5 new Gothic III screenshots

[Hell Kitty]

Great graphics don't matter if the gameplay is crap, but I wouldnt go so far to claim graphics are meaningless. I sure wouldn't want all my games to be in ASCII.

[Darque]

If the game was awesome, I could live with asci.

 

Wasteland and Starflight come to mind....

[mkreku]

Hey!! Wasteland has lovely graphics!

 

 

[CoM_Solaufein]

Back in the day it was a top of the line game.

[Hell Kitty]

If the game was awesome, I could live with asci.

 

I dunno, I think the resident evils would lose a hell of a lot with ascii for graphics. Like the atmosphere, the horror...

 

Oh, and when did the forums biggest spammer become a mod? crazy...

Edited July 5, 2006 by Hell Kitty

[Kaftan Barlast]

What did you not like about the first two Kaftan?

<{POST_SNAPBACK}>

 

 

Ive actually only played the second, but it is my god-granted right as a human being to declare judgement even upon that which I have never seen, touched, talked to or played with. But lets get to it:

• Boring, very typical and predictable story
  
• Being stuck with a premade character for no apparent reason. He doesnt have a backstory, not even a name. He's just some guy with a ponytail.
  
• Very awkward combat controls that required you to be lvl12+ to even be able to get your character to do what you want him to do.
  
• The whole single-player MMORPG feeling
  
• Being forced to go out and grind random critters for hours and hours to get level enough to be able to progress the thin story. Random gridning and looting should be optional in a single-player game, not mandatory. (good CRPG's handle this by giving enough exp during the main story with optional sidequests and hacking for people who want more power)
  
• No deeper interaction with NPC's
  

..and the list goes on and on. The graphics were pretty though.

Edited July 5, 2006 by Kaftan Barlast

[mkreku]

There is no grinding in Gothic or Gothic 2. There'a a finite number of opponents in the world and nothing ever respawns. Most areas are sparsely repopulated when the game changes chapters, but it's not possible to "grind". If you need to go out into the wilderness to kill monsters to be able to continue the story, you're doing something wrong. Maybe you didn't play long enough to get used to the controls? If you can't fight, you will die. The Gothic games never holds your hand, Bioware-esque style.

[Musopticon?]

What do you mean "no grinding"? It was mandatory in G2 to go out to the wilderness and hack the day away in order to stand a chance against the enemies the plot put you against.

 

Sure, you could kill black trolls on level two with enough patience, but the Valley of Mines was a different matter altogether. The quest experience from the story hardly gave you any kind of edge against the hordes or orcs and dragonic monsters inside.

[aVENGER]

Boring, very typical and predictable story

 

Your opinion. Personally, I thought the G2 story was adequate. Not PST-style stellar, but neither NWN OC "time traveling lizards from hell" craptastic. Simply adequate. The NOTR expansion subplots were slightly better though.

 

Being stuck with a premade character for no apparent reason. He doesnt have a backstory, not even a name. He's just some guy with a ponytail.

 

Actually, that's not true. He does have a backstory - a backstory which the player forged for him in Gothic 1. He's the hero who defeated the Sleeper, brought down the prison colony barrier and freed the convicts. This is referenced several times in G2, but I guess one has to play through the first part in order to fully grasp that.

 

Very awkward combat controls that required you to be lvl12+ to even be able to get your character to do what you want him to do.

 

Now this is just plain wrong. Granted, it took me a few hours to get the hang of the keyboard scheme when i first started Gothic1, but after that, the controls never presented a problem for me. If you actually need to be level 12+ in order to be effective in combat than you simply suck at fighting. Try playing a mage next time.

 

The whole single-player MMORPG feeling

 

Huh? I never got that feeling in either G1 or G2. OTOH, Oblivion and Morrowid came pretty close to what you describe.

 

Being forced to go out and grind random critters for hours and hours to get level enough to be able to progress the thin story. Random gridning and looting should be optional in a single-player game, not mandatory. (good CRPG's handle this by giving enough exp during the main story with optional sidequests and hacking for people who want more power)

 

Wrong again. You can earn a lot of XP by merely doing side quests. The point is, they are optional, as are most other things in Gothic. And as mkreku already pointed out, Gothic doesn't hold your hand, though it does grant a marginal ammount of XP for merely progressing through the main qest. However, you can't really expect to go toe to toe with a bunch of Orc Elites at level 3. It's just not realistic.

 

No deeper interaction with NPC's

 

On this point I agree with you, though only to an extent. While you don't have a party in the traditional sense in Gothic, your character does have a few close friends in the game, and those characters are certainly much more fleshed out than the rest of the NPCs. While you can't exactly have a cheesy BG2-style romance with a female companion in Gothic, you can certainly appreciate the insight, loyalty and the help which your friends offer you during your quest.

 

..and the list goes on and on.

 

Nah, you are just jaded that some of us actually enjoyed the game. Gothic 3 will improve almost every aspect of the past games which you seem to dislike so, who knows, maybe you'll end up enjoying it too. :cool:

[Kaftan Barlast]

I did play it to the end, I didnt beat the final boss though.

 

 

Youll die on the spot if you try to fight an Orc at lower levels no matter how good your player skillz are because you wont damage it much but itll take you out in two strikes. Doing the few non-violent quests available is not nearly enough to level up enough. So you have to go out into the wild and kill everything you see in order to level up... flies, weird lizards, animals... the monsters respawn in a tougher-to-beat form after you complete every chapter so you can go out and grind again.

[aVENGER]

I did play it to the end, I didnt beat the final boss though.

 

Hmm, he was actually pretty easy for me, without NOTR that is. Dragonhunter = slice and dice, dies in 9-10 hits. Mage + Rain of Fire = one crispy undead dragon in 5-6 casts. Paladin = just use the Destroy Evil spell a few times and presto, you've won.

 

Youll die on the spot if you try to fight an Orc at lower levels no matter how good your player skillz are because you wont damage it much but itll take you out in two strikes.

 

Well, that's kind of the point - you can't expect to take on Orcs at low levels. However, from lvl7 or so, and with some decent armor, it's quite possible to defeat a singled out Orc. They actually are pretty dumb you know, and if you observe their behavior for a while, you'll notice that they swing those huge axes in fairly predictable patterns. You can easily adapt to their fighting style if you just learn to time your blocks properly. Skeleton Warriors OTOH, are a completely different story. :ph34r:

 

Doing the few non-violent quests available is not nearly enough to level up enough.

 

Hmm, in my experiance, doing a bunch of side quests in Khorinnas and the surrounding farmlands can easily boost you to level 6-7. Even more if you do the Thieve's Guild quests. Also, new faction-based quests usually offer a moderate amount of XP in each chapter.

 

So you have to go out into the wild and kill everything you see in order to level up... flies, weird lizards, animals...  the monsters respawn in a tougher-to-beat form after you complete every chapter so you can go out and grind again.

 

Actually, the respawned critters are usually just a minor fraction of the original group. So, if you kill a dozen wolves in a forest glade for example, next chapter you'll only find 3-4 wolves in the same area.

[mkreku]

Wrong again. It is entirely possible to gain the first 3-5 levels (forgot the exact amount) by just doing quests for the farmer and inside the town of Khorinis. You obviously missed a lot of things in your playthrough.

 

The monsters do not respawn, but to avoid having an entirely empty world aftert the first two chapters (if some nut decided to clean out the place that fast), some new animals are placed in the wilderness between chapters. Respawn means that the same monster keeps being reborn over and over in the same place. That does not happen in Gothic/Gothic 2.

 

 

Edit; Duh, too slow. My post is referring to Kaftan's latest post.

Edited July 5, 2006 by mkreku

[Musopticon?]

The monsters do not respawn, but to avoid having an entirely empty world aftert the first two chapters (if some nut decided to clean out the place that fast)

<{POST_SNAPBACK}>

)

[mkreku]

Just a quick necro-post to show a picture of the world map that's been shown at the Leipzig Games Convention earlier today:

 

 

I think it looks awesome, but that might be because I've preordered the Collector's Edition and know I'll be getting this map to hang on my wall. Unfortunately not cloth, but it'll do.

 

Edit: Added some quick info about the game too:

 

- Gothic 3 offers 550 quests, but only 25 is part of the main storyline.

- The hero has 9 attributes which we can improve.

- There are 70 perks, divided into 7 types: combat (17), hunting (10), magic (11), forging (5), thieves abilities (11), alchemy (7) and others (6).

- Player can become for example master of blade or as a druid transform into some animal..

- To complete main storyline we will need about 50 hours. If player wants to complete all side quests, it will take about 100 hours.

- In the game world, we can find about 1000 different items.

- 62 speakers dubbed 250.000 lines of dialogue, which makes around 18 hours of speech.

 

Hardware requirements (take these with a pinch of salt):

Minimum - CPU 2 GHz, 512MB RAM and 128 MB GFX Card

Optimum - CPU 3 GHz, 1024MB RAM and GeForce 6800

Edited August 24, 2006 by mkreku

[Ellester]

Those specs seem kinda low for the graphics card, if people can max out on a GeForce 6800 (which I doubt) there should be a lot of happy people

[Hassat Hunter]

Optimal != max.

Optimal is more like min. graphics WITH 30FPS (that min. doesn't have)

[Judge Hades]

If the gameplay is like the Gothic 2 then I will pass this game by.

[Morgoth]

Old news.

 

Gothic 3 has to wait until I retire because I haven't figured out yet when I could possibly find the time for a 150+ hours game.

[metadigital]

If the gameplay is like the Gothic 2 then I will pass this game by.

<{POST_SNAPBACK}>

Thn don't post.  Sheesh.  No need to be rude.

<{POST_SNAPBACK}>

[Walsingham]

It does look excellent. Just imagine how it feels for me to come from BG2 to this sort of thing in one huge leap! I'll probably go into a weird kafka-esque fugue.

[Judge Hades]

If the gameplay is like the Gothic 2 then I will pass this game by.

<{POST_SNAPBACK}>

Thn don't post.  Sheesh.  No need to be rude.

<{POST_SNAPBACK}>

<{POST_SNAPBACK}>

 

In that thread I was asking those who wish to support Dark Raven to post. Here we are discussing Gothic 3 in which in turn is a continuation of the Gothic franchise which I didn't like. Posting on topic is not rude in my book, Meta.

 

In any case that thread was being spammed to death so I did your job and deleted it.

Edited August 24, 2006 by Judge Hades

[EUIX]

Oblivion for all its beautiful graphics was no where near as good as Morrowind. I quit after playing about 20 hours. The Gothic series on the other hand I played endlessly. I am really looking forward to Gothic 3.

[Pidesco]

Morrowind was awful and Oblivion, while not brilliant, was certainly better than Morrowind. The only problem is that it's even smaller.

[Musopticon?]

I need an off-year to play Gothic 3. I think I'll wait a year and try not to get spoiled.

 

It's freaking ginormous.

[@\NightandtheShape/@]

Nothing Special really that I can see, perhaps the actual artwork is somewhat better but the technology looks to be almost identical.

 

To say it's being released after oblivion it looks no better to my eye, the functionality appears the same, so really in the respect it's what, along the same lines but released afterwards.... right.