The game graphic is outdated, controls are rigid and voice acting is not the best but the game does so many things better then modern games.
NPCs are jerks, they are convicts, the old camp structure is one of strength, the weakest are the miners, the thieves are low in the hierarchy and the most powerful are on the top having most of the ore and women. This makes sense to me, is immersive.
The environment is a sand box but area limits are mostly dictated by monster difficulty. Hints are given by people rather then pop-ups. The map is an actual map. Menus are minimalistic, I do not like the full window modern menus we have now. The weather, light and sounds makes it feel gloomy as opposed to modern day games that have this very colorful theme/ filter.
Dialogue felt cold, this is a great thing, I do not expect a random guy that I've just met have a personal/ emotional reaction to me.
No pop-up to let me know what I should loot or where I should go.
No random drops, I do not like the way a lot of looting works in modern games. I think Witcher 2 and Gothic did it better by having weapons and armor tied to specific quests or fights rather then random drop like they did in Witcher 3.
Progression is more authentic, you get a new armor, put points in to weapons and then you get to explore different areas. You feel incredibly weak at the start but then you feel growing stronger in meaningful steps.
There is a static nature of the sand box, things are somewhat calm until you show up and this allows the player to explore this interesting setting and understand how the society works before you mess everything up. Things would have blown up regardless of your presence but I enjoyed the societal aspect of the game and the fact that the game allows you to explore that. There is no pressure on the player to act other then adapt to the new situation. Only later in the game it starts to become critical to act.
Overall I liked this game a lot, it was one of my favorite games when I was in school. Maybe is just nostalgia glasses but I wanted to rant a bit on things that old games did better.
Maybe we could use a game club for older games where we could discuss classic old games like Gothic, KOTOR, Jedi Outcast, Baldurs Gate, Witcher.
You’re describing, in a roundabout way, the insidious impact of “UX” design on video games. Thinking about every aspect of the game world from the perspective of (and with total deference to) the player has resulted in games that feel extremely artificial. Nothing feels real or organic because everything is centered around you.
When a game is built from the ground up for authenticity, with design choices that are frequently apathetic or even hostile to the user, then things start to feel real - like the game world existed before you got there and will carry on when you’re gone. And it’s hard to put into words how transformative that immersion is for the player.
A lot of Fromsoft games embody this rejection of modern UX design, and those games resonate with players in ways that virtually any other modern AAA game does not. The cruel and uncaring game world isn’t the only way to build immersion, but it does seem to lend itself to the task.
That is a great point and described a lot better then I could. The world feels much more authentic.
It is not perfect but it is way more immersive then modern "UX" design.
To add a few things:
Gothic 2 and it's expansion are great as well
As far as I'm aware there's a lot of mods around, from total conversions to High-Res-packs and everything inbetween
One thing that really sets Gothic apart from most other sandbox open-worlds is it's chapter-structure. There's ponts in the game where the open world changes dramatically
I loved Gothic 2 and the expansion.
Is just that Gothic 2 has improved on some aspects of the first game and added more content and do to that I feel a lot of people do not give enough credit to the first game.
I assume you have also played Risen 1 since it is basically Gothic 1 and 2 with better graphics.
Yes I did. I've not played Risen 2 or 3 and I did not play The Chronicles Of Myrtana Archolos
If you've played them I would love to hear your thoughts.
I've played the Risens as well as Elex I and II.
They're ok to good games and carry a lot of the strengths Gothic 1 and two did. They were, however, not able to fully recreate the magic. One of the reasons for this is, at least in my opinion, that the world is too large. One cannot get accustomed to a world this big the same way you could with the relatively small extent of the older worlds.
Funnily enough you still could spent hours upon hours in Gothic 1 and still see new things.
There is an Elex 2? I need to get around to play Risen 2 and 3. Thing is I tried Risen 2 but if I remember correctly it was with pirates and guns, the change was way to big from gothic so I never got past the start of it. How was Risen 3?
Have you tried "The Chronicles Of Myrtana: Archolos" is a free mod for Gothic 2: Gold edition.
Was released in December 2021, is set in the same world as Gothic, it looks great and has an overwhelmingly positive score. - 60 hours of gameplay.
And gothic 2 is like 3$ right now if you do not have it.
Being in the same world as gothic I decided to play the first and second game before playing this basically new game.
While replaying gothic I realized that the game holds up. The controls, mechanics and graphic are outdated but the game feels more authentic then most modern games. Hence the post I made.
It was released recently. It's a step up from Elex but again, the world is too damn big. There's some real FOMO-Vibes playing through (I ended up using an interactive map from Gamestar) because there's so much space to explore and while the world desing is beautiful (imo) it's just too much to keep track of.
And Jax has a son now (no worries, that isn't a spoiler), that boy has to be the ugliest motherfucker in all of gaming. Don't know what PB were smoking when they designed that bastard.
Also: The UI is blergh. At least playing with keyboard and mouse.
I'll check it out
If I haven't played Gothic 1, should I skip right to Risen?
You should play Gothic 1 and 2 and Risen 1, in that order.
You can find some graphic mods on nexus to improve Gothic visuals if those bother you.
Gothic 1 is not that long of a game and ties in to the story of the second game. Gothic 2 is better, it has better controls and the world is bigger and complex. Gothic 1 is a sandbox but Gothic 2 is very close to being an open world. Risen is closer to Gothic 1 then it is to Gothic 2, so while Risen and Gothic 1 are on par in terms of content, Gothic 2 is superior to Risen. However, Risen does have better graphics and does not suffer from the bad controls that Gothic 1 had.
Just find some graphic mods and play all of them. If you like RPGs you are going to like this games.
There is a Gothic 3 and while I did play it to the end there is a reason no one ever mentions Gothic 3.
Thanks!
To paraphrase an old saying on pricing and apply it to game design:
For me, I've found the main thing I don't like is the GPS-style navigation. I don't want to follow a line on a map. I don't want Witcher 3 style "follow the fart cloud" quests (at least not many of them). If I'm playing an RPG, I want part of the game being the confusion aspect and being lost from time to time, etc. Essentially, what I mean is I want the instruction to be "Go to the blacksmith shop in the northwestern quarter of the city" or something like that. Let me use my eyes and a map with no markers on it to look around and learn my surroundings.
I agree with most of the rest of your points as well really. One thing that came to mind when you mentioned random drops is it does feel like a lot of these games took the bad parts of MMO design and threw out all the good.
I like the realistic map and having to navigate myself. Even wow in vanilla did not have markers on map to show you where you want to go, although you still knew your position.
I liked it in Skyrim as it made the game easier, little did I know at the time that this would become the norm and every game will implement it. It makes everything feel artificial and the same.
Since you mentioned WoW I thought of something else. Fast travel. I really prefer when it's restricted in some way. Like WoW was at one point at least. Doesn't have to be slow like that where you sit and wait on an automated bird to fly around, but just not something you can do over and over from anywhere to everywhere like is more common now.
Wow did that pathfinder achievement. I know people hated it, I was not all that happy either, but it did make you explore the world. In retrospect it was a good thing.
Fast travel is the default. What hate the most is how the same all the games feel. They have so much in common, is not just Ubisoft games, Dying Light 2 and Horizon Forbiden West also feel like a Ubisoft game. I'm willing to bet a lot of games feel like that. I do not plan to replay Witcher 3 because although I liked the game I think that game also feels like the same game but with better characters.
When did RPGs start being the same rather each game trying to be its own thing?
Speaking of fast travel, Gothic had magic teleportation. You get it a bit later on. I understand that it makes things easier but it does remove from the immersion factor.
Any world that has magic teleportation would be very much different then ours. Trade would be instant so the need for boats would be greatly reduce. There would be no caravans and even war would be designed around teleportation.
This can be put under minuses in Gothic. This was something I did not like even when I was a teenager. I used the teleportation but it always bugged me.
I very much get that comment. I was playing Horizon Zero Dawn and Assassin's Creed Origins at the same time. It was so similar I remember being irritated that something like the jump and crouch buttons were swapped between the two.
I've gotten where I mix up games a lot. I'm not a play one game at a time until I beat it person at all. So I'll be in the middle of an action RPG, turn based RPG, and FPS game at the same time for example. Depends on my mood really. Sometimes takes me a long time to get through games but I don't care. Like right now I picked up Persona 5 again, I think I started that in 2019 and I'm still not done with it, because I only really enjoy it in 10 hour chunks.
From what I've seen of gothic 2, it seemed like an actually full 'open' world too. Lots of secrets and stuff crafted with love in little hidey holes. Not generic puzzle #204. Not an old ubisoft open world, but something you actually want to explore.
Gothic 2 highlights how empty, generic and formulated modern open world games are. Not all but most of them.
Even out of the way you could find stuff hidden somewhere.
I will take the opportunity to recommend their newest IP, from Piranha. Elex. I am having a blast with the difficulty.
As in, like Gothic. You can't go everywhere immediately because you are low level. You can try to play smart, but you will have a hard time.
I love it.
Sometimes an NPC will get killed randomly in the world, affecting the story. Or based on your choices, stuff will happen in the background. I haven't played Elex II yet, but Elex is really good.
And if you prefer something more sword and shield, Risen is also very good!
The first Risen is great, is very similar with Gothic. I tried Risen 2 but it had guns and pirates, maybe the game was good but I went in expecting a medieval fantasy game and got a pirate game. It was not for me. I never tried Risen 3, so if you did I would be curious how it matches against Gothic.
I've heard good and bad about Elex and someone mentioned Elex 2 came out.
At the moment I'm replaying Gothic 1 and then Gothic 2 because "The Chronicles Of Myrtana: Archolos" was released and it has been more then a decade since I've played/ replayed this games. This is a mod for Gothic 2 that is an entire new game set in the world of Gothic, was released in December.
If the mod is good I'll post my opinions here. But at the rate I'm playing games it will be a couple of months. I've been more excited by this mod then most games from the last 2 years.
Never played Gothic, so I can't give you an accurate comparison. But I liked Risen 3 a lot. Maybe it was a breath of fresh air in comparison to Skyrim, or some other forgettable game I played prior to it. The women looked like women, the voice acting was good, and they were not afraid of portraying natives like... natives. I played Risen 3 with a mod to improve a few things and eliminate some of the jank, including higher resolution textures. It was a beautiful game. And the wave effects were great.
I'm still playing Elex, before I go to Elex II, but it is a full Piranha game. I had a discussion with someone who swears up and down that the game is crap because it is hard. My answer is, GIT GUD, and level up.