Will you be buying Arcania: Gothic 4? And tv about zombies!!

To be honest, after Gothic 3: Forsaken Bugs it'll take much more than a dumbed down demo to convince me to buy into Gothic series again. I'll most likely wait for lots of reviews before purchasing the game.

Well, I've cancelled my preorder. I'll wait and read some reviews first. That's a shame, that was my number two game on my stoked meter.

I wonder if Two Worlds 2 will be any better.

Like a lot of others I'm officially in wait-and-see mode. It was on my probably pickup list but now probably pass. Gothic 1 and 2 were decent but not my favorite games and with the lackluster reviews and demo it looks like I'm going to wait until its in the bargain bin if I get it at all.

skavenhorde said:

I'll get it eventually, but not right away. Fallout: NV looks like it will take most of my time.

As for the zombie TV series, I've been shouting about that from the rooftops for a few weeks. The TV series is based off the graphic novel of the same name. Robert Kirkman has injected me with a new enthusiasm for everything "zombie". The comics are just beautifully written and delves much deeper into character development and interaction within this zompocolypse.

If you're interested in the TV show then you will definitely love the novels. I haven't bought any comics in at least over 10 years now(I never really was into comics), but I wanted to try this out. Everyone was singing it's praises in the comments section of some Dead State info article (can't remember which site). I'll warn you now, once you read the first one you'll spend every cent you have to get the rest of them. They are just that good.

The best part about the is the fact they stay true to the original type of zombies. Gone are the runner, mutant beasts, talking and intelligent zombies. In their place is something more deadly than any "special" type of zombie. A slow creeping horror that never rests and is always hungry.

After reading some of these novels (I still don't have them all yet) I can't wait for Dead State to get released. I think they are trying to make a game very similar to The Walking Dead. Zombies are in the background, but it's how man deals with man that is the main focus of the game and comics.

Ok, enough praising The Walking Dead. If you want to know more check out their website, here.

Please, please, please Double Bear don't screw the game up or give up on this. I haven't anticipated a game this much since the Quest for Glory series.

Oh, one last zombie game that took me by surprise. Dead Rising 2 isn't that bad. It's an all action game, but they got the zombies right at least. They have the slow shambling hordes of zombies that you whack your way through. They are nothing by themselves, but get a large crowd and you're in trouble. The character interaction leaves a lot to be desired and the timed quests are annoying, but it's a fun game if you're into action games.

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Looking at the website, Dead State looks like it could be my number one fantasy game (unless Bethesda remade Terminator: Future Shock). They sound like they might be nearing completion "not in 2010." So maybe 2011? Have you ever seen any screen shots or know a game that uses the same engine so I can get an idea of what it might look like?

One thing I'm a bit worried about is the PC only (at least initially). I haven't upgraded my PC since Oblivion. It runs Oblivion well, I just don't know if the new game will be more or less system intensive than that. It would be a shame if I couldn't play it.

You're in for a treat if you haven't heard about this game before. It's an indie being made with Torque 3D with tools and code used to make AoD (Age of Decadence). I'm pretty sure you're PC will be able to handle the game

We have a ton of info on Dead State. You can check out all of the newsbits that Dhruin has posted, here. You can also check out the official FAQ, here.

The single most thrilling point for me is Brian Mitsoda. IMO, his work on Bloodlines was beyond amazing. Here's a great interview with him where he talks about Bloodlines and Dead State. Good stuff.

I'd go on forever about this game, but I'm at work right now and have about 5 seconds before my class starts. Check out the newsbits here, especially the later ones with the Q&A sessions from the fans. There are some screenshots around somewhere, but I don't have enough time to search for them. Someone should be able to point you in the right direction and if not they are somewhere at IronTower forums.


Edit: Found the site where I heard about The Walking Dead from the commenters. It was RPS...should have known.

Anyways, the interview at RPS has some screenshots of the game and some more info on it.

As a gamer with no time(tm), I have plenty of games left to finish already, plus the classics that just became available on GoG. Then probably TW2 and FO:NV - ArcaniA will definitely have to wait, and if it isn't better than the early reviews have indicated, it may fall by the wayside altogether.

Alrik Fassbauer said:

Yes, that's the reason why I'm never there. These people are kind of fanatic in my view.

Plus, it's too much of other things for me there … machismo, for example. It's as if people there would say : "Gothic is a game for REAL men !"

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And you are not even a little bit fanatic about Drakensang? I recall many posts of yours in which you compare all kinds of crpgs to Drakensang. You almost always remember to point out how much better rpg Drakensang is because its not "dark", "gritty" and so forth. I'm no means an expect of DS, but I found it as much combat heavy as rest of the modern rpgs. I loved playing it though, but I never expected it to be like Gothic. I like both kind of settings. For me there is room for both, gritty and fairytale. Its like the films I enjoy. For instance I love the darkness and sense of despair in Apocalypse now as much as i enjoy the naivety and romanticism in Amelie.

Besides this silly macho rhetoric is not to be taken so seriously. Its a just friendly way to joke about fans of other games. Gothic is not for everyone, you'll have to enjoy the challenge and you have to be a bit hardcore and stubborn because the game doesn't give player much aid. The learning curve is quite steap compared to other games and I understand why this can frustrate people. Weird controls don't help much either.

I think I've already posted it here, but once I decided to analyse the social structure of Gothic 1 and wrote in the JoWood forums that I would like to see a Gothic game with the social structure reversed.
My, was I flamed ! This was the point when I decided not to meddle with any Gothic fans on the internet at all, and therefore I stayed clear of WOG.

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And i bet that analys was trying to be entirely objective. What did you expect really? You just went telling the loyal fans of Gothic series that their beloved game sucks and you would like to see the whole setting reversed because of you fancy lighter themes. I bet you even mentioned the unicorns . Look, i'm not trying to put you down. I just wonder your motives.

And besides Jowood forums is not a place for civilized discussion. I lost my hope years ago to see any spark of intelligent life there

You have to understand that Gothic 1 was loved because of it's "dirty" and "grim" setting. How often do you get to play an open ended rpg set in the prison colony? It was so refreshing that you didn't have to save the world for once, only to survive in that harsh world. Heroic deeds are smaller scale in such setting. Things become more personal. i find it odd that you didn't find this setting and storytelling even one bit orginal. Heck these dark and grim settings are in minority compared to high fantasy settings.

I'd be truly intrested in to know though, what you mean by reversing the social structure? Do you mean that the game should have been less realistic and more fairytale-like? or the prison colony should have never been overrun by convicts?

Dez said:

And you are not even a little bit fanatic about Drakensang?

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Yes, I am. I admit it.

But I can even restrain myself; especially when I'm given logical, reasonable thoughts.

I wouldn't have bought Dragon Age that early, but a kind of friend of mine, a Drakensang community member who was fairly disappointed from Dragon Age, gave me his Dragon Age "specimen".

And although I don't like the "D&G" touch of it at all (it looks very forced to me in some places), I can abstract the "D&G" part of it and look at the story alone.

Currently, I have the impression that Dragon Age could have been a nice above-standard RPG, if they hadn't been focuused so much on the "dark & gritty" part. To me, it's as if someone would run around with a badly fit costume on halloween, who is not at all suited for some kind of horor, and would much better look without it, imho. That's kind of my impression this far.

Dez said:

And i bet that analys was trying to be entirely objective. What did you expect really? You just went telling the loyal fans of Gothic series that their beloved game sucks and you would like to see the whole setting reversed because of you fancy lighter themes. I bet you even mentioned the unicorns . Look, i'm not trying to put you down. I just wonder your motives.

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I don't remember, but could be, yeah.

Well, my drive is to make things differently. My deepest philosophy is that improvement and evolution comes oly from those things that are different. I regard creativity very high - much higher than … like for example in the saying (regarding novels) "better stolen good thn invented badly" (I don't know how to put it correctly into words).

My motives are that I just kind of hate monotomy in terms of themes, in RPGs …
Plus, I just don't like anything dark. I just can't stand t. It's as if I'm some kind of flame, and I'm there o fight the darkness, sort of. Not in a philosophically o spiritually sense, but … It's something inside of me. And maybe it has something to do with my past.

I want things to be colourful, to be playful, and I do know that I'm quite alien in that respect.

I have seen enough darkness around me. I'm more sensitive than others, so things kind of hit me deeper than others, darkness included. I have learned that darkness can be fought best with light and with colours. And "darkness" could very much mean my time when i had deep depressions within the mid-80s and the 90s as well. A *really* deep depression (in a psychologicl sense) is like light drowning. A tunnel with no light at th end. The wish to die, to end all of the darkness, to let onseself be succumbed in the all-mighty, all-embracing darkness of death. I didn't try to kill myself, but I did have months and months and maybe even years of pure stagnation which involves daily thoughts o how I could end my life most effectively. The only thing that saved my life was a feeling that I had to look after my younger sister. This sense of uty was ll hat saved my life, in a way.

And then, one day, I gave it up. I thought : That's enough. I can't remain within this Black Hole forever. I must go out nd "socialize myself". Eventually, I found a group of star wars fans, and this was my very first step to get back into life.

I've had good luck, good friends and people who provided me with good thoughts. I came back in/to life. I came back to the light. Since then, I've tried to embrace it.

Right now I've found out that never being in therapy because of cost reasons might not have been a good idea. Maybe my depression has remained several levels beneath my consciousness, becoming some kind of chronic. I don't know, but I sense that there are still some parts within me that don't work properly.


And this is - by the way - a theme a *really* "mature" game should be about : Depressions. For example. Few people realize how dangerous they can really be. A poisoned Arl like in Dragon Age is child's play compared to that.

Dez said:

Its like the films I enjoy. For instance I love the darkness and sense of despair in Apocalypse now as much as i enjoy the naivety and romanticism in Amelie.

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I have experienced the darkness and the sense of despair myself. I do not need any more of that.

It's as if you had been eating something poisoned. You don't "enjoy" movies anymore in which pople re poisoned, because it will always remind you of your own struggle with (against) the poison within your self.

Dez said:

I'd be truly intrested in to know though, what you mean by reversing the social structure? Do you mean that the game should have been less realistic and more fairytale-like? or the prison colony should have never been overrun by convicts?

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That's easy.

Replace all men within "The Colony" of Gothic 1 with women; and let act these women in a similar way like the men do; of course a bit ifferent aka more fitting to how (I suppose to) women would behave within a social structure.

At that time, I was *really* interested in how this would be. I don't know in how far one can sperak o "typical women's behaviour" (I know, it's a cliché, at all ), but I'd really like to know how it would be if there were only women in Gothic 1, with the exception of 1-2 men being held in the same or in similar position like the women are in the "real" Gothic 1.

And I would really like to know whether there would be a shift from "physical bruteness" to "psychological bruteness", so to say. The men within "The Colony" appear to me very brute - it's a " men's world", after all. And, well, there's "men's rules", things like rivalry, competition, hierarchies and a little bit of barbarian cliché of "big men bear big weapons".

As a social experiment, I'd really like to know how it would be if there were women instead of men. And what kind of "rules" there would evolve.
And whether there would really be the differences I'd expect.

This seems like a more user friendly forum for anyone who's interested. I've read a few posts and the concensus seems to be the same; people are put off by the demo and hope it's not a reflection of the finished game. And that certain technical issues, like poor lip syncing will be rectified in the full game. But given that its out in a couple of weeks that seems unlikely.

I'll be reading a lot of reviews in the weeks after release… if I can tear myself away from Vegas for five minutes.

http://forum.jowood.com/forumdisplay.php?f=673

I played the demo and I plan on pre-ordering today in fact. I;m getting it for the PC though.

To those who have animosity towards it: then you must like games with awful combat systems b/c the difference between Gothic 3 and Gothic 4 in that regard are astaounding.

Edit: how can you tell what they are saying at world of gothic. theyre all talking in german!

DudeNtheRoom said:

To those who have animosity towards it: then you must like games with awful combat systems b/c the difference between Gothic 3 and Gothic 4 in that regard are astaounding.!

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I get the feeling you've never played Gothic 1 or 2.

As far as the combat in Gothic 3 though, yes, it's terrible.

I haven't. If the combat in Gothic 1 & 2 are good what happened with the 3rd. I was so hyped when I started playing that game. Then the more I got into it, the more it was pissing me off.

DudeNtheRoom said:

I haven't. If the combat in Gothic 1 & 2 are good what happened with the 3rd. I was so hyped when I started playing that game. Then the more I got into it, the more it was pissing me off.

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PB got bashed for the combat in the first two Gothics. Then they tried to make something more mainstream and failed. In Risen they got it right, although there many people complain that it's not just click, click ... dead.

The thing about the combat in Gothic and G2 is:
At first your char is very weak and uneducated. He holds his sword like a stick, and he fights like that. Of course a lot of people were frustrated when they tried to attack something serious early on and got the realistic result.
Furthermore the combat was more complex than usual, although the controls weren't that different. Instead of two options (LMB -> attack, RMB -> defend) you had 4, but to use them you had to keep either CTRL or the LMB pressed (L, R, forward -> attacking option, backward -> defend). This simple change in the controls was intellectually too challenging for the majority of the international reviewers.

The good thing about the old controls is that you can really "feel" the progression. Yes, your char sucks at first and you nearly break your thumb trying to control his actions. But when he learns how to make combos or gets better gear you can really feel the difference. The feedback is direct, and the amount of control unmatched in an RPG.
On the negative side the controls are not intuitive. You have to spend 5 minutes to learn them, and another 5 minutes each for trading and general game controls. PB found out the hard way that "unintuitive" costs at least 10% in the reviews. Fast, simple, efficient doesn't count. Only intuitive and conformity to standard are important.

I might buy it but not with much enthusiasm. More of an "oh well, I guess I'll buy this because there's nothing else to do." If TW2 were coming out this month in the states, it wouldn't have a chance. If I hadn't played Fallout 3 just recently, it wouldn't have a chance.

Gorath said:

PB got bashed for the combat in the first two Gothics. Then they tried to make something more mainstream and failed. In Risen they got it right, although there many people complain that it's not just click, click … dead.

The thing about the combat in Gothic and G2 is:
At first your char is very weak and uneducated. He holds his sword like a stick, and he fights like that. Of course a lot of people were frustrated when they tried to attack something serious early on and got the realistic result.
Furthermore the combat was more complex than usual, although the controls weren't that different. Instead of two options (LMB -> attack, RMB -> defend) you had 4, but to use them you had to keep either CTRL or the LMB pressed (L, R, forward -> attacking option, backward -> defend). This simple change in the controls was intellectually too challenging for the majority of the international reviewers.

The good thing about the old controls is that you can really "feel" the progression. Yes, your char sucks at first and you nearly break your thumb trying to control his actions. But when he learns how to make combos or gets better gear you can really feel the difference. The feedback is direct, and the amount of control unmatched in an RPG.
On the negative side the controls are not intuitive. You have to spend 5 minutes to learn them, and another 5 minutes each for trading and general game controls. PB found out the hard way that "unintuitive" costs at least 10% in the reviews. Fast, simple, efficient doesn't count. Only intuitive and conformity to standard are important.

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Remember how good it felt when you finally took down your first orc?

human_male said:

Remember how good it felt when you finally took down your first orc?

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Or beating a swampshark at a very early level where your hits don't count unless they are criticals and one hit from that sucker will kill you……Ah man, now I'm going to have to load Gothic 1 again

I was c- naturally - playing an archer. Usually, the archer is the "natural" form of character/class I play in games.

But being used to playing an archer also evokes heavy problems when you try to beat an animal within the Gothic world in close combat. And I never really got used to *that*.

Playing an archer and a "swordsman" are two imho entirely different playing styles. Close-to-close combat needs a *lot* more of manoeuvres of the character, around the orc, hitting him, running around, hitting him from the other side etc. ... That's tedious to me.

I preferred hit & run tactics. Hitting with an arrow, moving away from that one, quickly, hitting again, running a bit more ... Or climbing onto a rock and shooting from relative savety.

I don't consider any combat style as "better" or "worse", only "different". With the necessity of different approaches.

Alrik Fassbauer said:

I was c- naturally - playing an archer. Usually, the archer is the "natural" form of character/class I play in games.

But being used to playing an archer also evokes heavy problems when you try to beat an animal within the Gothic world in close combat. And I never really got used to *that*.

Playing an archer and a "swordsman" are two imho entirely different playing styles. Close-to-close combat needs a *lot* more of manoeuvres of the character, around the orc, hitting him, running around, hitting him from the other side etc. … That's tedious to me.

I preferred hit & run tactics. Hitting with an arrow, moving away from that one, quickly, hitting again, running a bit more … Or climbing onto a rock and shooting from relative savety.

I don't consider any combat style as "better" or "worse", only "different". With the necessity of different approaches.

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And don't forget the ever amusing jump-up-on-a-ledge-where-they-can't-reach-you-and-shoot maneuver.

Yes, such a thing, actually.

Oh no, it gets worse. This is 360 footage. For the first few seconds I'm thinking "Well, that looks nice." But then I see these big floating exclamation marks over the monster's heads. Oh no, tell me it aint so!

Does anyone know if you can turn those off?
http://au.ign.com/videos/2010/08/26/arcania-gothic-iv-video-first-quest?objectid=908256