Gothic series explained (I'll tell you which is worth your $$$)

[Robinhood90]

@Jeffro
You shouldn't take out a second orc city.
I think it's second or third, and all orcs in that region will attack. Best to do those things later when you've been to all camps in a region and done those. Same applies for attacking rebel camps. Myrtana, Varant and Nordmar are the 3 regions.

Despite all it's flaws, I'd still easily take G3 over Oblivion.

[DoctorEss]

Wait. . . Did you really just say the combat in the older games was "coherent"? By that, you mean "Absolutely garbage in all possible ways, terrible, in fact, one of, if not THE worst combat systems ever", right?

I can see why these games never took off. Even at the deeply discounted sale price, I'm feeling utterly ripped off.

[N3Burgener]

Originally Posted by DoctorEss

Wait. . . Did you really just say the combat in the older games was "coherent"? By that, you mean "Absolutely garbage in all possible ways, terrible, in fact, one of, if not THE worst combat systems ever", right?

I can see why these games never took off. Even at the deeply discounted sale price, I'm feeling utterly ripped off.

Would you care to explain how it's so bad, or why you think so, so that we can constructively discuss the issue? Or are you just being intentionally provocative and inflammatory for no other purpose?

I could write forever about why I think the combat in the originals is good (both objectively and subjectively), but since I can't tell what your motivations are, I'll say in brief that the combat in the originals is only truly incoherent when you're first starting out. This is due to the controls being highly idiosyncratic--it takes some time for you to get used to how the game functions--and due to the way the difficulty/balancing is scaled (your character has no combat training at the start, so the system becomes more fluid and functional as you level-up and train your skills). Are these the qualities that make the combat good? Certainly not, but they're conquerable issues that a lot of people get raged about and quit before understanding them.

[DoctorEss]

There's no distinct ability to target things, the control itself is awkward and unpleasant to use, and counter-intuitive (due to their rushed switch from console to PC), it mostly consists of randomly hitting buttons with no real strategy. . .

I could go on and on.

These games are barely passable, and for the most part, lousy. Like I said, even at the discount, feeling rather ripped off.

There's a good reason they never met with much success here.

They're painful to play, and I'm glad it was only a few bucks I spent on them.

[jiminator]

Not sure what you mean. Gothic 1 + 2 do autotargeting based on where your screen is pointing. Gothic 1 to be honest is really a keyboard only game. Gothic 2 can be used with a mouse if you set the scaling factor in the ini to about 5. Gothic 3 is harder to target with sword and groups of enemies. bow and crossbow though are precise. magic spells have a homing mode. Gothic combat does not work well against multiple enemies unless you are somewhere safe with cross/bow or have extremely high level sword/strength. The secret to them is to pick them off one at a time, and it is easy to do once you figure out how. anyway net result is that it is your loss. I enjoyed the hell out of the games. too bad for you.

[DoctorEss]

That's a silly statement. It'd be my loss if I was missing out on something. I don't like them, so I'm losing out on. . . something I don't enjoy. So, that'd be my win.

[Metro]

Originally Posted by DoctorEss

There's no distinct ability to target things, the control itself is awkward and unpleasant to use, and counter-intuitive (due to their rushed switch from console to PC), it mostly consists of randomly hitting buttons with no real strategy. . .

I could go on and on.

You could... but it would only betray how short your attention span is -- the controls in Gothic 1 and 2 take about ten minutes to master. If you couldn't figure out how to target something... just wow...

[DoctorEss]

Originally Posted by Metro

You could... but it would only betray how short your attention span is -- the controls in Gothic 1 and 2 take about ten minutes to master. If you couldn't figure out how to target something... just wow...

Has nothing to do with attention span. I've played games that are infinitely more deep and interesting than Gothic, that required much more attention.

There's no "targeting". You face something and hope the game decides you're targeting it. Other games, you might, say, click on it to lock it in as a target. Not in Gothic, nope.

I've deeply enjoyed, in the past, Arena and Daggerfall, both older than Gothic, but both controlled and played much better, and those were DOS games! Hell, Morrowind came out in the US only 6 months after the US release of Gothic 1, and look how superior that game was to this. Not even in just controls, but in inventory and inventory management, armor, weapons, depth, character interactions, story, graphics, and world size.

There is absolutely NO excuse for a 2001 game to play as badly as Gothic does.

Not properly programming mouse controls in the year 2001 is a joke. I don't care if it was originally intended for consoles, and was hastily moved to PC. It's sloppy.

"Mastering" poor controls doesn't make them good, by the way.

Try playing as an archer. I hated the melee combat in all the gothic games, too.

[Jeffro]

Originally Posted by Robinhood90

@Jeffro
You shouldn't take out a second orc city.
I think it's second or third, and all orcs in that region will attack. Best to do those things later when you've been to all camps in a region and done those. Same applies for attacking rebel camps. Myrtana, Varant and Nordmar are the 3 regions.

Despite all it's flaws, I'd still easily take G3 over Oblivion.

Thanks!!!! glad I came back here and saw that, was about to take out my third when I read this. Definitely not ready for all the orcs to attack on site!!

[N3Burgener]

Originally Posted by DoctorEss

Has nothing to do with attention span. I've played games that are infinitely more deep and interesting than Gothic, that required much more attention.

Like what? We'd all love to put this conversation into perspective.

Originally Posted by DoctorEss

There's no distinct ability to target things / There's no "targeting". You face something and hope the game decides you're targeting it. Other games, you might, say, click on it to lock it in as a target. Not in Gothic, nope.

Face the enemy/object and hold the "action" key while it's "highlighted," ie, when it looks brighter, and voila, you've just targeted something. It's not that difficult. Saying that there's no targeting system or that it's totally inconsistent would demonstrate that you've got no clue what you're talking about.

Originally Posted by DoctorEss

the control itself is awkward and unpleasant to use, and counter-intuitive

Granted, this can be very true at first. We've all played games with more conventional controls, games with "better" controls. Does anyone here think Gothic's controls are truly great? Probably not, but Gothic's controls are as functional as you make them. It doesn't take that much effort to figure them out, and once you do they can work pretty fluidly aside from a few odd spots here and there.

Originally Posted by DoctorEss

"Mastering" poor controls doesn't make them good, by the way.

Perhaps not, but being too stubborn to figure them out doesn't make them "poor," either.

Originally Posted by DoctorEss

Not properly programming mouse controls in the year 2001 is a joke.

I guess the joke's on you, then, cause I can handle and navigate the game just fine with the keyboard alone.

Originally Posted by DoctorEss

(due to their rushed switch from console to PC), I don't care if it was originally intended for consoles, and was hastily moved to PC.

What's your source on this? As far as I've ever known, Gothic was always designed for the PC and no Google search (in English or German) yields any kind of information about what you're saying.

Originally Posted by DoctorEss

it mostly consists of randomly hitting buttons with no real strategy. . .

Evidently the words of someone who didn't play enough of the game to understand the combat system. It's actually a pretty deep system that's far more strategic than Morrowind's (or especially Oblivion's) combat. Gothic's combat requires timing your attacks, blocks, and parries; you can't heal in the middle of battle so you have to make strategic decisions to survive; you have to move around a lot when fighting groups to keep from getting swarmed; you have to know how to fight different types of enemies because one basic tactic doesn't necessarily work for every type. It requires a solid balance between character statistics and player skill to do well. If you've been randomly hitting buttons with no real strategy, then I think the problem lies with you, not the game.

Originally Posted by DoctorEss

That's a silly statement. It'd be my loss if I was missing out on something. I don't like them, so I'm losing out on. . . something I don't enjoy. So, that'd be my win.

You're ultimately correct, that if you don't enjoy the games then you're not missing much. However, it's still "your loss" because you evidently don't know what you're missing. Maybe you think you do, but anyone who says [what I'm about to quote below] obviously doesn't "get" Gothic to understand what it is they're missing.

Originally Posted by DoctorEss

Hell, Morrowind came out in the US only 6 months after the US release of Gothic 1, and look how superior that game was to this. Not even in just controls, but in inventory and inventory management, armor, weapons, depth, character interactions, story, graphics, and world size.

Morrowind is an incredibly shallow game if you've ever actually played Gothic. The only things you listed where Morrowind may be indisputably superior to Gothic is the controls and interface. In terms of armor and weapons, well, that's debatable and depends on what you're looking for in those areas. Personally, I prefer Gothic's faction-based armor, and I prefer the incremental progression through Gothic's weapons better than the weapon progression in Morrowind. In every other way, however, Morrowind isn't necessarily any better and could arguably be inferior.

1) Bigger "world size" doesn't mean it's better. Gothic (and especially Gothic 2---they're basically the same game in my book) have far more complex, dynamic, atmospheric, and interesting game worlds. In Morrowind, all of the "good" content is stretched out so thin and the game is heavily saturated with monotonously repetitive textures/environment with virtually no sense of life. In Gothic's world, people have daily chores; they sleep at night, work in the day. They idle around talking with one another making small talk, they smoke, they play lutes, they sit around campfires, they harvest crops, they work on their houses. People actually do things. Every square foot of Gothic's game world is uniquely hand-crafted making every area interesting to explore. Everything is coherently tied together in a taught knot, unlike in Morrowind where everything feels disjointed. Even though Gothic's is a lot smaller, it's far more detailed with more interesting things going on in it.

2) I'm not sure how you're pulling the "Graphics" argument. Maybe Morrowind's are technically superior? But the overall artistic design of Gothic's environments and the attention to detail make Gothic's visuals far more interesting and stimulating. Morrowind has five square mile intervals of things looking exactly the same with barely any genuinely distinguishing elements. Explore one ancient ruin and you've explored them all. A lot of the animations in Morrowind look clunky and robotic, and those body/facial designs with their awkwardly sewn-together appearance with joints and features seemingly sticking out of nowhere?

3) Morrowind may ultimately have a more complex narrative, but I find the way Gothic's story is told to be far more engaging. Even though you're fresh meat in the colony, they give you an objective and a sense of empowerment right from the start with concrete goals to be working towards. The goals themselves usually involve an over-arching direction to keep you going, but with smaller, more-specific sub-objectives to fulfill the larger ones. It keeps you doing things to progress the story at a satisfying rate as opposed to Morrowind's which, like the game world, gets stretched out so thin that it drags on and on and becomes a chore in several places. It takes a while for Morrowind's story to get to the "meat," and until then you feel like you're just being strung along in pointless quests. Gothic's also got some fun twists and turns in the plot which prove to be surprising and present the game world in a more realistic, dynamic sort of light.

4) In terms of character interaction, Gothic's got fully voiced NPCs which adds tremendously to the atmosphere. They also have animations which they do as you're talking which is also more engaging than Morrowind's. And there are a lot of quests/instances where you have to say and do the right things or else you'll fail the quest. NPCs in Gothic also respond and acknowledge to your presence much more than in Morrowind. You pull a weapon out in town or start casting a spell, and people pull their weapons out and threaten to attack you. If you stand in their way they ask you to move. If they see you go into their houses, they come get you and threaten to call the guards. They acknowledge and respond to you differently depending on your guild/faction. There's ultimately more text and more "options" in Morrowind but like everything else it can get to be a real chore when basically every conversation is so heavily one-sided with characters jabbering on and on at you while you click everything they say for more information. Not to mention all of this happens in an interface window which detaches it from the actual game world. Gothic's also got characters who follow you around and fight with you, who show up in different situations which lets you get attached to them more readily because they feel like an integral part of the game world as opposed to some random NPC giving you quests.

5) And the depth. Gothic has a real sense of danger to its game world because characters trick you and stab you in the back. You get pushed around by a lot of characters and killed dead in an instant by beasts lurking in the forests. It teaches you to be careful who you trust and of where you're going. The combat requires more strategy and engagement than Morrowind's basic "stand still and spam mouse clicks" combat. There's actually a sense of challenge to exploring the game world because strong monsters are abound guarding unique treasure, so the world is ultimately more wholesome and rewarding to explore. There are more consequences for what you do, such that if you do something to one NPC you close off opportunities for other quests or other benefits. Quests more often overlap requiring you to make decisions about who to side with. Every named character has some kind of significant role in the story. Your stats don't level themselves, they require you to allocate resources through trainers, a system that requires fore-thought, strategy, and planning to be effective with.

Don't get me wrong; there are a lot of things Morrowind does pretty well and in the grand scheme of things it's a pretty big accomplishment for a game. However, there are a lot of things about it that I really don't care for. The leveling, the atmosphere, the environments, the exploration, the combat, the questing. They can all be decent by their own rights, but as part an overall experience they just don't meld well in my book, there's something about it all that makes it feel stale and pointless. The aspects of Morrowind that appear superior to Gothic's just don't carry as much weight in terms of the overall gameplay, immersion, and experience as they do in Gothic. Whenever I hear anyone say "Morrowind's world is bigger, there's more to do and that makes it better" I just roll my eyes because they just don't get it.

Most of the things I just said about Gothic, in comparison to Morrowind, don't necessarily make Gothic the better game. In fact, in terms of sheer quantitative values, I think we can safely say that Morrowind is the more successful, superior candidate. For example, Morrowind can be a deeper game than Gothic, but it isn't inherently so, the player has to make it so. Whereas the depth of Gothic is innate to its very essence. Basically, the depth of Morrowind actually feels superficially so--as if it's just tacked on--whereas the depth of Gothic feels more tangibly real, as if it's a fundamental root of the gameplay. There's a certain style and charm to Gothic that is utterly lacking in Morrowind, and I get the feeling from all of your rants that you're just failing to see any of it due to some kind of stubbornness. The comments you've made about Gothic make it sound like you've not really played it at all, as if you played for 30 minutes, got fed up with its superficial aspects and decided to go onto a message board and criticize it.

Basically anyone who's played more than, say, five hours of the game, who's bothered to figure out the controls and how the overall game functions, and who's allowed themselves the open-mindedness to appreciate the Gothic experience has fallen in love with it. Virtually every single person whom I've ever observed criticizing the game got frustrated in the first few hours and never bothered to try figuring things out. Their main (if not only) criticisms deal with the controls being stupid, the combat sucking, and the quests being too hard to figure out. Although those complaints aren't inherently invalid, if that's all you have to say about the game then you don't really have an informed opinion. Of my close, personal friends who have played Gothic, they all told me they were frustrated and annoyed with it at the start, but they were eventually enamored by its execution and whole-heartedly praised it by the time they finished it. Except the one who played an hour and quit.

If you're that keen on Morrowind that you're trying to compare Gothic to it, then it might be safe to say that you'll never be able to truly appreciate Gothic. The two games are ultimately vastly different in their style, execution, and emphasis, and if you try too hard to impose the standards of one game on the other, you're going to inevitably find that the other one comes up short. In general, if you really like one game you probably aren't going to like the other one that much. Some people really like both. Maybe Gothic's just not for you, and that's ok if it's not. I honestly don't mind people criticizing Gothic as long as it's evident that they've actually spent considerable time with it, that they understand what the game was aiming for, and that they're mature enough about it.

Here it just seems like you're on a crusade, as if the game stole your wallet and killed your dog, and you've got a personal vendetta against it.

[N3Burgener]

Originally Posted by Jeffro

Thanks!!!! glad I came back here and saw that, was about to take out my third when I read this. Definitely not ready for all the orcs to attack on site!!

To put it more precisely, once your reputation with the orcs or rebels reaches 60, the other side will begin attacking you on sight. Liberating cities gives you a ton of reputation points, so if you do liberate too many the orcs will start attacking on sight. It's still possible to reach 60+ reputation if you do EVERY quest for the rebels in each town, but you ultimately get a lot more experience if you hold out on liberating towns until you've done all of the quests in each town first.

[Jeffro]

Oh, thanks for that too, I'm getting close to that number with the rebels so ill quit doing there quests for now.

Does it matter with the other factions? Pretty sure I'm above 60 with the Rangers.

[jiminator]

I think that info is wrong. Reason being in a prior play through I was able to go in all the areas. The orcs and the hashishin have faction locked areas, not sure about the rebels. Hostility comes from too many liberations and also wearing faction clothing.