33 Gothic 3 screenshots from HQ ingame footage

[Meshugger]

The emperor looked like he was painted on a butt.

<{POST_SNAPBACK}>

 

Don't give Bethesda any new ideas

Edited August 28, 2006 by Meshugger

[Pidesco]

Character designs in Oblivion look like they were due sheer incompetence. The FaceGen program that they licenced for Oblivion makes better random faces than any in Oblivion.

 

And, after about an hour and half with the game, I could make faces with Oblivion that were better than any faces the professional paid artists did for the game. It's like they couldn't even be bothered to do their jobs properly.

[Morgoth]

While I only got the chance to try out Oblivion on a 360 for 5 min, it was already enough to turn me off.

Those fat-faces were indeed not a nice sight. I assume Todd is handling the hiring process, hiring some Newbies from the Morrowind mod community.

 

Artists #23B4: Hey look Todd, I made that extra for you! A sphere with some painted todds... I mean dots on it!!!!

Todd: Ayyy kewl!!! I like that! Welcome to Bethesda Corp.! You gonna be teh Lead Character Artists for Fallout 3!

Artists #23B4: Fallout what?

Tood: Ahh, don't mind, just imagine Oblivion with guns okay?

Artists #23B4: Understood!

[Judge Hades]

The faces in my Oblivion look pretty good. Then again I have so many mods that change so many things.

[Slowtrain]

Those graphics are ass. WHat did they do, draw them with crayons? They don't look a whole hell of a lot better than Gothic 2. Very disappointed.

[Slowtrain]

The faces in Oblivion entirely depend on your skill as a face maker. My faces look great. Obviously the ingame faces for the most part look like ass. I guess its ok since most of them are suppose do be "average" downtrodden serfs and downtrodden serfs are always butt ugly. Still, I think there should be more stylishly pretty npcs in Oblivion then there are. But whatever. They still look better than Morrowind.

Edited August 30, 2006 by CrashGirl

[SteveThaiBinh]

And, after about an hour and half with the game, I could make faces with Oblivion that were better than any faces the professional paid artists did for the game. It's like they couldn't even be bothered to do their jobs properly.

<{POST_SNAPBACK}>

Wow. Mine all looked like they had a really serious rash above their upper lip, whether I had facial hair turned up or turned down. How did you get rid of that? I ask because I'll be playing again next week, I hope.

 

My characters' faces always looked OK in the gloom of the dungeon, but once in the sunlight...

[Pidesco]

Well, that's a texture problem that is hard to get rid of unless you get new face textures. I wasn't talking about the textures, though. I was mostly referring to the modeling of the faces. Everyone's pudgy in Oblivion.

[Musopticon?]

My pal made the hottest woodelf imaginable.

 

Yeah, I mean that. I don't get boners from game characters anymore, thank heavens, but he really outdid himself with that. I mean, you can make good work with the ditor, it's a great program. Pity that the game was never any good.

Edited August 30, 2006 by Musopticon?

[mkreku]

For the record, finnj

[Tigranes]

anymore

 

"

 

Looks pretty much like Oblivion, complete with the horrible facial bloom, but I've seen better screenshots for G3 and I've only seen about 5. Horrible blocky font for the creature tooltips, by the way, I hope that's only a placeholder. Out of place font really gets me for atmosphere, like the Arials in NWN.

[Slowtrain]

the strange filter that makes backgrounds look like they're smeared out with butter is annoying

<{POST_SNAPBACK}>

 

 

Yes, exactly. Everything mushes together. Nothing is crisp. Plus the avatars are all somewhat misproportioned and the creature graphics look like they were drawn by a three year old. ALso the use of color seems rather monotnous. None of this is an engine problem, obviously. But there's defintely an art problem going on here. Shades of Troika's crappy art. Sorry, but I like my fantasy somewhat pleasing to look at; it shouldn't make my eyes bleed.

 

Assumign the game gets good word of mouth, I'll probably stilll buy it though.

[Morgoth]

I predict Gothic 3 will even destroy NWN2, but that's maybe just my fanboyism....

 

Oh, and I like the new Orcs. They're intelligent and more human/Ape like (Planet of the Apes anyone?), that makes them a little more scary if you ask me.

Those typical DnD/LOTR Orcs really never impressed me - they were just dumb cannon-fodder... very boring.

 

There's also a screenshot-gallery, I hope you'll find new ones among them. Clicky

[Kaftan Barlast]

Its not a surprise that the actual ingame graphics looks bad. Its one of those things where the cheating is heavy; from taking screenshots of models that are too highpoly to ever be rendered in realtime, to actually staging a scene in MAX and rendering it with Mental Ray

 

 

I predict Gothic 3 will even destroy NWN2, but that's maybe just my fanboyism....

 

 

Haha, right about when hell freezes over But the two cant really be compared since G3 will have more in common with an action game like "Prince of Persia" than a pureblood CRPG.

[Morgoth]

Its not a surprise that the actual ingame graphics looks bad. Its one of those things where the cheating is heavy; from taking screenshots of models that are too highpoly to ever be rendered in realtime, to actually staging a scene in MAX and rendering it with Mental Ray

 

 

I predict Gothic 3 will even destroy NWN2, but that's maybe just my fanboyism....

 

 

Haha, right about when hell freezes over But the two cant really be compared since G3 will have more in common with an action game like "Prince of Persia" than a pureblood CRPG.

<{POST_SNAPBACK}>

You obviously don't learn much at your game Uni huh? What's a pureblood CRPG btw?

[mkreku]

It's weird. I love Gothic. I love Gothic 2 even more. I love Wasteland more than.. uh.. I mean I love the Gothic's. But not even my fanboyism can cover up the fact that the art direction has taken a turn for the worse since Gothic 2. And since I am a fanboi of the Gothic series and still can see the flaws in my most anticipated game, I have to ask the question: How can creatures like Volourn keep defending games like Neverwinter Nights, spouting stuff like "the main story was better than most rpg's out there" and "the models weren't blocky, they were pretty"..? Does this mean i am bad at fanboying over stuff?

 

I would loved for Gothic 3 to have Oblivion crushing visuals, but I am not worried about graphics (as long as they work), I'm more worried about the new combat system than anything else. Apparently it's much more actiony now, kind of resembling games like Prince of Persia more than Gothic 2. I hope they've managed to pull it off in the way that it still feels like an RPG and not just some free-roaming action game.

[Kaftan Barlast]

You obviously don't learn much at your game Uni huh? What's a pureblood CRPG btw?

<{POST_SNAPBACK}>

 

 

The developers of the Gothic series have stated repeatedly that the Gothic series are not CRPG's, but action-adventure games, and that Gothic 3 will be even less of an RPG than the previous two.

 

 

Without trying to start the whole "what exactly makes a real RPG" debate again; a pureblood/hardcore CRPG is generally a game where you control a party of characters through an adventure where you actions and choices have a noticeable effect on the outcome of the story. There are also traditions regarding combat; that it cant be twitch-controlled etc. A simpler way of putting it is that a hardcore CRPG tries to emulate the experience of playing a table-top RPG.

[Morgoth]

The developers of the Gothic series have stated repeatedly that the Gothic series are not CRPG's, but action-adventure games, and that Gothic 3 will be even less of an RPG than the previous two.

 

No, I have never read that they stated Gothic is an action-adventure. The only thing they wanted to make like an action-adventure is the combat, and I'm fine with that.

I thought the combat kinda sucked in G1, G2 a little less, but I'm now happy to have full mouse-control in G3.

Besides, the motivation of the Piranhas is to create choice- not so much via stats like NWN2 - but more with a well realised world and quests and guilds that fit into that world. That doesn't lessen it being a CRPG, it's just a different approach, but that doesn't make it an action-adventure either. NWN2 may have the FR sticky on the box, but that doesn't change my opinion that the world is still inferiorly realised.

 

 

Without trying to start the whole "what exactly makes a real RPG" debate again; a pureblood/hardcore CRPG is generally a game where you control a party of characters through an adventure where you actions and choices have a noticeable effect on the outcome of the story. There are also traditions regarding combat; that it cant be twitch-controlled etc. A simpler way of putting it is that a hardcore CRPG tries to emulate the experience of playing a table-top RPG.

<{POST_SNAPBACK}>

I see. But those "pure table-top RPGs" are slowly dying, and god thanks. Even minorities like NWN2 or DA won't change that.

Edited September 4, 2006 by Morgoth

[Tigranes]

I see. But those "pure table-top RPGs" are slowly dying, and god thanks. Even minorities like NWN2 or DA won't change that.

 

Totally irrelevant comment, Kaftan's claims that Gothic 3 is NOT a 'pure table top RPG' was the point at work here. Not their level of success. As I recall Kaftan never blasted Gothic for not being a 'pure rpg', he just said it wasn't.

 

Anyway, Gothic being a game striving for actiony combat and choice-involved game (in concept), you'd think atmospheric graphics would help, too. Don't mean purty, mean atmospheric. If the stupid bloom was toned down (the inventor needs to be shot) then I think Gothic 3 looks fine enough in that aspect, although animations are always the make or break factor. As I said before, it's things like out of place ugly fonts (the tooltip), unnatural bloom and unusual lack of crispness that hurts the screenies more than the fact that they were taken on a low-end comp or something.

[mkreku]

With a little luck the game looks more like this (if the link works):

 

 

These distant mountains doesn't look blurred. Much more Gothic-styled.

[Arkan]

I predict Gothic 3 will even destroy NWN2, but that's maybe just my fanboyism....

 

Oh, and I like the new Orcs. They're intelligent and more human/Ape like (Planet of the Apes anyone?), that makes them a little more scary if you ask me.

Those typical DnD/LOTR Orcs really never impressed me - they were just dumb cannon-fodder... very boring.

 

There's also a screenshot-gallery, I hope you'll find new ones among them. Clicky

<{POST_SNAPBACK}>

 

It's crazy how awful the pics in the OP look compared to these you've given. I can't imagine the graphics having actually gotten worse during development, so I'll take these any day.

[Kaftan Barlast]

With a little luck the game looks more like this (if the link works):

 

 

These distant mountains doesn't look blurred. Much more Gothic-styled.

<{POST_SNAPBACK}>

 

 

The problem is there is no interface there, no animated characters, nothing. So the bad screenshots are probably more truthful to how the finished game will look. This screenshot is probably a loose rendering.

[Morgoth]

There's a preview (you can babelfish it if you want) and click through the thumbnails to get some pictures of an "almost finished version". Clicky

 

Here's a shot of the interface.

 

 

Doesn't look too shabby.

 

I miss the distance fog. I thought that's a better solution to spare performance rather than doing a sort of faked Zdepth that just blurs the background. Meh.

 

The preview is overall very positive and despite some crashes, they think this might be the "RPG of the Year".

Edited September 4, 2006 by Morgoth

[Musopticon?]

Yeah, I'll propably buy Gothic 3 after NWN 2.

 

 

Hee, not a long post.

[Slowtrain]

they think this might be the "RPG of the Year".

<{POST_SNAPBACK}>

 

 

This is what I was hoping for. I just expected better graphics. Not neccessarily Oblivion-level graphics, but not too far off that curve. WHat I am seeing here are graphics that would have looked good several years ago.

 

Its true that in the past crpgs were always cut some slack graphic-wise when compared to sports games or shooters, due to their longer dev cycle and generally more complex gameplay and world-building requirements. WHich meant less time so spend on graphics, more graphics that needed to be done, and generally an older engine to boot.

 

I'm still looking forward to G3, I was just disappointed to see what is essentially the final look of the game. I'm sure once I get playing it I won't even notice the graphics.

 

Also I can't tell the quality oif the animations from static screenies. As several of you have pointed out animations are pretty important, especially in a non first person game, where you are going to spend the whole game watching your character move.