Arcania - Updated System Requirements?

Probably prevents some people from buying a shitty game, don´t see a problem here.

Grandor Dragon said:

Wow, this is interesting. At Gamescom the game didn't look like it would have such high requirements. I estimated them to be comparable to Risen.

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Yes, I agree. I'm astonished myself, although I didn't admit it.

It didn't look at all especially forcing, so to say.

Are these the highest minimum requirements for a game ever? I don't buy many games that aren't RPGs, but I can't recall anything else that required more than 2 cores just to run. Most games don't even have recommended specs that are as demanding as the minimum here.

Gothic 3 was incredibly buggy, incomplete, and performed poorly at release. They eventually fixed up some of that stuff a bit (but not all!). Its fundamental problem was it had a very weak and tenuous story and story is what made the previous Gothics great.

For me Gothic 3 failed because:
I played for over 20 hours and never found a better weapon than the one I got within the first 5 hours.
Dungeon exploring never paid off
Poor balancing, player had too much money, or there was too little to buy. In previous games I used to look under every rock for a piece of ore so I can get that next sword or armor.
The entire story was: go to town, do side quests, get reputation, kill everyone, repeat. I never finished the game, I couldn't take it anymore, too boring.
Performance issues. The game still doesn't perform smoothly even with my brand new i7+295GTX+SSD configuration.
Pathetic combat
No chapters (Probably one of the reasons why balancing was so bad)
Large open world with no real restrictions. In previous games dangerous areas were at least guarded by high level beasts. In G3 dungeons of all levels were scattered all around, and there were no real barriers in the outside world. It's much harder to make the game fun if the player can go anywhere any time. Gothic 1 & 2, had a nice balance of having an open world, but opening up new areas gradually.

At least I hope Arcania wont have such performance problems.

My system barely meets the "min" requirements because of the CPU but as those are usually "It works but it's a slideshow" I'm not going to bother. Plus G3 left such a bitter taste in my mouth I don't intend to look unless some follow-on garners HUGE critical acclaim.

Well there are crazy requirement to be sure.

I guess I should be glad that they ARE releasing a demo before, but if these are confirmed (I only have Core 2 Duo), I guess I might end up going for the 360 version (that is... if it is not a catastrophe of Risen proportions).

Well, I'll wait till it ships and some people try it out before I decide anyway, but always good to know that super computers might be needed for this 20 to 30 hour bit of entertainment. Not fond of game console ports anyway, so I won't lose any sleep over it.

DPB said:

Are these the highest minimum requirements for a game ever? I don't buy many games that aren't RPGs, but I can't recall anything else that required more than 2 cores just to run. Most games don't even have recommended specs that are as demanding as the minimum here.

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Most PCs can't take it, true, but most gamers can. As GothicGoddess said, this has probably been optimized for three cores - just like the XBox has. Never forget, the console gamers outnumber us massively. Actually, I'm surprised it took this long to get a game that requires 3+ cores. (Watch for 64-bit requirements next - possibly coming along with Win7 requirements.)

P.S. Oh, and Ergonpandilus? Watch the over-generalizations. I'll be playing on six cores. In stereo 3D.

P.P.S. You know, if you can play this game via OnLive or something like it, you don't have to worry about upgrades.

Grandor Dragon said:

Wow, this is interesting. At Gamescom the game didn't look like it would have such high requirements. I estimated them to be comparable to Risen.

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Did the game run on PCs at Gamescon?

Personally, I'm surprised it run on console if the minimum requirement for memory is 3GB (for comparison the XBOX360 only have 512mb).

Also, maybe Desslock should have mentioned those specs came from Dreamcatcher in his own posts. Right now, it look like it is his own guesses, because he's incapable of running the game on his computer.

Here's some additional information on this matter:

- The build I have of Arcania Gothic 4 was sent to me review. It is not final code - the PC version is being finalized now, but the publisher was willing to have it judged and reviewed because it was considered sufficiently close by the Publisher to submit for review.

- The game was unplayable on my system — a core 2 duo 6700, 267 ghz; 4 GB RAM (but effectively less, since running Win XP SP3); Geforce GTX 285 — all drivers up to date, I was getting under 10 fps.

- Sent a dxdiag.txt to the Publisher — Publisher sent 3 individuals to personally check out my system and found nothing wrong.

- After further compatibility testing at their own shop, the publisher reps confirmed that the problem was the system requirements floating around the internet are outdated. The new ones provide that the Core 2 Duo is capable of running the game, but is not recommended.

I asked: so you guys are convinced that the problem is the CPU - I do not want to review this game based upon a premature build - are you sure there isn't an optimization issue here that a later build of the wouldn't help?

And was told they could send a newer version when it went gold, but they were not convinced that it would help. It was compatibility testing reports (about 150 configurations that led us to the conclusion that the core 2 duo was the problem.

I then asked for the publisher to send along official required specs so we can make sure let our readers know.

And was told:

To comfortable play the game, readers should acquire at least the following:

Processor Min: Intel Core 2 Quad 2.4Ghz, AMD Phenom X4 2.2Ghz (or Tri-core like AMD Phenom X3)
Ram Min: 3GB
Video Card for minimum playability: Geforce 8800 GTX / ATI HD 2600 Pro
Video Card for best results: Geforce 280 GTX / ATI HD 4800 or higher
HDD: 10GB
OS: XP SP2+ / Vista / 7

I posted that information to inform fellow RPG fans of my experience and the revised system requirements provided by the publisher so that RPG fans wouldn't get burned buying a game they couldn't run on their current system.

Hopefully the publisher representatives were wrong, and that the game will be further optimized prior to release, and/or there was another problem/incompatability with the build or my set up that neither I, nor the 3 publisher representatives and their QA/compatibiility tests/team could diagnose.

But I didn't want anyone to get burned so I posted what information I had to help you to make more informed decisions — good luck, and happy gaming.

GothicGothicness said:

Xbox 360 is running a tripple core power PC processor…. playstation is running cell…. so to me 3 cores is perfectly logically if it was optimized for consoles.

Speaking in technical terms they probably built 3 main threads all of them CPU heavy…. one probably used for graphics, one for gameplay computations etc, and maybe one for physics. Perfectly reasonable setup.

With 3 very CPU heavy threads it is going to run like crap with less than 3 CPU's… so……

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That's not really how it works at all…if you want to support 3 cores, you program your software to use at least 3 threads. The OS's kernel chooses how to schedule those threads onto the CPUs (cores). If you have 3 threads all needing as much CPU time as they can get, and you happen to have 3 cores, then chances are 1 thread will just run on each core. On the other hand, if you have 2 cores, then (barring any special priority or affinity settings), your 3 threads will end up getting scheduled such that each thread gets to use 1 of your 2 cores, 2/3rds of the time.

The 3 cores on the Xbox 360 are so slow compared to any modern PC CPU that 2/3rds of a PC core would be many times faster than an entire Xbox 360 core.

Thanks for the clarification Desslock. We and all gamers appreciate the lengths you went to. I won't be buying this unless it's playable on a dual core system. I only upgraded my rig last year.

Desslock said:

To comfortable play the game, readers should acquire at least the following:

Processor Min: Intel Core 2 Quad 2.4Ghz, AMD Phenom X4 2.2Ghz (or Tri-core like AMD Phenom X3)
Ram Min: 3GB
Video Card for minimum playability: Geforce 8800 GTX / ATI HD 2600 Pro
Video Card for best results: Geforce 280 GTX / ATI HD 4800 or higher
HDD: 10GB
OS: XP SP2+ / Vista / 7

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Desslock, did you get to play the game in the end? And if so, do you feel that you get all the bang for having such a system? Are there so many objects, or is the AI so incredible? I'd actually be surprised if this was the case.

Thanks for the clarification Desslock.

Desslock said:

- The game was unplayable on my system — a core 2 duo 6700, 267 ghz; 4 GB RAM (but effectively less, since running Win XP SP3); Geforce GTX 285 — all drivers up to date, I was getting under 10 fps.

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If a 2,6Ghz Core Duo can't get 10 fps, then a 2,6Ghz QuadCore will never go beyond 20 fps (in the best case).
Something must be wrong with your release/build, or the settings you used, or perhaps is due to something rare in your computer. I can't believe that a company release a game that needs a iCore7@3Ghz to reach 30 fps!!!

Another consideration: Games developed for XBOX360 use the same tool (Visual Studio), libraries (DirectX) and sources (C++) as the PC version, all XBOX360 games are developed and tested first in PC. You can have a game project and compile it for both arquitectures (x86 for PC and Xenon360 for XBOX360). Of course, in the PC Version more elements are added (input, configuration, settings, better textures,…). What I mean is that any game developed for both XBOX360 and PC should run with the same performance under the same quality settings and with an equivalent hardware (Core Duo 3Ghz and a ATI 1950XT).

I think that we have to wait for the final release and its official reviews.

Zloth said:

Never forget, the console gamers outnumber us massively.

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Except in DACH; where this game is being produced, if I understood this correctly.

Which could imply that JoWood reaches out for the *international* market, not for the "national market".

azarhal said:

Did the game run on PCs at Gamescon?

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Both. Consoles & PCs.

elikal said:

Does it?

Well, I don't claim to know better, but maybe it's a not optimized built. Who can say. But since Arcania will have a demo at release day, I guess we can try out for ourselves. I just think in our days of over sensitive gamers, we should be more careful before we ruin games with spread of hearsay news.

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There is no hearsay. It's safe to assume Desslock has preview or maybe even review code to write an article for PC Gamer. The mags in the US have LOOOONNNGGG print lead times.
He is playing the game and he writes what he sees.

I really hope Spellbound spends some time on optimization. These effective minimum requirements will kill Gothic 4 on PC.

Hmm…

I have nothing substantial to base this on, but it seems off. My gut is telling me there's no way it can perform THAT badly on modern hardware. Some detail setting, or some hardware/driver conflict???

Maybe the tech support staff is about as competent as the one we have at my workplace

Same - the fact they sent three guys round to check seems to suggest the performance came as a surprise to them.