Comment by corent

11/23/2006 @ 8:15 pm

Superior? Well, more like inferior. Oblivion, or any other TES game, pales in comparison to the Gothic series. There’s no soul in TES games. Gothic is like the finest gourmet 3-course meal while TES is like rice cakes and tap water

Missing textures you say? Hmmm… you might want to update/upgrade your PCs or patch the game.

Comment by Tritone

11/23/2006 @ 9:05 pm

I will agree with you that Gothic 2 had a lot of character; this third game really misses the mark. The Gothic series has always been rough around the edges but this time the lack of polish is even greater. I have everything maxed out and it still looks crummy. Nice, vibrant colors, but that’s about it. Now, maybe 20 hours in it starts to get interesting. So far, it isn’t.

Comment by Brixtone

11/24/2006 @ 1:14 am

Why is it that when Tritone knocks a game, I feel the need to experience his disappointment first hand? Stop being so damned clever!

Comment by Tritone

11/24/2006 @ 2:52 am

Could it be some sort of reverse schadenfreude? You know, instead of taking pleasure at the misfortune of others, you want to experience it yourself?

Comment by corent

11/24/2006 @ 9:44 am

Well, yeah… Gothic 3 is a unpolished piece of software but it still is a good and enjoyable game that I can’t stop playing. I’ve guided the Nameless through the continent for almost 6 weeks now, at least 4 hours a day. That’s not a sign of a bad game.

Gothic 3 is not as great as the previous two though, especially Gothic 2: Night Of The Raven, which is the best game I’ve ever played. The huge open game world of G3 just isn’t “Gothic”. There isn’t really characters you’d remember afterwards, or good gripping storyline. G3 has a LOT of places and locations though that have left a permanent memory print on my mind. It is one of the best looking games out there, if not the best.

Piranha Bytes only has a ~20 man team and G3 is a magnificent achievement considering that fact, and they did the world “by hand” and coded the engine themselves. All that in a little over 3 years. But I can’t help to think that with Gothic 3 they bite off more than they can chew. JoWooD also is to blame for rushing it out. Two weeks before the Euro release I heard rumours of a bankruptcy (couldn’t afford to wait an extra month or two). Here’s hoping that the upcoming massive patch v1.10 will make G3 more polished…

I hope the promised add-on gets back to the good old Gothic feeling with great characters, story and atmosphere. Piranha Bytes has said that it’ll be a lot smaller, more compact and “back to the roots” Gothic game.

Comment by Tritone

11/24/2006 @ 10:14 am

Was there some point at which it switched from being sort of annoyingly disappointing to engaging? I’m willing to give it a longer trial if there is hope…

And “best looking game out there?”  I think not.

Comment by corent

11/24/2006 @ 11:20 am

I like the visual style of Gothic games and there’s some amazing vistas to be seen, especially in the mornings and in the evenings. It’s not “best looking” all the time but when it does look good it’s really a sight to behold (I play without DOF, by the way).

Engaging? It depends what engaging means to you. I like Gothic’s rough world that has no babysitting or hand holding. It’s not a guided walk in Disney Land park. The often dumb AI makes 1 vs. 1 battles too easy though. It’s another matter when you decide to liberate a town or a city from orcs and their supporters…

I have to admit that I was very disappointed in the beginning when I started up the game for the first time. So many things were so different from the previous Gothic’s. But, in time, I got “adjusted” to it all and stopped being grumpy at it and started to enjoy the game as it is. I guess I needed some time to recover from the shock