Why is Gothic series so culty?

[Stavrophore]

rusty i know that you hate germans, but i think this conspiracy is truly far fetched. Do you truly think that german wanted to make little germans out of little poles by exposing them to the jank like gothic, sacred or drakensang? Piranha Bytes was heavily subsidized by german gov afaik, so there's some truth to that.
Are there any good articles on why german gaming industry strongly promoted and growing in early 2000s flopped in the end?

 

[Jasede]

People struggling with Gothic controls also struggle with using their nose to breathe.

 

[Arbiter]

1990s, you are a polish illiterate children, you don't know english, your mother and father brings 400 usd per month together, you nag them about that new morrowind game which cost 30 usd

In 90s that would be Daggerfall / Redguard / Battlespire, not Morrowind.

 

[Stavrophore]

1990s, you are a polish illiterate children, you don't know english, your mother and father brings 400 usd per month together, you nag them about that new morrowind game which cost 30 usd

In 90s that would be Daggerfall / Redguard / Battlespire, not Morrowind.

Late 90s/2000. Also we usually got games later, with all the dubbing or on sales. It wasn't rare for most of customers back then to buy game 1-2 years after release when the price had dropped, even if it was really good.

 

[Darth Roxor]

niggers talking about morrowind when it actually came out after gothic 2 (in polan) and gothic 1 was already popular back then

 

[turkishronin]

i prefer witcher 1's "kurwa, dance! dance!" combat to gothic

 

[Zboj Lamignat]

I have to say this thread has been an eye opener, at least. Stavro outing himself as an illiterate child abused by his mother is another revelation that explains quite a lot.

Also the Risen patch dropped, gonna play now as this gaem's p gud.

 

[Fargus]

This is why i don't rely on rpgcodex when it comes to well... rpgs. Codex is just a funny place where you can post "nigger" without getting banned. Still i love you, you fucking niggers. No homo.

Stay autistic.

 

[Cohesion]

Also the Risen patch dropped, gonna play now as this gaem's p gud.

Could you elaborate? What patch?

 

[Jasede]

https://store.steampowered.com/news/app/40300/view/3660897688194674802

 

[Stavrophore]

I have to say this thread has been an eye opener, at least. Stavro outing himself as an illiterate child abused by his mother is another revelation that explains quite a lot.

Also the Risen patch dropped, gonna play now as this gaem's p gud.

Nah i was describing your alcoholic childhood to westerners, so they got more context.

 

[Cat Headed Eagle]

That does look like a pretty comfy patch. Downloading.

 

[Ryzer]

Gothic with risen combat and controls would be my perfect game. Maybe improve it with new combat animations and combos as well as no input lag, that would be delightfull.

 

[Reggin Backward]

Now that I have registered, here's my two cents: Some of the posters made some good arguments but I think what really left such an impression on people who played Gothic I is the setting. The penal colony and the power dynamics with the ore as currency, the factions with their own agenda but all working towards the same goal "getting out". How it profits more the Old Camp to keep the status quo while the New Camp is getting the short end of the stick. How it is a matter of preference between living in a relative safety in a stronghold runned by a mafia-like boss or living "free" just to end up exploited by the Rice farmer/strongest thug around the block. The real dilemma of what is freedom (which is ironical when you consider they're all former prisoners that freed themselves just to end up trapped again). When it's either a choice between slaving in the ore mines, breaking your back in the rice fields or getting stung by bloodflies to pick up swampweed for the Guru drug cartel.

Somehow, you, the nameless one rise to the top, live your own destiny just through sheer will or whatever you fancy rping. You really are the nameless one.

I could go on and on about this but the simple fact is that the universe is credible, in your brain it works because you know that's how it would be. That was enough to launch the series and put pb on the map. I can't speak for gothic 2 or 3 however.

 

[Rincewind]

Now that I have registered, here's my two cents: Some of the posters made some good arguments but I think what really left such an impression on people who played Gothic I is the setting. The penal colony and the power dynamics with the ore as currency, the factions with their own agenda but all working towards the same goal "getting out". How it profits more the Old Camp to keep the status quo while the New Camp is getting the short end of the stick. How it is a matter of preference between living in a relative safety in a stronghold runned by a mafia-like boss or living "free" just to end up exploited by the Rice farmer/strongest thug around the block. The real dilemma of what is freedom (which is ironical when you consider they're all former prisoners that freed themselves just to end up trapped again). When it's either a choice between slaving in the ore mines, breaking your back in the rice fields or getting stung by bloodflies to pick up swampweed for the Guru drug cartel.

Somehow, you, the nameless one rise to the top, live your own destiny just through sheer will or whatever you fancy rping. You really are the nameless one.

I could go on and on about this but the simple fact is that the universe is credible, in your brain it works because you know that's how it would be. That was enough to launch the series and put pb on the map. I can't speak for gothic 2 or 3 however.

Yes, the setting is one of the game's strongest aspects, plus the realism (the good type of realism, not the micro-management type). An appreciation of low-key, low-magic, non-epic settings also helps.

Also, if you're sensitive to music in general, Gothic has one of the best game soundtracks ever.

 

[Zeriel]

This is why i don't rely on rpgcodex when it comes to well... rpgs. Codex is just a funny place where you can post "nigger" without getting banned. Still i love you, you fucking niggers. No homo.

Stay autistic.

There's just too many newfags. Codex was pretty based in 2002-2005 era, based enough for Volourn to be an aberrant exception rather than the norm. But decline is irreversible and eternal, so 20 years later even the userbase has declined.

 

[gurugeorge]

I think Piranha Bytes' games are popular because at least they make an effort, (or if you want to be hypercritical, have at times made an effort) and even though they never seem to have the money or resources to pull off what they want to pull off, they evidently do their best.

And what they make an effort in, is to present games as virtual worlds to get lost in. That's the emphasis they have that's different from most RPG developers (apart from Bethesda at one time), and it's what makes their 3-d presentation, which would otherwise be merely "Action RPG" more of a real RPG, because they try to develop their RPG systems around that.

It's more like an MMO developer's idea, in the best sense of that, where you start with a concept for a persistent virtual world, and work your way through the systems from that point of view, except this is in a single-player context (so there's no need to balance anything against other players).

Bethesda used to have something like a similar driving force (at least, they did up to about Morrowind), but Piranha Bytes don't seem to have had the resources to pull it off in the financially successful way that Bethesda did. But the fact that they still exist at all is a testament to there being a reasonable-sized market out there for this type of game. Bethesda became more mainstream and LCD in their appeal, but PB have remained stoically purist about it.

That's how it looks to me anyway, as a part-time fan of PB games.

 

[Konjad]

Bethesda is way more popular because everybody around the world plays what americunts make, but americunts don't care about European market (and the rest of the world in consequence never heards of it).

There are exceptions, like Twitcher 2/3 or Cyberprank, which were made with americunts in mind, hence they were shit.

 

[Harthwain]

Bethesda is way more popular because everybody around the world plays what americunts make

Nah. Bethesda is popular because they have an established reputation for their open-worlds since Morrowind. That's literally it. The Witcher is a similar story - it started small, but broke bank when they made a game with big open-world (The Witcher 3). Same goes for Kingdom Come: Deliverance. One thing they have in common is that they are all big open-world games. Kenshi? 95% Positive Reviews on Steam with more than 50k reviews? Yeah, it is an open-world, too.

 

[rusty_shackleford]

Gothic games are unfinished, that's why Bethesda is more popular. Both games just fall apart halfway through and just decline to the end with constant backtracking and repetitive filler tasks. I replayed g1&2 last year, 7/10 at best.

 

[rusty_shackleford]

Then again plenty of unfinished games are worshiped on this site because the average poster has ADHD

 

[Konjad]

Then again plenty of unfinished games are worshiped on this site because the average poster has ADHD

You're just a consoletard

 

[rusty_shackleford]

Then again plenty of unfinished games are worshiped on this site because the average poster has ADHD

You're just a consoletard

Then again plenty of unfinished games are worshiped on this site because the average poster has ADHD

You're just a consoletard

Gothic games were made for controllers tho

 

[Rincewind]

Bethesda is way more popular because everybody around the world plays what americunts make, but americunts don't care about European market (and the rest of the world in consequence never heards of it).

There are exceptions, like Twitcher 2/3 or Cyberprank, which were made with americunts in mind, hence they were shit.

Edgy response, but there's some truth to it.

Coming from Europe, it was incomprehensible for me for a long time why certain quite mediocre American products are doing so well. Then finally I understood that Americans in general are very good at salesmanship; they're just better at peddling their products, even if they're average or bad (there's lots of examples of this outside of games, Microsoft, Oracle and Salesforce being prime examples). Whereas in many parts of Europe you almost have to apologise if you work in a sales related field. Selling is viewed as a necessary evil by many, not a honest, reputable profession. So naturally people from Europe are in general, well, "less aggressive" when it comes to selling their wares. Of course, that's a generalisation, but most generalisations are at least 50% true.

Even if you don't love Gothic, the sales numbers of Piranha Bytes and Bethesda games are not proportional to their respective qualities. The answer lies in the "good" marketing campaigns of Bethesda ("good" in the sense of generating more sales), and perhaps in the absolutely huge and largely homogeneous US market. Plus the propensity of consuming American products in the rest of the world.

So there you go, I think Bethesda got wealthy and popular because they can simply sell their shit well. If they were marketing the Gothic series, and PB the Elder Scrolls games, I'm convinced the situation would be reversed.

 

[Piotrovitz]

Aside from stuff mentioned countless times (tank controls, clunky combat etc) that you can get used to, my biggest gripe with G1/G2 is shitty writing, no C&Cs (just please don't pull out factions), rudimentary dialogue trees (1. Ok, give me the quest. 2. K, thx, bye), lots of backtracking, which combined with slow running speed requires you to pick up Acrobatics in G1 asap, so for the rest of the game you can travel through the gameworld like a fucking human torpedo. Also - no replay value, everything is railroaded, plus there are no char builds other than melee and mage. Once you get the melee skill to 2nd tier to swing faster, levelling up boils down to pumping STR for the rest of the game, just to dish out more dmg and being able to wield better weapons that also dish out more dmg. Awesome char customization.

Too many 30+ yo people have played both games upon release and are looking back at them through nostalgia glasses.
Sure, they were fun back then, especially that it was the beginning of the cRPG dark ages, but let's be honest, they did not stand the test of time.

 

[Jasede]

Shitty writing? You didn't play them in German, I assume. The writing is very good. Naturalistic. If you threw a bunch of Germans from the year 2000 into a prison colony they'd talk like they do in the game - and you're telling me that's shitty writing? Most games fail miserably at making conversations sound natural.

And don't be ridiculous, I replayed G1 5 years ago and G2 last year (because I loved Archolos) and they're as good as they were back in the day. Frankly they might be even better because every game is trash these days.

 

[rusty_shackleford]

Aside from stuff mentioned countless times (tank controls, clunky combat etc) that you can get used to, my biggest gripe with G1/G2 is shitty writing, no C&Cs (just please don't pull out factions), rudimentary dialogue trees (1. Ok, give me the quest. 2. K, thx, bye), lots of backtracking, which combined with slow running speed requires you to pick up Acrobatics in G1 asap, so for the rest of the game you can travel through the gameworld like a fucking human torpedo. Also - no replay value, everything is railroaded, plus there are no char builds other than melee and mage. Once you get the melee skill to 2nd tier to swing faster, levelling up boils down to pumping STR for the rest of the game, just to dish out more dmg and being able to wield better weapons that also dish out more dmg. Awesome char customization.

Too many 30+ yo people have played both games upon release and are looking back at them through nostalgia glasses.
Sure, they were fun back then, especially that it was the beginning of the cRPG dark ages, but let's be honest, they did not stand the test of time.

Thanks forgot to mention the complete lack of any itemization or character building.
Also things like pick pocketing in g2 are complete afterthoughts. The games do one or two things well and the fanboys get angry if you point out that rpgs need more than that.

Honestly they're barely rpgs, closer to action games.