Gothic III spanks The Elder Scrolls 4: Oblivion silly!

For those of you who were disappointed with Bethesda's latestest game, then you better get ready to delve into the very complex world of Gothic III....by upgrading your computer. This game focus's is on Realism from the way fights are to how the towns are setup and populated to the Political and Factional structure embedded into the very gameplay itself. At the beggining of the game you are steered towards the cause of the Royalists, more commonly referred to as the Rebels. You do not have to help the rebels liberate towns of course and could go Mercenary and help the occupation forces of the Orcs. There are also other factions like the Peaceful Rangers and the Greedy Slaver people called the Hashishi....who smoke Hash Joints and Water Pipes. They are the now cliched Desert people with an accent, though I've found that this implementation is more accurate and realistic. The attention to detail is amazing as well and if you are looking for a challange this game is for you! Run away from Boars at the beggining. They will knock you down and will not let you get backup until you are dead.

For those old school gamers out there, this game reminds me a bit of Darklands.

www.youtube.com...

youtube.com...

[edit on 24-10-2006 by sardion2000]

Oh yeah, the actual levelling system is a hybrid between skill based and level based. The amount of skills you can learn is increadible and spells are treated as skills(of which there are quite a lot of). You can be anything from a two sword wielding assassin working for the Orcs to a Staff wielding fire mage seeking to reaquire his power. You can learn blacksmithing skills as well as mining, alchemy and cooking skills.

It feels a lot like an MMO in certain places, but doesn't force you to grind that often. You gain skills by spending gold and SP at skill trainers and level by completing tasks, quests and killing stuff. Skill training can be pricey and you'll often find yourself having a large backlog of Skill Points. In order to receive the services of a skill trainer you'll usually have to either pay gold or do them a favor that can range from anything from package delivery to espionage missions(as well as the standard assault missions and cave crawling missions). You actions dictate the fate of the world literally so choose your skills wisely.

[edit on 24-10-2006 by sardion2000]

Okay, I've got to the point where I have all three Fire Chalices. Now I have to get to Nordmar to give them to the fire mages. How the hell do I get past the Mountains, Undead, and/or the Orcish Army?

[edit on 24-10-2006 by sardion2000]

Nvrmnd, I'm blind. heh

Thanks for the link, that looks sweet, I hope they port it to the 360 - My PC aint no where near powerful enough?

I haven't played 1 or 2 either so might did them out of a bargin bin.

Gothic is over ten years old so you better dust off 'old DoxBox to emulate it. Gothic 2 shouldn't be a problem.

What's your specs? You might be able to play it on ultra low resolution(800x600) and graphics.

[edit on 27-10-2006 by sardion2000]

I loved Gothic II. .
I've got an AMD 64 FX2 4400, 2GB RAM and an ATI Radeon X850. Looks like my video card is on the low side! I guess I won't be able to run full graphics. Dang.

Ati 9500, 1Gb RAM, AMD 2800+
Running a Virtual server aswell.......

I think I will stop there.

"Gothic III spanks The Elder Scrolls 4: Oblivion silly"

Blasphemy! *get's the torches and ptichforks ready*

I've actually heard some say that Oblivion is still better than Gothic III. Many have argued that they're completely different styles of gameplay (one being free-roam, and the other linear). I do hope to get Gothic III soon, to test it out. If it's as good as you say, I'll have to tell the angry villagers to put away the torches and pitchforks.

Is that XP or 64? If it's XP then you'd best off either waiting for a port or upgrade your comp. I couldn't imagine this game running good on my old XP machine.

[edit on 27-10-2006 by sardion2000]

What are the specific specs needed to run it?

I'm guessing mine will run fine, since it runs Oblivion without any trouble.

AMD Athlon 64 3700+, 4 GB RAM.

First Post Reply
DJ, this game rocks. The gameplay argument doesn't hold water because they are essentially in the same genre so comparisons are legit.

1. In Oblivion there was that idiotic Level scaling scheme ensuring that you had a chance to beat the game at Level 1. In Gothic III you'll be running from half the creatures in the game before you get a feel for the game. In one of the caves near the start, there are fricken small dragons!?! I won't tell you how to get there, but I'll give you a hint, you get to the cave on the beach.

2. In Oblivion, the much Hyped Radiant AI turned out to be a bust. In Gothic III, the AI does have some pathing issues as well as some combat ones(wait for the patch, they said they'd fix it in 3 weeks), but the way the towns are setup is soo much more realistic then Oblivion. You see the Orc smiths hammering away at something and the Mercenaries sharpening their swords. They eat and drink when they need too(after a fight, when they are tired, etc).

3. As a consequence of this idiotic level scaling scheme, in the later levels, you'll often find Bandits with gear as good as yours. In Gothic, you gear is handled in a far different fashion. Armor are bought in sets and art extremely expensive. You cannot loot armor because the game makes the assumption that armor looted from a corpse will be useless since the manner of death is usually extremely violent. However weapons and shields will fall realistically to the ground after you kill/incapacitate an opponent.

4. The variety of weapons in Gothic and the ways in which to use them beats Oblivion easily. From Hashishin Poisoned Knives to large Halberds, most of the high fantasy arms are there. The Ranged combat is also much better then oblivion. The only thing that Oblivion did that I wished Gothic would have done, was to add combos. Maybe in an expansion pack.

When you've played the game, I'd love to hear a rebuttal/affirmation.

I'd advise you to wait though as there are some annoying combat bugs with NPC's fighting Mobs.

Second Post Reply
You'll be able to play it DJ. And probably better then I. What's you video card?

I've actually found that this game requires more then Oblivion in cities due to the massive amounts of NPC activity.

[edit on 27-10-2006 by sardion2000]

[edit on 27-10-2006 by sardion2000]

Ah, I see. Thanks for posting that. I'm getting a new video card next week. I was thinking about a Radeon X1950 XTX or a X1900 XTX.

[edit on 27-10-2006 by DJMessiah]

Oh yeah, one other thing, there are no loading screens between wilderness and cities as well as dungeons. The game is completely persistent and seamless. Bodies will eventually decay into skeletons and caves you wiped will stay wiped, etc, etc.

[edit on 27-10-2006 by sardion2000]

So the bodies/skeletons will remain for the rest of the game?

This was an issue with Morrowind, with players complaining that the game would freeze from too many bodies remaining in the game.

Originally posted by DJMessiah
So the bodies/skeletons will remain for the rest of the game?

This was an issue with Morrowind, with players complaining that the game would freeze from too many bodies remaining in the game.

No, just the skeletons in the caves. The wilderness stuff disappears eventually. I just noticed that while playing.

[edit on 27-10-2006 by sardion2000]

wow this is looking good, im sure my laptop can handle this thanks for those links

Indeed, this game looks great, but......this game is full of goddamn bugs, lots of people are complaining about it around the internet. IMO, this game was released too early, they should have finished it properly. :shk:

Good thing is, they are at least trying to fix those bugs as soon as possible.

Pirhanna Bytes official statement about Gothic 3 and patch at WOG

"First, we don't chose the "we want fast money and kid the fans"-way.
That G3 wasn't finished at the release was cr@p. That guys complain about that is legitimate. We knew that there will not be no bugs but we underrated the amount of problems we were confronted working at the goldmaster.
We thought that we will deliever a finished game with a few bugs at the announced release and wanted to remove them with one patch.

Sadly we are working on a 2nd patch now but although we will fix the most known bugs many fans will be disappointed.

So once the enemy dies and you can collect their swords, shields, and other items, can you sell them to the shop owners? Can you also loot from shop owners to resell their items too, or has this been disabled?

This is normal business practice nowdays with releasing products, its a way of cutting costs getting your customers to do stuff you normally would. Imagine the amount of money it saves letting the public play and find the bugs and report them back to the developers.

[edit on 27-10-2006 by Fett Pinkus]