Arcania - Interview @ Critical Gamer

Dhruin

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Omega points out UK site Critical Gamer has an interview with Spellbound Lead Designer, Andre Beccu. It's a decent article and here's a sample:
CG: How big is the world map? What options will be open to the player to cross it quickly?

Andre Beccu: The game world of ArcaniA consists of two islands. The main island is huge, about two thirds of the size of the main landmass in Gothic 3. We decided to focus on a more compact and action-oriented world, with intricate details and loving design.

Now some RPG series like to present a mind-bogglingly huge world … only soon you notice that much of it is empty, and the rest is basically all the same, with a small random factor to make each settlement, shop and randomly generated quest almost, but not quite entirely, identical to every other village, shop and “fetch the item” quest in the game.

Gothic veterans know that this kind of size isn’t what Gothic is all about – each quest, each NPC, each settlement is hand-crafted, so we may not have the sprawling world size of many other games, but every area in ArcaniA is relevant or interesting in some way. We want quality, not quantity: Rather than adding vast empty deserts (like Gothic 3 had) or duplicating islands and villages, we decided to focus on a compelling story, action-laden combat and fast-paced excitement, and having to travel a dozen miles to the next relevant location would be detrimental to these goals. We’ve even added a way to travel much more quickly: The character can learn to sprint, and to use teleport stones in key locations which, once activated, offer the chance to jump from one stone to another.

CG: Does Gothic 4 focus on combat, or non-violent activities and quests?

Andre Beccu: Both are true – even if the answer sounds strange! The story is a key element, but so is fighting! Some quests can be solved without fighting, but some cannot. Like in real life, players will have to stand their ground in some situations, even if their hero is more the bookish type and doesn’t even own a sword. We love to put players in unexpected situations and we make sure that players, no matter how combat-oriented their playstyle, have a way to survive these little surprises.
More information.
 
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Great interview. I've not had high hopes for this game before but this just felt just "right". Mayhaps this will be the real Gothic 3.
 
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I agree: The interview is great and very insightful. Everyone interested should be reading it !

It shows - among other things - that they try hard to let this game become a more or less true Gothic game - but they appear to put a little bit more action into it, how much this "little bit" is, I cannot say, though.

From the interview I gather that this will be a game Gothic fans will like - and I perhaps won't. My very personal "gaming style" seems to be different than that.

What makes me shake my head, though, is this part - but mostly because I have my own beliefs about what I - for my own part - consider a "good RPG" (essentially it's just a matter of taste, imo) :

CG: What makes a good RPG… and a bad one?

Andre Beccu: We believe that an RPG needs a strong, compelling story set in a living world to be really great, but it also needs a solid fundament to construct these on, such as a thought-out character development system … and of course a combat system that motivates you and makes you hungry for more fights. These really are the pillars we’ve built the ArcaniA experience on.

Another important difference between good and mediocre games is in its pacing and fun level: It simply needs to be fun all the time. Any gameplay element that players dislike must be carefully tweaked away – much more so today than in the early days of gaming. The typical gamer is no longer just the stereotypical male teenager with his breadbox hooked up to the TV, who doesn’t mind having to search for one quest item for four hours, or having to deal with clunky controls – Gamers nowadays cover a wide range of age groups, and they’re typically very discerning and well-informed, looking for a game that’s easy to pick up and learn, a game that delivers fast-paced action so you can prove your skills, and a captivating story that will keep them playing – and we deliver all of these with ArcaniA!

And just because of my own taste I really dislike this part :

CG: What makes a good RPG… and a bad one?

[…]

…and of course a combat system that motivates you and makes you hungry for more fights.

This (imho) just sounds too much like my thought-model of "I fight, therefore I play a role".
 
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Good interview. The hand crafted quests and landscape sound great. Not sure how "Gothicy" the combat is going to be but I'm a bit more confident this will be a fun game regardless :)
 
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I admit, that was surprisingly interesting. Maybe this could actually become something of a hidden gem? I'll definetly watch this a bit more closely from now on.
 
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The part about hand crafted design, focus on plot, offering a living breathing world and quality over quantity pretty much nails it IMO.

That's what I want from a Gothic really, and that's where Gothic 3 utterly failed. The lack of a real plotline to follow was already a problem, but more than that it clearly suffered (much from the TES series really) from the "quantity over quality" approach : PB aimed too big, and it resulted in a game world that felt more generic to the point that one city didn't felt different from the next and the game felt less alive as a result.

I never blamed PB from trying something different from GI&II... but they so too big and IMO they failed at what they aimed to do while at the same time sacrificing a lot of what made Gothic so great - so I'm glad that much like PB Spellbound seems intent on learning from Gothic 3's mistakes and offering a more focused experience even if it means having a smaller world.

-Sergorn
 
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