Preview Gothic 3 preview at IGN

[Vault Dweller]

Tags: Gothic III; Piranha Bytes

<a href=http://www.ign.com>IGN</a> has enjoyed the E3 <a href=http://www.gothic3.com>Gothic 3</a> demo and posted a short <a href=http://pc.ign.com/articles/708/708135p1.html>preview</a>, noting a reactive AI.
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<blockquote>In one of the quests shown off an NPC challenged the main character to a duel as a test of strength. After a short battle the NPC was defeated and fell to the ground. Now, there are some options here, one of which is to deliver a killing blow even though the fight wasn't supposed to be to the death. This naturally provided a terrific moment to start demonstrating the reactive AI. Once the killing blow was delivered, all of the people watching the fight freaked out and cried murder. It was not a good public relations move but considering one of the ways to play the game is to help the orcs subjugate humanity, it's not that big a problem.
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Once again, when approaching orc guards around the castle, once weapons were even drawn the entire lot of them went into alert mode and started shouting threats about putting the weapons away. If weapons are left drawn for too long in the face of potential enemies, they'll simply begin attacking. Sometimes the best defense is a good offense afterall.
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</blockquote>The funny thing is, it's the same old stuff that nobody paid attention to before. Oblivion's stupid hype has attracted everyone's attention to AI, and because RAI was such a ... what's the word? ... procedural garbage, everyone else's AI looks great in comparison. Thanks, Bethesda!
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<blockquote>Gothic III looked pretty impressive again. It's a lesser known and lesser played series here in the states but it definintely warrants some attention from the RPG crowd. It's open-ended gameplay should turn on anyone that was a fan of the recent Oblivion release and even hold some advantages over it.</blockquote>My sentiments exactly.
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Spotted at: <A HREF="http://www.rpgdot.com">RPG Dot</A>

 

[Atrokkus]

The funny thing is, it's the same old stuff that nobody paid attention to before. Oblivion's stupid hype has attracted everyone's attention to AI, and because RAI was such a ... what's the word? ... procedural garbage, everyone else's AI looks great in comparison. Thanks, Bethesda!

Hah, yeah, funny indeed. But not too funny, though, since it's coming from IGN, heh.

 

[suibhne]

They say that the AI is more reactive than in the GDC demo, but everything they tick off was done by the original Gothic...what, 5 years ago?

 

[Seboss]

Hey at least the Piranha guys don't dumb down their games with each episode.
I would love some character customization though. I'm not too fond of the paperdoll dressing we usually find in MMOs and I'm generally all right with fixed character design, like in Fallout (which give you the choice to play either sex at least) or Torment. But the Gothic main character really charisma IMO.

 

[suibhne]

Hey at least the Piranha guys don't dumb down their games with each episode.

Don't worry, I was criticizing IGN rather than PB. :wink:

 

[Fresh]

They say that the AI is more reactive than in the GDC demo, but everything they tick off was done by the original Gothic...what, 5 years ago?

About the AI being more reactive... maybe thy're referring to the fact that in the GDC demo the scavengers just stood there doing nothing when the pc approached?

 

[Claw]

What GDC demo? I only recally E3 and GC in Leipzig last year. I couldn't find any reference on IGN's Gothic game profile either.
I would suspect the AI was turned off in the demo, like in the E3 demo where the AI was turned on only to show off combat.

 

[Fresh]

From the gamespot preview: "Aspyr says there will be more than 200,000 words of spoken dialogue in the game"

How does that compare to OB?

 

[Kendar]

From the gamespot preview: "Aspyr says there will be more than 200,000 words of spoken dialogue in the game"

How does that compare to OB?

Not sure but, there are clearly less words in OB than in MW, wich had 800 000.

 

[Saint_Proverbius]

Hey at least the Piranha guys don't dumb down their games with each episode.

Given Gothic's character system from the first game, it would be hard to dumb it down further unless they totally went the Harbinger route. The character system and advancement really doesn't offer much in the way of non-combat skills, and given the way it's handled, I doubt it ever could and have any type of balance.

 

[Claw]

Combat skills are expensive and expensive, non-combat skills add a variety of more or less useful, non-essential abilites and are very cheap.

Given that Gothic's original system was largely thrown out for the second, and the third is going to have an extremely different system, although I guess there will be many familiar skills and non-combat skills will be relatively cheap again, your opinion is kinda obsolete.

Out of curiousity, I'd like to know what exactly you mean by "given the way it's handled, I doubt it ever could and have any type of balance."

 

[sheek]

From the gamespot preview: "Aspyr says there will be more than 200,000 words of spoken dialogue in the game"

How does that compare to OB?

That's about 2,000 to 4,000 paragraphs.

Pretty good.

Of course it can't compare to Oblivion because however many paragraphs there are they're non-interactive.

Another thing to think about is how much of this text will be 'lore' and stuff like that. In Morrowind I'm pretty sure they included all those books nobody read into the total. If all I want to read pages of soul-destroying bullshit text cut-n-pasted together by an idiot I'll go to wikipedia.com.

 

[elander_]

Whats wrong with having books in crpgs? It's part of a game setting and tell the history of the world. If just Oblivion was as good as a game as the writing in some of the books.

However having books replace character interaction is idiotic. It's like replacing dialog with action or making dialog as short as yes /no or "go on" and call it a crpg.

 

[FrancoTAU]

NPCs getting hostile when you walk around with a drawn weapon was impressive when Magic Candle did it 15 years ago. Dave Gaider really had a good point about how gameplay has improved so much due to the improved technologies. Jackass.

I'm not trying to trash Gothic 3 as i'm looking foward to it.. even with the silly refunded skill points thing.