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Why is Gothic series so culty?

Nikanuur

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Europoors got it for free in gaming magazines (The CD-ROM was included). Since it was the only game they could afford to play during their childhoods, they shill the shit out it:

So you are saying that Europoors could afford computers but not games? Or did they play Gothic on toasters?
I don't think people were unable to buy games at the time of Gothic. Funny thing though, games for PC are about 60 bucks since like 1990 until today. Give or take. Some are bit cheaper, some used to cost around 80 back then, and some start to cost the same today. But anyway, here's the thing; salaries in the latter communistic countries had been steeply rising year after year after the fall of the eastern block. At the time of Gothic's release, a simple IT dude earned around 700 bucks. It was okay to buy one game a month. But it was not that simple, we were used to piracy so much. Just a few years before that, the price for the game was still the same 60 bucks but the salary was around 90! We wouldn't buy games for this price, and we didn't even know that there were originals in the first place.

My first PC, considered a good (not great) rig, was a 286 20Mhz computer with a 15" monitor. We bought it for approx 1200 bucks, with our salary around 100 a month. Again, I didn't eben know what buying games meant. Some time later during the time of the rise of Pentiums and Celerons we already knew, but still, pirating was such a "normal" way of doing things that some pirates even used ads in newspapers. Can you imagine that? We used to have a "cult of originalka" with my friends. We bowed several times to any original game package upon seeing it (even at shops :) ) or to the owner of an original copy because it was such a rare and precious thing in those days :)
 
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Nikanuur

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Because for its time, Gothic 1 and 2 were groundbreaking games.
Today we see them as these old games with crappy graphics and animations but back then nothing else could compete.
Great definition indeed. I'd also add that while these features aged poorly, the world building, the characters and a great sense of adventure never will. This is probably why Myrtana has got an overwhelmingly positive feedback.
 

Deadyawn

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Of course you should play them, OP.

Gothic is an incredible action RPG with OUTSTANDING world design, barely interrupted by loading screens and fully voice-acted. Its pocket-world is so richly detailed it's unreal for a game of its time. Such small forests, yet you can actually get lost in them.

Gothic 2 was a refinement of the formula and Piranha Bytes finest hour. Everything afterwards has been worse with varying degrees of success. We can only pray that the success of Archolos gives them the kick in the nuts they need to steer them back to the correct path.
 

Konjad

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Strap Yourselves In Codex Year of the Donut Codex+ Now Streaming! Torment: Tides of Numenera Wasteland 2 Steve gets a Kidney but I don't even get a tag.
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Harthwain

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The Nameless one ends up being the chosen one but at least it doesn't happen 20 minutes into the game
Yeah. The supposed climax is lame. I would rather have the reason for the Barrier anomaly left unexplained and the game more focused around all factions trying to find a way to get out, rather than the Evil God being the root of all and killing him magically fixing everything. Gothic does most of this, but fails at the very end. I guess they ran out of time and needed to shoehorn the ending? It would explain why the Old Camp gets the short end of the stick out of all factions.
 

Falksi

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Yeah, Gothic's world and dlivery is just incredibly grounded and immersive, whilst at the same time still being somewhat fantastical and alluring too.

I think this is an incredibly rare balance to find, with only a handful of other games such as Morrowind, Phantasy Star 4, and Hard West managing to keep you very rooted in a down-to-earth world, whilst also taking you on a wonderous adventure too.

It's fucking brilliant innit?
 

turkishronin

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where the best is like the worst

Yes, we all know that only bad, casual RPGs use the concept of a Chosen One:

fallout-2-voice-mod.png


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You don't get it. This self flagellating experience of Gothic is paramount to the average german male because they're soulless automatons that are physically incapable of imagining any sort of human condition that isn't about work for the sake of work, even though they not so secretely want to kill everyone, which is also why in every single PB game you eventually genocide every single NPC, and you enjoy it despite the massive jank
 

Arbiter

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Fallout 2 makes fun about the concept of your character being the chosen one from the start of the game to completion

There is plenty of easter eggs in Fallout 2, but the Arroyo part is serious. It is not surprising that more advanced communities mock tribal beliefs.
 

spectre

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Fallout 2 makes fun about the concept of your character being the chosen one from the start of the game to completion

There is plenty of easter eggs in Fallout 2, but the Arroyo part is serious. It is not surprising that more advanced communities mock tribal beliefs.
It was one of the things that made Fallout 2 great. The culture shock you get upon collision with the other settlements and realizing it's a fucking Big World Out There.
You could pretend that you've left Arroyo behind, but every now and then the game would remind you of your roots.

Now, at the risk of having my pollack card revoked, I have never really gotten into Gothic. As much as I appreciated the setting and the storytelling, the controls and combat was a deal-breaker for me.
Never been a fan of twitch gameplay in RPGs. I also had a bumpy start with installing it. I was already commited to the C: for OS D: for games arrangement and the pirate copy (not from a gaming rag cover CD as some would claim earlier)
I've gotten my hands on would default to dumping the whole thing on the system partition, which didn't have enough room for several CDs worth of data and I didn't have an easy fix for it at the time.
 

Arbiter

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I remember the great wars between Oblivion and Gothic II fanboys.

Oblivion was a competitor for Gothic 3, released in the same year and featuring open world gameplay.

At least Bethesda can claim that competition released an even buggier game.
 

Arbiter

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Oblivion was a competitor for Gothic 3, released in the same year and featuring open world gameplay.

At least Bethesda can claim that competition released an even buggier game.
It was the war between the Gothic II and Oblivion fanboys, here too.
https://rpgcodex.net/forums/threads/why-is-gothic-2-better-than-oblivion.15146/

Oblivion was released 7 months before Gothic 3 and therefore at the time of release it could only be compared to Gothic 2, a 3-year old title at that time. By fall 2006 Gothic 3 was released, a true competitor for Oblivion in terms of open world gameplay and technology.
 

Arbiter

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As much as I dislike Oblivion, there was no competition, which says a lot about how bad Gothic 3 was.

It was unfortunate as Oblivion was a huge disappointment in terms of design and a clear downgrade from Morrowind. I liked the world of Gothic 3 much more, too bad it was released in a terrible state.

It gets even worse if you compare the technical quality of Gothic 3 expansion to Shivering Isles.
 
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Fearlessjay

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I loved Gothic 1 and 2 simply because they the first games I played in German. As a English speaker living in Switzerland it really helped me learn the language and deal with people in the Swiss way. Basically be a unfriendly gobshite everyone hates. Back then open world games like that were pretty rare, and the ability to explore and take out something you should have no chance against cos the game was so ganky was pretty unique. Gothic 3 was awful on release though. Having said that I still play it today thanks to the mods.
 

sosmoflux

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P.S. While there is nothing quite like Piranha Bytes games, I would also suggest to anyone who enjoyed Gothics to try Breath of the Wild. It's not exactly the same, but this game is the closest (along with maybe KCD) that other studios have come to replicating SOME of that early PB magic.
Absolutely true. If you like Gothic, play Breath of the Wild.
There's an astonishing amount of dynamic changes and interwoven story threads amongst the towns and characters you meet.
 

Jasede

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Insert Title Here RPG Wokedex Codex Year of the Donut I'm very into cock and ball torture
I'm going to tell you, when G1 came out and I was a teenager we didn't even need the manual nor did we need any mods or control changes to play and enjoy it. It worked fine out of the box.

And who needs a tutorial for a game that only uses maybe 8 keyboard keys?

The manual was good but pretty thin (at the time.)
 

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