Prime Junta
RPGCodex' Little BRO
- Joined
- October 19, 2006
- Messages
- 8,540
The Gothics never were your grandfather's CRPG. Gothic 3 is like the ones that came before, only more so.
I've spent a few fluey days hacking away with it, and been about equal parts frustrated and delighted. Years of your grandfather's CRPG's made me play it in the wrong way. Or at least in a way that wasn't as enjoyable to me as the way I finally figured out, which may, of course, not be at all as enjoyable to someone else. These are my thoughts on it.
Before we go any further:
(0) Install the patch, update the drivers on your system (including the CPU drivers if you're on AMD X2), and read through and apply the tweaks from the Tweaks thread. Oh, and check that your GPU gets enough air not to overheat. Failing to do so will result in a painful experience.
So, how to play G3 and enjoy it? In many ways, it's just the opposite of playing most other CRPG's. Most CRPG's hand-hold you. The only throw challenges at you that are carefully calibrated to your strength, they reward you with appropriate loot for surmounting appropriate challenges, and they carefully advance a plot. G3 isn't like this. At all. It's basically a huge world for you to play in, with challenges at all levels to be found in (almost) all parts. If you wander into the wrong cave at the wrong time, you'll end up as a wet stain on the floor. If you pick the wrong quest, you'll end up spending more time listening to that mournful death music and watching the load screen than actually playing.
So don't. In particular, *don't* do any of these tried-and-true CRPG power-gamer tricks:
(1) Try to kill every enemy you see. At worst you'll die all the time. At best, you'll spend 45 minutes sticking arrows into a really nasty beast from a safe location, and then get a few hundred XP and some lewt that will make virtually no difference to the game. Instead, if you see something that kills you in no time flat, run away. (Unless it's a bloodfly or wild boar, in which case curse roundly and deal with it.)
(2) Try to do every quest in sequence as you get them. You'll easily get quests that are way too tough, or only doable through obsessive save-reload. Just gather up those quests, and do the ones that feel about the right size to you. If quests in an area get too tough, wander off somewhere else -- there's a huge number of places with a huge variety of quests, most of them interesting and atmospheric.
(3) Min-max compulsively. The interesting thing about G3 -- and I've only started to appreciate it -- is that it's all about using a fairly small variety of "tools" on the right situations. This is different than in G2, too. A character that's reasonably good at most things will have more fun and get through most things more easily than a character that's put all of the learning points into a single skill group. The halberd works great against wildlife, for example, but a good sword works better on human(oid)s. Scrolls and magical effects are very powerful. Moderate thieving skills will open up yet new options. Moderate skills with a bow will make otherwise tough fights much easier to manage. So, at least at reasonably early levels, it's a better approach to make your character a decent all-rounder with perhaps one area a bit more emphasized than the others; I suspect min-maxing will become more important later on in the game though.
(4) Try to approach the world area by area. Instead, explore. There's a tremendous amount of stuff to discover, tucked away in secret places. And never mind if there's a chest you can't open or quest you can't do; there'll be plenty more chests and quests elsewhere. A big part of the fun is coming back to areas you already know, and doing more stuff there.
OK, so there were the don'ts with some do's added in for flavor. Here are a few do's (very, very mild spoilers):
(1) Do make friends with the rangers. They're your best bet for decent armor and magic before having to do some pretty heavy-duty fighting. It's much easier to become friendly with them than the major factions, and they're close by to the starting point.
(2) Do be mercenary. (Not necessarily *orc* mercenary, but mercenary -- kill people for money, basically.) The Nameless Hero is not a very... nice person. (In fact, he's more of an anti-hero than a hero; think Riddick, not Sir Galahad.) He was imprisoned in what amounts to a death camp, was betrayed by his mentor and a few people he considered friends, saved the world twice, and never got any thanks for it. He doesn't owe anyone anything, not the King, not the Orcs, not Xardas, least of all the whiny peasants. The only reason he's still alive is that he knows how to look out for Number 1. So do that. For a long, long time you won't be strong enough to be a mover and shaker, so don't try to be. Instead, be what you are -- a sellsword. Keep a low profile, and take on those jobs everyone else is too weak (or too scrupulous) to do. Once you're tough enough, there will be time to pick a side.
(3) Pick your own fights and set your own objectives. The world of Gothic is a mean place, and the only way you can survive in it is by fighting it on your terms, not theirs. It's also varied enough that setting your own objectives actually makes sense, and makes a difference -- the Gothics are the only games I can think of that really have meaningful choices in them. Sometimes the choices are forced on you -- not by the scriptwriters, but by events. For example, you may have gotten into an argument with a group of individuals out in the wilderness that ended up badly for said individuals, and later discover that they were important enough that you'll never be able to become fully accepted in a city because they're no longer around to talk to. Them's the breaks, so deal with it.
(4) Take the main quest slowly. It's possible to get in way over your head (essentially because of an early badly-designed boss fight with a really, really huge loophole), so don't try to pursue that too early. Instead, keep doing those odd jobs, learning what the factions are all about, developing your character, and just soaking in the atmosphere. If the going gets too tough, it's probably because it *is* too tough, so do something else instead. G3's main quest is the diametrical opposite of Oblivion's -- where the O-games main quest feels like throwing yourself at a door that wasn't locked after all, G3's main quest feels like finding a pool full of piranhas behind that door. So take it easy.
Bottom line? The more I play G3, the more I like it. It just demands a very different approach than almost any other CRPG I can think of. Oh, and the wildlife still does needs to be toned down -- my character is closing on level 30, and can *still* be killed within seconds by being jumped by a bloodfly or wild boar. That just ain't right.
I've spent a few fluey days hacking away with it, and been about equal parts frustrated and delighted. Years of your grandfather's CRPG's made me play it in the wrong way. Or at least in a way that wasn't as enjoyable to me as the way I finally figured out, which may, of course, not be at all as enjoyable to someone else. These are my thoughts on it.
Before we go any further:
(0) Install the patch, update the drivers on your system (including the CPU drivers if you're on AMD X2), and read through and apply the tweaks from the Tweaks thread. Oh, and check that your GPU gets enough air not to overheat. Failing to do so will result in a painful experience.
So, how to play G3 and enjoy it? In many ways, it's just the opposite of playing most other CRPG's. Most CRPG's hand-hold you. The only throw challenges at you that are carefully calibrated to your strength, they reward you with appropriate loot for surmounting appropriate challenges, and they carefully advance a plot. G3 isn't like this. At all. It's basically a huge world for you to play in, with challenges at all levels to be found in (almost) all parts. If you wander into the wrong cave at the wrong time, you'll end up as a wet stain on the floor. If you pick the wrong quest, you'll end up spending more time listening to that mournful death music and watching the load screen than actually playing.
So don't. In particular, *don't* do any of these tried-and-true CRPG power-gamer tricks:
(1) Try to kill every enemy you see. At worst you'll die all the time. At best, you'll spend 45 minutes sticking arrows into a really nasty beast from a safe location, and then get a few hundred XP and some lewt that will make virtually no difference to the game. Instead, if you see something that kills you in no time flat, run away. (Unless it's a bloodfly or wild boar, in which case curse roundly and deal with it.)
(2) Try to do every quest in sequence as you get them. You'll easily get quests that are way too tough, or only doable through obsessive save-reload. Just gather up those quests, and do the ones that feel about the right size to you. If quests in an area get too tough, wander off somewhere else -- there's a huge number of places with a huge variety of quests, most of them interesting and atmospheric.
(3) Min-max compulsively. The interesting thing about G3 -- and I've only started to appreciate it -- is that it's all about using a fairly small variety of "tools" on the right situations. This is different than in G2, too. A character that's reasonably good at most things will have more fun and get through most things more easily than a character that's put all of the learning points into a single skill group. The halberd works great against wildlife, for example, but a good sword works better on human(oid)s. Scrolls and magical effects are very powerful. Moderate thieving skills will open up yet new options. Moderate skills with a bow will make otherwise tough fights much easier to manage. So, at least at reasonably early levels, it's a better approach to make your character a decent all-rounder with perhaps one area a bit more emphasized than the others; I suspect min-maxing will become more important later on in the game though.
(4) Try to approach the world area by area. Instead, explore. There's a tremendous amount of stuff to discover, tucked away in secret places. And never mind if there's a chest you can't open or quest you can't do; there'll be plenty more chests and quests elsewhere. A big part of the fun is coming back to areas you already know, and doing more stuff there.
OK, so there were the don'ts with some do's added in for flavor. Here are a few do's (very, very mild spoilers):
(1) Do make friends with the rangers. They're your best bet for decent armor and magic before having to do some pretty heavy-duty fighting. It's much easier to become friendly with them than the major factions, and they're close by to the starting point.
(2) Do be mercenary. (Not necessarily *orc* mercenary, but mercenary -- kill people for money, basically.) The Nameless Hero is not a very... nice person. (In fact, he's more of an anti-hero than a hero; think Riddick, not Sir Galahad.) He was imprisoned in what amounts to a death camp, was betrayed by his mentor and a few people he considered friends, saved the world twice, and never got any thanks for it. He doesn't owe anyone anything, not the King, not the Orcs, not Xardas, least of all the whiny peasants. The only reason he's still alive is that he knows how to look out for Number 1. So do that. For a long, long time you won't be strong enough to be a mover and shaker, so don't try to be. Instead, be what you are -- a sellsword. Keep a low profile, and take on those jobs everyone else is too weak (or too scrupulous) to do. Once you're tough enough, there will be time to pick a side.
(3) Pick your own fights and set your own objectives. The world of Gothic is a mean place, and the only way you can survive in it is by fighting it on your terms, not theirs. It's also varied enough that setting your own objectives actually makes sense, and makes a difference -- the Gothics are the only games I can think of that really have meaningful choices in them. Sometimes the choices are forced on you -- not by the scriptwriters, but by events. For example, you may have gotten into an argument with a group of individuals out in the wilderness that ended up badly for said individuals, and later discover that they were important enough that you'll never be able to become fully accepted in a city because they're no longer around to talk to. Them's the breaks, so deal with it.
(4) Take the main quest slowly. It's possible to get in way over your head (essentially because of an early badly-designed boss fight with a really, really huge loophole), so don't try to pursue that too early. Instead, keep doing those odd jobs, learning what the factions are all about, developing your character, and just soaking in the atmosphere. If the going gets too tough, it's probably because it *is* too tough, so do something else instead. G3's main quest is the diametrical opposite of Oblivion's -- where the O-games main quest feels like throwing yourself at a door that wasn't locked after all, G3's main quest feels like finding a pool full of piranhas behind that door. So take it easy.
Bottom line? The more I play G3, the more I like it. It just demands a very different approach than almost any other CRPG I can think of. Oh, and the wildlife still does needs to be toned down -- my character is closing on level 30, and can *still* be killed within seconds by being jumped by a bloodfly or wild boar. That just ain't right.
- Joined
- Oct 19, 2006
- Messages
- 8,540