Arcania: A Gothic Tale

[taviow]

Downloading now. Wondering how it'll run on a lesser system ;_;

[mkreku]

Yeah, I've played through it now too.

 

The good:

It runs great on my Core i7 920 (@3.2GHz), 5870, 6GB RAM system. Everything on max, 1920x1080 and the game dipped to 37 at its lowest and an average of ~55 (capped at 60).

It looks good. The graphics are good to great, the art design is pleasant, the animations are OK, it looks Gothic-y, the world is detailed, lots of neat effects.

Combat has potential. It feels fluid enough and if the character evolves it might be fun.

Controls are improved over Gothic. The game just feels a lot more responsive and less sluggish.

Still no loading times! Mucho important to me.

Equipment is more plentiful. This is a good thing as Gothic has always been very low on equipment. Too low, even.

 

The bad (if you enjoyed Gothic):

They removed swimming (just like in Risen).

You can't fall off of cliffs anymore. Your character runs up to the edge, but stops at an 'invisible wall'. The running animation keeps on going though. You need to jump off to be able to fall off.

They removed climbing.

Interactivity with world objects is gone. No more sleeping in beds, no more cooking in pots, no more smithing weapons on anvils etc. The animations are there, but not the effects.

You can only fight enemies. No more accidentally hitting allies in the middle of combat.

Character development is.. different. To me it felt worse, but opinions will vary.

Arrows are not physical objects anymore. In Gothic, if you missed your target, you could trace the path of your arrow and pick it up again a kilometer away. Not so in Arcania.

Lots of little things noone but me is bothered to hear about..

 

All in all, I think I will enjoy it as a lightweight RPG in the Gothic genre (I'm still getting it). I'll stick to Risen 2 for my Gothic needs though.

[Tigranes]

If you can jump off cliffs anyway, then why can't you run off them? Prevent accidental deaths? Meh.

 

Sounds like Gothic Lite, maybe I need to try for myself before buying then.

[Nepenthe]

there are far too many untargetable villagers that also don't react when I take out my weapons on enter their houses.

 

... So you can't savor the last moment before popping your heatsink?

[Tigranes]

Watching a video of the demo being played, http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2lj0r7e1mnU - tell me if I'm on the mark here...

 

1) Rule #1 of voice acting fails again - if you can't get good VA, get unnoticeable VA, not obnoxiously crap VA. Or at least let me kill the idiot girl. Sadly this continues with the retarded farmer, and pretty much everyone sounds like they've been lobotomised. Much, much worse than Risen, and how big a budget did that game have? Even the protagonist VA is retarded. They all sound like people who failed the Harry Potter Radio audition.

2) Graphics/world looks nice, Gothic-ish, as we've known.

3) Obnoxious quest markers and such - but we know we can turn them off.

4) That fade to black just to talk to people is going to get annoying.

5) Can you at least jump up on shoulder-height rockfaces and such in the village? Otherwise it's going to suck.

 

Codex Feedback tells me combat is way too easy, can we get opinions? So far looks like the game will still be fun if the combat is balanced/challenging and there is still some quest nonlinearity.

[WorstUsernameEver]

1) Rule #1 of voice acting fails again - if you can't get good VA, get unnoticeable VA, not obnoxiously crap VA. Or at least let me kill the idiot girl. Sadly this continues with the retarded farmer, and pretty much everyone sounds like they've been lobotomised. Much, much worse than Risen, and how big a budget did that game have? Even the protagonist VA is retarded. They all sound like people who failed the Harry Potter Radio audition.

2) Graphics/world looks nice, Gothic-ish, as we've known.

3) Obnoxious quest markers and such - but we know we can turn them off.

4) That fade to black just to talk to people is going to get annoying.

5) Can you at least jump up on shoulder-height rockfaces and such in the village? Otherwise it's going to suck.

 

Codex Feedback tells me combat is way too easy, can we get opinions? So far looks like the game will still be fun if the combat is balanced/challenging and there is still some quest nonlinearity.

 

1) Indeed. All the voice acting is very Gothic-y... in a bad way.

2) Some textures leave me a little bit iffy, but overall it really looks good and smooth when you max every setting.

3) You can turn off a lot of things. Not really sure if the design supports that though, I didn't really fiddle with those settings.

4) It gets annoying pretty quickly, yeah.

5) I'll have to try but it didn't seem as limited as a Bioware/Obsidian game. Still, coming from Gothic, it's annoying that they've removed such things as swimming and climbing.

[HoonDing]

The reason why you can't kill everyone in the village is because you're supposed to be a model villager known & loved by everyone; not to mention the village is typically going to be razed to the ground, with you being the only survivor out for revenge.

 

I'm unable to download the demo due to download limits, but it seems a lot like Two Worlds 1 to me... not a bad way to pass the time until Two Worlds 2 comes out.

[WorstUsernameEver]

Played a little more of the demo. The voice acting is really atrocious (not as bad as the first 2 Gothics though) but the game is surprisingly enjoyable if mindless.

[SadExchange]

Have a question, I'm in the cave completing quests for the witch, but I've come up to a gate after defeating some fallen knights and don't seem to have a key for the gate, therefore can't progress. Did I miss something along the way?

[WorstUsernameEver]

Have a question, I'm in the cave completing quests for the witch, but I've come up to a gate after defeating some fallen knights and don't seem to have a key for the gate, therefore can't progress. Did I miss something along the way?

 

Explore that segment of the cave some more, there is a chest with the key.

 

And I finished the demo. It's not bad but it's ultimately unremarkable, though I guess we can't judge the quest design just yet.

[SadExchange]

Ha, thanks, can't believe I didn't see that chest, just got it and finished the demo. Overall, decent enough, better than I expected it to be, to be honest.

[Gorth]

The voice acting is really atrocious

That would be an understatement... it sounds completely weird, utterly out of synch with lips and body language and the translators couldn't agree on the translation. One guy tells me to fetch 5 of something while the subtitle says 6

 

Other than that, it seems to run Ok. All maxed out too, with high and ultra high settings, no hiccups so far.

[LadyCrimson]

Don't normally "do" demos (lazy) but I'm semi-interested so I'm downloading this now. Got over an hour to wait tho, so I'm also watching the YT video. As soon as the "hero" opened his digital mouth, I started laughing.

 

It's Disciple!!

 

LMFAO

 

Edit:imdb doesn't list the game as a credit under his name, but it sure sounds like him in spots & he's done lots of other games. Can anyone confirm/deny?

Edited September 25, 2010 by LadyCrimson

[Morgoth]

Watching a video of the demo being played, http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2lj0r7e1mnU - tell me if I'm on the mark here...

Well he does sound a lot better than with German VO.

[WorstUsernameEver]

By the way, did anyone try both the color palettes?

[Labadal]

This is a "buy down the road" game for me. It is good enough to buy, but not for $50-60.

 

Why can't I pick up my missed arrows.

[HoonDing]

My biggest gripe is the looks of the player character. With that haircut, he looks like a complete douchebag.

[WorstUsernameEver]

According to the goons the demo automatically sets all the main quests to completed when it ends, thus spoiling the entire story.

 

If I'm understanding correctly

they've retconned Gothic 1 so that the Sleeper was actually just the evil half of a lost goddess and that the Nameless Hero, now called Rhobar III, is possessed by his amulet, that apparently was a Collector's Edition item of the expansion for Gothic III, that one that no one played because it was made by an inexperienced Indian studio and was even worse than the main game when it comes to bugs. So .. well, yeah.

 

[HoonDing]

If I'm understanding correctly

they've retconned Gothic 1 so that the Sleeper was actually just the evil half of a lost goddess and that the Nameless Hero, now called Rhobar III, is possessed by his amulet, that apparently was a Collector's Edition item of the expansion for Gothic III, that one that no one played because it was made by an inexperienced Indian studio and was even worse than the main game when it comes to bugs. So .. well, yeah.

Well, I guess that's the last drop.

[LadyCrimson]

I played some of the demo (I don't know how long it is) but didn't finish it. Can't speak to potential longer term gameplay appeal, but initially I'm unimpressed. The invisible walls are very annoying, including not allowing you to walk off short platform edges to drop to the ground, and getting stuck on rocks here and there. Voice acting/script I don't care about personally, but I'd say it's not that bad. Not good, but not that bad. Interface didn't bother me at all either, fairly simple. The mouse turning motion felt way too fast for me - like spin around dizzy fast - and even with the slider all the way down it was more spin-y than I'd like. So count me in on the probably wait for it to come down in price camp. I might not wait for bargain bin, but discounted at least.

 

I had it on max-everything & it was giving 30-35 FPS (i7/Win7/geGTX275) which felt smooth & non-stuttery. If I turned Fraps movie recording on, it only dropped a few frame points/wasn't laggy at all. Graphics were ok but nothing spectacular/super smooth in terms of the scenery/grass/trees - faces were better. One thing I did like was the "American" & "European" color saturation option. Did all the Gothics have that? I think more games should. Sometimes I don't want the over-saturated colors.

 

Also had fun getting stuck on a rock in cave, which led to the always giggle-inducing inside-out-face/body model view. Hahaha.

 

 

Edited September 26, 2010 by LadyCrimson

[LadyCrimson]

By the way, did anyone try both the color palettes?

Yes, all it does is increase/decrease color saturation. I don't think it does anything else (if it does, it's too subtle to be much noticeable), since when I take screenshots of the two different settings, and then only increase/decrease saturation in an editor, they end up looking exactly the same.

[Slowtrain]

All of you who are into this should try the Oblivion TC in the other thread. It's quite good. ANd I speak as someone who hated Oblivion. But the TC, while having to retain some similarities to the vanilla game, is nonetheless extremely impressive. And you can swim and run off cliffs, if you choose.

 

Also, it's free.

[WorstUsernameEver]

Also, it's free.

 

Well, you need Oblivion. Since the only experience I've playing it is from borrowing a friend's copy for a couple of days.. I'll think about getting it during one of the Steam sales though.

[HoonDing]

I'm finally playing the demo and for me the game runs best with post-processing off. Anyone know what this option does, exactly? It seems to impact the look of the game quite a lot.

 

On:

 

Off:

[Oner]

All I can see is the game is more colorful with post-processing switched off.