almost every publisher in the world, we have rarely seen feedback quality like we are receiving from our publishing producers. We are happy to work with JoWooD and Dreamcatcher.

19. What do you think about Piranhas new project RPB and how would you like to comment their first published artworks? Do you feel a competition?

As we said before, we think the world is big enough for two great role playing games. We are not in a special competition with Piranha, we are in competition with every game out there. And we wish them good luck for their game.

20. Tell me some interesting last words... What can we expect in near future?

We are looking forward to the regular discussions - and we look forward to the upcoming events like the Games Convention which should give us the chance to see each other and talk further about Gothic 4 .

 

[MaskedMan]

3. The forthcoming G3 add-on should have a connection with G4 story. Do you cooperate on it as well?

Our involvement in the development of the G3 Add-On is currently being discussed. While we will not be taking over the main load of development, so far we have been supporting the Add-On developer and we have provided some input / consulting where requested as well.

Who is the Add-On developer :

 

[GeneralSamov]

Interesting and relieving. Thanks for that

Who is the Add-On developer :

No info yet... they're being very secretive about it

 

[A user named cat]

Forgot to post about this, how come the interviewer makes mention of Realms of Arkania being Spellbound's series? What in the world did they have to do with those games? Were they even around yet when those games came out? I'm assuming it's just misquoted or something from translation.

Anyway, I also accidentally skipped over this that was posted right in their sticky topic for news/info. It was an earlier Q&A with the same community manager from a few weeks ago.
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Q: Will we see old friends again, like Diego, Gorn, Lester, Xardas ... ?

Yes. You will definitely see some old and well known faces in Gothic 4 – Arcania. And a lot of new ones, too.

Q: Will quests be able to be solved in multiple ways?

Yes. Due to the skills and abilities of your character, you will be able to find different solutions for one task.

Q: Will it be an MMORPG, will there be a multiplayer option, or you're only emphasising on single player again?

It will not be a multiplayer game. That would not be Gothic.

Q: Will there be a world/quest editor, so we can create our own worlds and stories?

That has to be decided.

Q: Will the combat system be as bad as in G3? Will it be The Witcher style? Will you make your own combat system?

Of course are we working on our own combat system. But you may find elements from the previous titles.

(self note; Did someone seriously ask if the combat will be as bad as G3? LOL)

Q: Will you make G4 realistic and interactive as it always was(G1,2 and 3).I mean NPC walking around doing their regular job. Birds flying, packs of wolf ,not loading cells(like oblivion) and many other great unique things that i saw only in gothic series?

Absolutely. The NPCs will behave different regarding the time of day and they act different when the weather changes.

Q: Will you put mounts in the game?

You may see that.

Q: Do you have the complete design documents for all Gothic games released so far? If so, would you release them to the fanbase in a gesture of good will (thus proving you're one awesome bunch, again)?

You must be joking. But hey – good joke!

Q: Did everyone on the team play each Gothic at least once?

Everyone involved with the development of Gothic 4 – Arcania, knows the previous 3 games by heart. We also made a huge analysis of the games and built databases around that.

Q: Are there going to be descriptions of the items in your inventory? (Please don't listen to Todd Howard's rants about descriptions and message boxes. He's a moron who was designing dungeons for Daggerfall and is unfit to be a project lead for anything, much less projects the magnitude of Oblivion or Fallout 3)

We are thinking about tooltips.

(self note; What did Todd Howard say exactly about descriptions and message boxes? I'm curious about this ''rant'')

 

[FeelTheRads]

He's a moron

OMG, did they like put that in the FAQ?

(self note; What did Todd Howard say exactly about descriptions and message boxes? I'm curious about this ''rant'')

Not sure if he's talking about this, but I remember something along the lines that there shouldn't be text description because if you need them it means you have failed at conveying the message through the visuals.

Probably there weren't words like "conveying", though. Don't think Todd knows them.

 

[Shannow]

Forgot to post about this, how come the interviewer makes mention of Realms of Arkania being Spellbound's series? What in the world did they have to do with those games? Were they even around yet when those games came out? I'm assuming it's just misquoted or something from translation.

One of the devs from Spellbound was involved with realms or arkania.

 

[Unradscorpion]

Well, this certainly shows that Gothic fanboys are openly hostile to Bethesda fanbois.

 

[GeneralSamov]

And that's a good thing, too. [/Xardas]

 

[shadow86]

I can understand why all the Gothic fanboys are mad but this might actually be a good thing. Gothic 3 was a pile of crap (and before you ask, I do like Gothic 1/2) and showed that Piranha Bytes had some problem. A new developer, while drastic, might be the best thing to happen to the series. As long as they write a good stpry and offer roleplaying options, the game won't suck.

 

[Lumpy]

I can understand why all the Gothic fanboys are mad but this might actually be a good thing. Gothic 3 was a pile of crap (and before you ask, I do like Gothic 1/2) and showed that Piranha Bytes had some problem. A new developer, while drastic, might be the best thing to happen to the series. As long as they write a good stpry and offer roleplaying options, the game won't suck.

Spellbound were always known as great stprytellers.

Okay, why was Gothic 3 a pile of crap compared to Gothic 1&2?

 

[bat_boro]

It was not.
It was just different.

Different != crap

 

[fizzelopeguss]

No, it was a huge pile of excreta. If you're still a gothic fan after playing it there's something wrong with you.

 

[Raapys]

Actually, Gothic 3 only has a slightly worse atmosphere than G1&2, and that's the most important feature of the Gothic games I'd say.

The character development system is actually better in G3 than the previous ones. The lack of magic runes is a loss, but other than that the magic system is pretty similar, except with a much needed natural mana regeneration ability.

The bad is stuff like the combat system, the reputation system( at least for my own part I liked the 'guilds' better ) and the bugs. The world( especially the towns ) is also maybe slightly less interesting, even though it's gigantic, and the two previous games do a better job at progressing the main plot throughout the game.

 

[Atrokkus]

Just finished Gothic 3. (disclaimer: i'm a rabid gothic fanboi, finished all the previous games several times)

Well what can I say? The technical aspect is completely broken. The game is barely playable even with all the patches installed (incl. community ones). Loading times were such that I could read an entire chapter of a book during one of them; and the in-game stutterings were even worse and nerve-wracking to the max. Even worse were the AI and script bugs that could ruin your game. Characters disappearing in the walls, protagonist suddenly becoming almost impossible to kill in armor, etc etc. That does deter from the gameplay very much indeed, and yet, for me, it was something I actually managed to cope with, because the gameplay and story were just so good.

The story made sense, and nonlinearity actually went well with it -- especially compared to other gothics, where nonlinearity consisted only of the mid-way and the temporary affiliation to a faction -- though in comparison, it actually worked well, and in terms of atmosphere, maybe even better than g3 guild system, as it let you actually "belong" to a faction, whereas in Gothic 3 you were the power broker of sorts. But considering the protagonist's reputation in G3, after all he had done in G1-2, this position seems appropriate, and perhaps there can be no real ties to a single faction. In fact, in Gothic 3 you pretty much play out Xardas -- you become exactly like him, a puppetmaster (and this time he treats you as an equal, or even superior -- hell you can even kill him if you choose to).

Regardless, the story was coherent and rather interesting. I loved the endings. It realy feels global. Compared to the pretty much village world structure of Gothic 1, Gothic 3 felt like a political strategy game -- less personal, but much more diplomatically nonlinear. So yeah, in this regard, Gothic 3 is indeed a "different" game, not true to the original gothics at all, yet good in its own right. Though personally I preferred the atmoshere of Gothic1, it felt very non-epic and more like a survival game, which was awesome.

What one should expect of Gothic 4 then? Well, it largely depends on the story, what world cataclysms are ahead now, after the war of gods is over -- granted that Gothic 4 will start off from G3's "neutral" (all artifacts destroyed) ending. And yet, it's unclear what the hell are those islands of Gothic4, and how come that your friends come along with you, after all those ending screens of G3 telling about their fates. Hopefully, the G3 addon will clarify things.

Now, what I really want them to work on in G4 is the challenge rating and combat system. Now, don't get me wrong, Gothic 3 challenge rating was rather high, very true to the original masterpiece Gothic 1, but unfortunately it is beset by one fatal flaw: humanoid non-spellcasting opponents are much MUCH weaker in combat than their monster/animal counterparts. Traversing deep forests of Myrtana and frozen wastes of Nordmar is very fun, even if you've already mastered most of your skills, but at the same time laying siege to major cities of, say, Varant, is such a simple task in comparison that you can't help but curse the retarded humanoid enemy AI for not being able to properly gangrape you -- in G3, *all* humanoid opponents, including bandits, are, deep inside, noble knights who would NEVER gang up on you -- if you attack a group of them, only your current target will actively engage you in combat, others will just strafe around. But that's not the only problem (besides, animals usually have the same issue) -- what's worse is that it's way too easy to "click" your opponent to death by a series of fast attacks, and what's even worse - you don't even need high weapon mastery to accomplish that, whereas with animals or, say, goblinoids, you have to time your attacks and account for particular animal attack speed and animation.
Magic is extremely dangerous in Gothic 3 (moreso than in previous installments, actually), especially to a non-mage (mages can use staves to block incoming spells, which is, by the way , an awesome touch). Sometimes I even think that enemy magic missiles (fireballs, ice lances) do percentage-based damage, because no matter how much health i have, each fully-charged ice lance hurled by a shaman or undead mage, drains at least 70% of my HP, and freezes me, which is pretty much 100% fatal if there are other enemies around.

Also, skill progression in G3 was way too easy. You could become a master swordsman in no time. Worse yet, there was hardly any difference between master swordsmanship and amateur level thereof -- neither visually nor practically. Gothic 1 provided much better transition -- not only was it hard to attain mastery, but also you actually felt the difference between those levels.

So the major concerns to address in G4 are: enemy AI, follower AI (it's just abyssmal), magic system (needs enhancement in terms of spell variety -- i really miss spells like "Shrink monster"), combat system. And perhaps they should limit their scope this time around... Gothic 3 aimed way too high, which is why it was so unfinished and buggy.

 

[Azrael the cat]

I can understand why all the Gothic fanboys are mad but this might actually be a good thing. Gothic 3 was a pile of crap (and before you ask, I do like Gothic 1/2) and showed that Piranha Bytes had some problem. A new developer, while drastic, might be the best thing to happen to the series. As long as they write a good stpry and offer roleplaying options, the game won't suck.

Yeah, so far the Goth developers are sitting on 2 from 3 - not a bad strike-rate. They're basically doing as well as Bethesda PRE-oblivion in my book: (G1 and G2 were, imho, better than Arena and Daggerfall, Morrowind was better than G3) which is still pretty good. And at least as far as I know they haven't all buggered off leaving the dungeon-design kiddie in charge of the entire project. Worth waiting and seeing how they go

 

[ghostdog]

Piranha bites also did the same mistakes , but in a smaller scale , wirth G2. The game had many bugs and the story wasn't that polished. It was NOTR that fixed most of the bugs and added a lot of story/quest content that made G2 a great game. I was hoping they would do something similar with the G3 expansion, but it seems that the G3 engine is such a mess that they will make a stand alone expansion.

 

[Raapys]

Yeah, sucks that it's gonna be stand-alone. Could have done the original game alot better with some more bug fixing & improved combat.

 

[WalterKinde]

Haven't finished Gothic 3 yet but Atrokkus is being too hopeful.
Now that Oblivion is the standard by which you judge an RPG, at least accordng to the hype game sites etc, Gothic 4 and the Gothic 3 expansion will be based around the design principles of Oblivion/Fallout 3.
So i don't expect an improvement in the sense of something better, they may bump the graphics up add bloom times 5 but the gameplay etc will probably suck, we already know there will be two different environments for Gothic 4, a rainbow care bears version for North America and a gritty real medieval environment for Europe (sounds like they are ripping of Shivering Isles but whateve) so i don't expect much from the Gothic 3 stand alone Expansion esp since its not Piranha Bytes doing the development.

 

[bat_boro]

You're talking shit.
There are not going to be two different environments, there are going to be two different color themes - one shiny and bloomy, the other dark and gritty. You can choose whatever you want - if you don't like one, choose the other.