The Gothic Series

[vometia]

I've just been playing through the Gothic IV demo (or Gothic 4 or Arcania for those using search!) and was wondering if anybody else has taken a look. First things first: it's huge, weighing in at 1.7 GB for the PC version, so if you're still on 2400 bps dialup, er, it'll take a while.

First impressions are reasonably good. Overall it feels like Gothic III given a new lick of paint to keep it contemporary for 2010. It seems we have a new Nameless One to play, albeit still a beardy chap. Mass Effect fans may be tickled that he's continuously referred to as "shepherd": though nothing to do with the latter's namesake Sheppard, simply that, well, being armed with a crook and surrounded by wandering balls of wool, I think you get the idea. This one has an English accent, though voiced by an American actor as the pronunciation of "'erb" reveals.

The first person you see besides your chap is his lady friend, leading to obvious comparisons to the opening scene in Risen. Perhaps she makes an early appearance to demonstrate that Gothic IV isn't the female-free zone of its predecessor! Though personally I'd rather have been given the choice of some character generation choices if we're starting off with a new hero and all.

So how does it play? Well starting with the most in your face element of the graphics, a mixed bag. It's a bit of a resource hog giving me typically lower fps than I've seen in most other places; but it does so stably, and while it dips in busy areas you don't get the slightly dizzying mix of performance peaks and troughs you see elsewhere, so it's liveable. They're a modest improvement over Gothic III's, though IMHO not as good as Risen's, but we're getting into what's arguably subjective territory anyway: it looks good. The graphics are a step forward and feel neither dated nor over the top, which will probably keep most people happy.

In terms of gameplay, it all feels very familiar, so no nasty surprises there. Usual keys for movement, you get to play in third-person mode (camera's not adjustable, however), you get a wide assortment of weapons from axes to swords to bigger swords to clubs to kitchen cutlery and so on. For those who prefer the hands-off approach you get a bow, a crossbow, a dizzying selection of arrows and some spells to hurl about with wild abandon. Well, a very weak lightning spell, but y'know. Use of these in combat is pretty much as expected; one thing that was less expected is that it looks like it might not be one for the hardcore kids who like having their bottom handed to them: hard it isn't, which suits me just fine, but it is bordering on just going through the motions. The full version may be harder, but so far I haven't found myself being ravaged by an oversize wolf or poisoned by a nasty flying prawn, as happened pretty much immediately in Gothic III.

But let's not get ahead of ourselves. The game doesn't start off in the middle of a fight like some others we could name but rather more sedately, giving you a chance to chat to various people in the nearby village. Some have stuff to say, even if that stuff is just "bugger off", others you ostensibly even know from before: but since most of the apparent long-term acquaintances just spent their time bumming about in the last Gothic I can barely remember their names let alone why I should know them. Still, it's nice having some (un)familiar faces about.

My personal thoughts are that the script and voice-acting is reasonably well done, though it's hard to tell in what's a small fragment of the full game. It does at least seem to have a coherent story, unlike say Sacred II where I spent most of my time trying to remember why I was doing whatever it was I was doing, which I could seldom remember either. Oh yeah, and talking of voice acting, there's one who should really have their vocal cords removed after their transgression - but I'll let you find out for yourselves!

One concern for those who were early Gothic III adopters (or if anyone here is one of the half dozen who bought the expansion) is stability. Again, it seems a bit mixed: I certainly wouldn't describe it as unstable and saw no major bugs coming to bite me in the two-three hours I mucked about with it (well I did get two blue screens but they've been a problem for the past fortnight since I updated my Catalyst drivers to 10.8; apparently that's been a widespread problem since 10.6, so I regressed to 10.4 today and had no further problems. But that's almost totally irrelevant here!) What was quite obvious is that the demo version isn't finished: if you could manage any meaningful interaction with the alchemy bench, beds or smithy I couldn't figure it out, and minor wrinkles such as voices being out of synch with graphics and some rather ugly collision boundaries need to be ironed out. There's also no swimming and limited scope for climbing, which I'm not clear is a case of "that's all you're getting" or "not finished yet".

In conclusion, to call a close to my rather disjointed tangents, it was quite a lot of fun. Not an "I'm desperate to have it nao!" but certainly scores a lot higher than "meh"! I look forward to playing the full version.

And for the small print a.k.a DRM, that always unwanted guest SecuROM has invited itself along. It's claimed to be more friendly than previous versions and should cause less problems, and will even offer auto-updating similar to Steam (though it may simply use Steam for all I know). It'd be nicer if it wasn't there at all, but as long as it doesn't have Draconian installation limits and unknown transmissions back to Sony HQ then I suppose I can live with it.

[Zaldir]

Thank you for a good and interesting read!

I started downloading the Demo the moment I saw this topic! (50 minutes and I'm good to go^^)

Looking forward to playing it - Been a Gothic fan since the first!

[Arthmoor]

Ooo, something to peek at. I can't honestly recall there being much in the way of demos recently so this will be welcome indeed. The rough edges and possible stability concerns you describe do have me worried since they claim this is slated for full release in about 2 weeks time. Doesn't sound like they'll be fixing any of the issues you're talking about unless this demo is several months old or something.

If it's not using Steam, I just may bite if the demo proves its worth. I am not among those who fanatically oppose SecuROM unless it's the evil rootkit version.

[vometia]

I don't think I'd be really put out if this was the final "ready for release" version, but I think it'd be hard for them to argue that it's the finished product: it just isn't. I assume that this demo was probably put together a few months back, but time will tell. It'll almost certainly be a rather fun jaunt, but it'd just be more fun if the crafting menu was tied to the crafting objects and if things like swimming worked and collision was smoother.

It remains to be seen what version of SecuROM we get since even official releases tend to be best viewed as "anecdotal", but it doesn't sound as thoroughly unpleasant as other versions that have been foisted on gamers.

Personally I'd be pleased if we see something of a similar scale to Gothic III: it wasn't something I really felt like replaying, but I had a lot of fun in the countless hours I spent working my way through it!

[Zaldir]

It doesn't seem to like Windows 7, nor dual-monitors...

First off, it runs on the wrong monitor (Every other game runs on the main one)

Second, I can't click on anything, but New Game, Options, Credits and Quit...

i.e when accessing the Options menu, there is nothing I can do, but to click esc and return to the main menu. I though, okay, whatever - It's a Demo, I can play with low graphics for now..

but nooo.. The first "Tutorial" window that pops up - Can't click okay. Tried with the mouse and every button on the keyboard - It just won't work...

The funny thing is that dialogue options works^^

Well well.. Guess I'll just have to wait for the release.. :/

[vometia]

Hmm, that's odd: I use Windows 7 (64-bit no less, just for added incompatibility!) and it worked here right off the bat. What I don't have, however, is dual monitors so perhaps that might be the problem. But other than that bit of vague and useless speculation, I'm afraid I don't have a lot of help to offer...

[Arthmoor]

Just a heads up for Firefox users - Firefox is retarded when it comes to downloads. It attempts to cache the whole thing in memory while you're downloading. Yeah, you can see where this is going. Firefox blew a gasket when it exhausted the 32bit memory limit. 1.7GB file + miscellaneous other browsing = HARD crash. Task manager had to be called in to clean up the mess. I'd advise downloading the big file using Opera, which isn't stupid about how it downloads.

[vometia]

Command-line users might enjoy wget - it's usually what I end up using once Firefrog has made a mess of things, and it has a nice resume option.

[Zaldir]

I used Firefox to download - No problem at all.

And I also have Win7 64-bit, but I will test with just one monitor.

[vometia]

Good luck, oh user with too much memory. I also use Firefrog most of the time, but I do cast an often suspicious eye over its memory usage.

[Arthmoor]

Did some Googling, found out the memory hogging for downloads was caused by Firebug. Guess what I just evicted from my extensions list

[Zaldir]

I guess it was.. Firebug?!

ehrm.. well, anyway, it seems like it was the Multiple Monitors that was the issue. But luckily, I can Disable/Enable the secondary with the click of a button, so it's no worries.

And by the way, great game!

I especially liked the end of the demo, where you see Gorn, Diego and all the other people from Gothic 1, 2 and 3 ! :D

[vometia]

I especially liked the end of the demo, where you see Gorn, Diego and all the other people from Gothic 1, 2 and 3 ! :D

I think it says a lot for how promising the game was that I felt quite miffed it ended at that point - I wanted to go on exploring! Oh well, I'll just have to be patient, and at least it meant that I didn't have to listen to Lycra, the Witch of Stretchy Fabrics talking to me any longer.

I should've done some screenshots now that I think about it, but since my screenshots are typically rather random and aimless I'm sure my review has survived perfectly well without them.

[vometia]

Figured I may as well post some screenies anyway for those who haven't seen it yet:

A familiar face.

Scenery. I'm afraid I was too lazy to figure out how to turn off

the HUD, but on the other hand, people probably want to see what it

looks like!

Village life.

The inventory, and your chap.

[Zaldir]

Something I dislike very much about this Gothic Game though, is that in 3 Games you have been the same guy, and I have become kind of connected to that one guy, since you experience quite a lot with him, then all of a sudden in the fourth game, you are a totally random shepherd on some island - and your not even in Myrtania!!

[vometia]

Something I dislike very much about this Gothic Game though, is that in 3 Games you have been the same guy, and I have become kind of connected to that one guy, since you experience quite a lot with him, then all of a sudden in the fourth game, you are a totally random shepherd on some island - and your not even in Myrtania!!

The annoying cackler said something about being washed up and "adopted" - I think the alchemist type woman in the first hut you come to in the village is supposed to be "mother" of sorts, in spite of the usual character (if it is he) being at least late 20s! If that is the case, it's a bit of a well-worn story plot, character washes up on shore minus his memory, though I'm not really that bothered about lack of originality in that regard. The question remains as to whether it's the same Dave Nameless from the other Gothics or, as the ending sequence suggests, a new one: it may have been carelessly worded, but if it is the same guy, they could've gone to a bit more effort getting him to look at least vaguely similar!

Hopefully all will be explained as the game's story unravels in full. If it is the usual chap, I guess the question of why he washed up on a small island half drowned and with no memory of his past life will have a compelling explanation... or not.

[Zaldir]

If it is the same guy, they will probably not explain anything - Hey, he is the nameless Hero for a reason!

[Arthmoor]

Well I'm a displeased Iguanadon now. After spending all that time downloading the demo and wanting to play through it, the silly thing crashes when I try to launch it. It seems it does not like something about my sound driver because it's killing itself over one of the DLLs that belong to it. I certainly hope this isn't a sign of how well the actual release has been QA'd.

[vometia]

It's been pushed back again, this time 'til December 8th, at least according to Amazon. I did think a mid October release was optimistic considering the "a bit rough around the edges" feel to the demo and that some elements weren't implemented (e.g. the crafting animations and menus weren't connected up). I'd like to think that the delay is a sign that it's being properly fixed up rather than hurriedly taped together in time for a Christmas release... we'll see.

[Vouivre]

Um... I'm actually looking at my Arcania game as we speak. Book and game. Have I installed it yet? No not yet, college work comes first. The graphics from the demo to some way reminds me of far cry level... visually it looks VERY appealing. I'll play it maybe this weekend. But Yeah amazon says one thing, but the game's been released, the ONLY thing that confuses me is this. Arcania if I remember for the ps3 comes out NEXT year. I'm scratching my head

Edited October 20, 2010 by Vouivre

[vometia]

... and the UK release date's moved back to 29th October again, at least according to Amazon. Since I never got an announcement about the 8th December date (it was someone on the official Jowood forums being all shouty about it that caught my attention) I assume it was an error on Amazon's part, though I'm now getting to the point where I feel like I can't keep up.

Meanwhile, Eurogamer's review gives it 4/10. Seems a bit harsh based on what I saw of the demo: whilst not RPG perfection it seemed like quite a merry little jaunt, so 4/10 seems a bit mean, unless I'm missing something; then again, apart from making some complaints that seemed entirely subjective (I'll have to make my own mind up about the loot situation when I play it myself, but to take the opposite position to his complaint in that regard, I find too much high-quality loot can quickly become boring), it did seem that the reviewer was having a bit of a bad hair day.

[InsanitySorrow]

GamesRadar gave it a 6/10, I much prefer their reviews

[vometia]

GamesRadar gave it a 6/10, I much prefer their reviews

Quite a brief review, but it felt more informative and got straight to the point. I'm inclined to say "I felt that they gave it a fairer score", but of course "fairer" really just means "something I agree with".

The subject of innovation or lack thereof is one that comes up quite often, and it's a tricky one. The reason a lot of games stick to the same formula is that it works, and attempts to do something new and exciting often turn into something that's actually confusing and frustrating. So there is a risk of things becoming stale, but... I'm happy enough, for the moment at least. And since Two Worlds references have cropped up a few times, I rather enjoyed that, too (and also commented about its similarity to Gothic 3!) so if it's more of the same, that suits me just fine. Well, apart from the voice acting, but even in the brief demo, it sounded a lot better overall. Except for the witch, who made me want to rip my own ears off. And then beat her to death with them.

[vometia]

Interesting that the GamesRadar article just came up on my C&VG feed now as well; I suspect that the latter is the original (or at least a more verbatim copy of it) which I mention mainly because it scored 6.7 there; only a tiny difference, but perhaps a psychologically important one since it puts it in the "top 3rd" rather than the middle 3rd.

[InsanitySorrow]

I think those two sites are linked , But yeah the GamesRadar version is the original I think, suprising to see such a brief review. But then they did have some decent previews

I've never played a gothic game before (Played Risen, heard it was linked to the Gothic series) and going by the review I may only because there are Two World references, which was a game I really enjoyed, despite some negative reviews ect.