VD's Gothic 3 impressions

[Vault Dweller]

The kids may cry, but I will ask this anyway.

Vince, what are your computers specs?

Pentium D processor 930, Dual Core, 3GHz, 800FSB
2GB Dual Channel DDR2 SDRAM, 533MHz
nVidia GeForce 6800, 256 MB

 

[Vault Dweller]

A quick question since I've never played any of the Gothics before this:

Can I actually die in combat after a certain time/level, or am I roleplaying The Highlander with sweaty palms and dodgy balance, so I just keep on falling over and dropping my sword?

Some enemies will kill you, some enemies will only kick the shit out you and take your gold and your stuff. One of the bastards yesterday took my sword and literally said that now it's his. In other words, you are not role-playing an immortal guy with nothing to lose.

 

[fizzelopeguss]

Something that's always bugged me about the Gothics is how you're always playing the same character, yet you start every game as a fairly weak shmuck with no equipment and little magic power. I can appreciate that it's easy to remove someone's equipment by saying they were robbed or something. Do they actually have a reasonable explanation this time for what happened to all your uber spells and 1337 combat skills between games?

Due to the long boat journey to the mainland, you're now a "little out of shape"

 

[Vault Dweller]

sorry, I didn't noticein G2 (even if I did enjoy the game), I didn't play G3 yet.

Different ways to get into the city:

1. Sneak past the guards
2. Buy farmer clothes from the farm nearby and pretend to be a worker
3. Buy a pass from Canthar
4. Bribe the guards
5. Collect a shitload of herbs and pretend to be a herb trader
6. Explore the area around the town (to the right from the gate) and find the "explorer"s way in.

Pay more attention next time you play a game.

no, but it has become since the fallout 3 license which piss a lot of people over here.

Not really, but who cares about the truth when you can make shit up for fun?

Seriously, VD's high praise was for the game's art, not graphics. If you don't understand the difference, go play in another thread.

graphics is the pejorative art and start with a "g" and not a "a".coool.

In other words, you don't understand the difference.

 

[elander_]

Ok heres the motherfucking questions that everyone wants to make but nobody dares and if you dont have a barrel of solid proven facts don't even bother answering.

Are there realistic boobs and well undressed woman in the game?

Is there a compass in Gothic3? If not then how are we supose to know who we have to talk to before we kill him or what mushroom do we have to pickup or wheres the next quest?

Can i be the savior of the orks against the opressing human slaves after i free the slaves and put them in charge? I like to roleplay a guy who joins every factions and wins everything. Thats the minimum to expect from the price of this game.

I hope there aren't too many factions in this game. How many factions are there?

Is dialog too long and obtrusive? Like how many words per conversation average?

Do we have to use our brains to finish quests? If so does the journal tells us what we have to do? If not then im not even touching this game.

Finnaly can i be evil? I mean can we be realy, realy, realy evil? Like take your enemies down and piss on them and call names to old ladies and bargain prices a lot and allways ask money for a quest?

 

[Admiral Rimjob POOBUM]

Something that's always bugged me about the Gothics is how you're always playing the same character, yet you start every game as a fairly weak shmuck with no equipment and little magic power. I can appreciate that it's easy to remove someone's equipment by saying they were robbed or something. Do they actually have a reasonable explanation this time for what happened to all your uber spells and 1337 combat skills between games?

Due to the long boat journey to the mainland, you're now a "little out of shape"

I wouldn't say you're back down to Gothic 1 first-level skill, though... You DO start the game by kicking the asses of an entire townload of orcs.

 

[suleo]

Jasede, a quick and stupid question. As a German do the german discs come exclusively with german language, is there any easy way to patch to English or should I just buy online.

As others said, you can change the .ini options to get an english menu and subtitles with german voiceovers. If you really want english voices, you need to find someone to send you the 667 MB Speech_English.pak file

 

[Vault Dweller]

In Gothic 2 your Strength was trainable to 100 (I don't recall what you start with). You start G3 with 100 points in Strength and a decent weapon, which explains why you can kick so much ass.

 

[HardCode]

Its not a spoiler when its within the first 5 minutes of the game.

I don't know about 5 minutes, but yes, I know the Wikipedia-definition of a 'spoiler', but it's not objective. Personally, this kind of information I'd rather not see.

Then don't read a fucking thread titled, "VD's Gothic 3 impressions". Jeez.

 

[Lyric Suite]

Exploring the world is the biggest hassle because of the imprecise controls, dodgy collision detection, and the difficulty in seeing some of the enemies (unless they are moving) just like in the previous Gothics.

That was the reason why i never played Gothic 2 for more then 5 minutes (skipped the first one entierly).

That and the fact the main character looked like a metal head larper faggot.

Ho, and who the fuck was the asshole that figured it would be a good idea to implement inventory control through keyboard ONLY?

 

[Monolith]

In Gothic 2 your Strength was trainable to 100 (I don't recall what you start with). You start G3 with 100 points in Strength and a decent weapon, which explains why you can kick so much ass.

Now that's a design decision I like.

 

[RadioGnome Invisible]

The kids may cry, but I will ask this anyway.

Vince, what are your computers specs?

Pentium D processor 930, Dual Core, 3GHz, 800FSB
2GB Dual Channel DDR2 SDRAM, 533MHz
nVidia GeForce 6800, 256 MB

And what about performance? MIN/MAX/AVG FPS?

I've noticed people with similar systems sometimes have drastic performance differences in G3, and in several cases these are hardly explainable. Personally, found out, that driver settings may have serious effect - about 2 times actually. (From 20-45 with driver-forced HQ to 45-80+ with default "balanced" settings. And i'm not talking about full AA activation)

 

[Vault Dweller]

And what about performance?

Pretty good. Minor slowdowns when an area is loaded.

 

[Volourn]

LMAO All this G3 priase by VD, and so few stuff on the actual role-playing. HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAH

Edited - VD.

 

[Vault Dweller]

*sigh*

Moron, I posted early impressions after a few hours of playing the game.

 

[elander_]

Gothic games don't have chargen. The player starts with a generic character and slowly specializes into one of possible chars. In Gothic2 it was a Paladin, a Mage and a Mercenary. Im curious to know what characters we can specialize in G3. I hope theres much better thief role-playing than in the previous games.

Edit: Arrgh Vorlun you dimbfuck edit your post and remove that haha. Your making this thread hard to read.

 

[Lumpy]

So, any impressions about anything besides combat?
What are the dialogues like? Multiple, meaningful options? Can quests be finished in multiple ways?

 

[Vault Dweller]

So, any impressions about anything besides combat?
What are the dialogues like? Multiple, meaningful options? Can quests be finished in multiple ways?

I'm at work now, so... From what I saw yesterday, the dialogues are very limited and not very deep. There are some options though. Overall, Gothic games role-playing is based on in-game actions, not dialogues (see my earlier post about 6 different ways to get into the town in G2). I didn't have time to test G3 quests yet.

 

[Texas Red]

Something that's always bugged me about the Gothics is how you're always playing the same character, yet you start every game as a fairly weak shmuck with no equipment and little magic power. I can appreciate that it's easy to remove someone's equipment by saying they were robbed or something. Do they actually have a reasonable explanation this time for what happened to all your uber spells and 1337 combat skills between games?

Due to the long boat journey to the mainland, you're now a "little out of shape"

I wouldn't say you're back down to Gothic 1 first-level skill, though... You DO start the game by kicking the asses of an entire townload of orcs.

Nah, the world scales to your level.

 

[VenomByte]

In Gothic 2 your Strength was trainable to 100 (I don't recall what you start with). You start G3 with 100 points in Strength and a decent weapon, which explains why you can kick so much ass.

So the main char is 'a little out of shape' but has retained his strength of 100? Well, I'm not one to further poke the rather tenuous reasoning behind the starting stats, so I'll leave it at that.

But does that mean strength is now trainable above 100, or is it pretty much 'fixed' there for the whole game, barring any injuries/poison/spellls that might or might not have an effect?

 

[Volourn]

"sigh*

Moron, I posted early impressions after a few hours of playing the game."

If it's a true role-playing game, it should never be too early to have role-playing situations worthy enough of being shared. This proves that G3 is NOT a RPG.

That's all I need to know.

Thanks. :D

 

[aweigh]

The kids may cry, but I will ask this anyway.

Vince, what are your computers specs?

Pentium D processor 930, Dual Core, 3GHz, 800FSB
2GB Dual Channel DDR2 SDRAM, 533MHz
nVidia GeForce 6800, 256 MB

And what about performance? MIN/MAX/AVG FPS?

I've noticed people with similar systems sometimes have drastic performance differences in G3, and in several cases these are hardly explainable. Personally, found out, that driver settings may have serious effect - about 2 times actually. (From 20-45 with driver-forced HQ to 45-80+ with default "balanced" settings. And i'm not talking about full AA activation)

Gnome, nVidia's "HQ" setting actually delivers about a 35% performance impact, and for this reason whenever you see benchmarks done on nVidia hardware the reviewers are asked by nVidia to benchmark with "Quality" settings, instead of "HQ".

Now, you may be asking yourself... then why even use HQ at all, since it has such a major performance impact? Simply put, nVidia image quality sucks ass compared to a comparable ATI card, and when playing on less than HQ settings your textures will shimmer and crawl excessively. If you've never noticed this before then cosnider yourself lucky, and pray you never do, because once you do notice the annoying shimmering and crawling textures you won't be able to concentrate on anything else when playing.

EDIT: I did some digging around through my favorites folder and found the definitive ATI vs NVIDIA image quality showdown thread, from Rage3D forums: http://rage3d.com/board/showthread.php?t=33869432

And, here's the links to the "versus" videos that show off beyond a shadow of a doubt the nVidia shimmer issues when *not* using HQ mode:
GUN running on nVidia on "Quality" mode.
Same thing on ATI, default settings.

So... oh, and changing gears for a bit, another huge performance killer is VSYNC, on any hardware, because Windows D3D games usually don't come with Triple Buffering activated by default. So if you're running Gothic 3 with VSYNC on, that's certainly contributing to your poor performance, but have no fear, there is a program available to turn on Triple Buffering on any D3D title and thus be able to use VSYNC with negligable performance impact: DirectX Tweaker program.

 

[suibhne]

Nah, the world scales to your level.

Well, sure, except it doesn't.

 

[Vault Dweller]

But does that mean strength is now trainable above 100...

Trainable above 100.

If it's a true role-playing game, it should never be too early to have role-playing situations worthy enough of being shared. This proves that G3 is NOT a RPG.

Really? Take Fallout, for example. You get out of V13, kill some rats, go straight to V15 (thinking to stop at Shady Sands on your way back), killing some more rats there, etc. Is that sequence enough to form an opinion of the game's role-playing qualities?

 

[suibhne]

If it's a true role-playing game, it should never be too early to have role-playing situations worthy enough of being shared. This proves that G3 is NOT a RPG.

Which is to say...it may be like G1 and G2. They've always been action-focused, RPG-lite games which excel in a hand-designed gameworld, multiple quest solutions, and some consequences for faction choice (ranging from extensive to limited).

I don't care whether we call it a great RPG or not. I just want to know how it measures up to G1 and G2. :wink:

 

[Romanian_Dude2005]

At first I thought they were some kind of turtles of death who will definitely get me unless I get them first. It's a tough world.

I saw a mudturtle the other day