Piranha Bytes - New RPG to be announced at GC
 

Deep Silver/Koch sent out a press release in their lineup for the Leipzig Games Convention (Aug 23-26) and it includes this tantalising bit:
More information.

Bugs can be fixed, shitty design is forever.

G3 will be fine with some fan polish. Yes, releasing a game in a bugged state is a shitty thing to do, and the developer/publisher tend to get punished appropriately, from Troika's demise to this little crisis here.

But pretending it's some kind of unspeakable, unforgivable act is kind of pushing it.

Wonder what the new title'll be. Hope it won't be a fantasy game.

I already put money aside for this game :) I like G3 despite its short comings. Anony, bet you have done greater things to ride on such a high horse, more power to you.

Shortly after the GII release, PB toyed around with ideas for a Science Fiction game they always wanted to develop instead of continuing the Gothic franchise… we'll see.

Um … OK, so I hear Piranha Bytes is announcing a new RPG at GC … perhaps we should have a thread about it!

Personally, while I know there were issues with Gothic 3 related to the release and subsequent support, and believe there is plenty of blame to throw around, I am looking forward to hearing what they are doing.

Because while G3 was a mess, G1 & 2/NotR are some of my favorite RPG experiences ever.

PB has a slightly bigger team to make a game of a size somewhere between Gothic and G2. They´re officially "exactly on schedule" (what else should they say ? ;) ). The art director didn´t want to commit to a release date but mentioned he would be disappointed if he is still working on the new game in 2009.

I'll ignore the uninformed blabbering about Gothic 3 and how "poor" PB was rushed (several statements from PB employees themselves point to the opposite but I think I've posted and translated those like about 116 times by now ;) ). I guess some people are just facts-resistant (like where did you get that crap about the engine from, Ace? PB did get GameBryo. They just decided to not use it. They. Themselves. Jeez…). Which kind of defeats the purpose of posting the following but I hope that not everyone's reading comprehension is as flawed as Ace's and Aries' (among others and nothing personal, folks, you keep believing and reading what you want to read/believe… no problem :) ).

Sooo… with that out of the way, some folks have compiled a facts list for PB's new game at the German WoP forums. Of course, these are all subject to change and can only be considered as "facts" in a very loose sense but here goes:

General
- The game will be set in a fantasy world including the RPG-typical monsters, magic, alchemists, smiths, hunters and fighters.
- Any references to Gothic will be left out due to legal reasons.
- There will be a pre-defined hero. No character generation.
- The world will be approximately of Gothic 1/2 size. Definitely smaller than Gothic 3.
- There will be different zones of vegetation as well as dynamic weather and day/night cycles.
- No loading screens.
- There will be interesting dungeons and caves.
- More emphasis will be put on riddles/puzzles.
- There will be several cities/camps.
- The game will be divided up in chapters.
- The game will not be related to Gothic and it will also not be a Gothic 1 remake.
- The graphics will be slightly improved over Gothic 3.
- There will be more women than in Gothic 3 and they will not all have supermodel shapes either.
- There will be shields.

Development
- The graphics engine will be self-made again but it won't be the Gothic 3 engine.
- Everything will be modelled by hand. Items and loot will be distributed by hand.
- The max poly limit of the armor models is at around the 6K mark.
- Some programs that are used in development are 3D Studio Max, Photoshop and ZBrush.
- SpeedTree will once again be used to render the trees.

Misc
- There will be a demo of the game.
- The game will be published in German and English language versions.
- The game will not be released in 2007.

The other 90% of the thread can be found here.

If what you say is true Moriendor, this might just shape up to be a game that can rival Gothic 1. I somehow doubt they manage to pull off another game as good as that one, but could it come close? I'll keep my fingers crossed.

Yeah, by the looks of it, it's Gothic - without the Gothic name.

Sounds pretty damn good to me.

I would have bought G3 (collectors edition) no matter how good/bad it is. These guys did somthing great with G1/G2 and I wont let them down for just one mistake. They still need money to live and I totally want to support them. Same reason I bought and played through beyond divinity which actually wasnt that bad after all the bad press it got.

Thanks for the list, Moriendor. It certanly gives a more clear picture and I love the fact that it has chapters, pre-defined hero, no loading screens, fantasy setting, just like Gothic. :) PB are really the best!

For those of us using the dark color scheme, the quoted text is the same color as the background.

Actually, to be very honest, that sounds like a rehash, too similar to Gothic.

Of course I'm jumping the gun a bit here, but I was really hoping they wouldn't go for vanilla fantasy style again

They´re playing it safe. Probably the best thing they can do after all the trouble.

Apropos. Disappointing and yawn-worthy, but their choice, I suppose.

Why do you think their choice is disappointing? Their fan base wanted them to go back to the deeper Gothic gameplay and forget about the generated mediocrity of G3.

That is gameplay, I am talking about setting.

I suppose the setting is based on typical publisher thinking. Maybe their numbers say only fantasy RPGs sell, unless they have a big license attached.

And I bet their numbers are right.

Still, this is Europe, this is not a huge company, this is where my personal hopes of any sensible development of intelligent gaming is focused on. Typical predictable orcs! fantasy settings don't do it for me anymore.