Arcania - Demo Released

[Alrik Fassbauer]

In-case anyone's wondering what's the difference between the colour settings,don't waste your time.

Yes, it's basically a thing of colour saturation.

I'm puzzled right now at what they had intended with this "feature" ?

 

[JDR13]

The European setting was supposed to have a darker, grimmer look. I think it simply looks washed out.

 

[Alrik Fassbauer]

Alrik Fassbauer: It's rude to say ADHD gives you a low attention span? No, it's a fact I wasnt 100% serious though but there is some truth to it that many kids (or people overall have it). It doesnt mean thats why games are getting dumbed down, but at least its a theory

I have too many people with that in my circle of friends - which is basically part of a forum I'm moderating in.

And to me, ADHD is something one should rather do not do jokes about.
Like Autism, for example.

 

[WorstUsernameEver]

Apparently the demo sets all the main quests to completed once it ends which means spoilers are floating on the net right now. I won't elaborate, but what I've read (if true) is really disheartening.

 

[TheMadGamer]

I've played through maybe half of the demo and I've read all the posts in this thread so far.

The game has about a 30% 'gothic' feel to it.

I don't like the 'on rails' (invisible barriers) feel to the demo. I'm hoping this goes away in the real game. The Gothic series built the expectation of, 'if you can see it, you can go there.'

I don't like not being able to go into the water. At least you should be able to wade into water like you can in Risen.

I do like the interface and overall polish. I particularly like the tooltip texts - they thoroughly explain items you find in the world - something sorely lacking in G3.

The world is pretty, though somewhat empty. I go exploring the nooks and crannies to essentially find nothing interesting. Prior Gothic games had a lot of nooks and crannies that contained nothing, but sooner or later you'd find something hidden somewhere - so hopefully this will be the case in the full game.

Fighting seems very easy. I just click click click and kill everything. Not too excited about this. Risen really excelled in this area.

I will probably take a wait and see approach when the full game is released. Not sure if I want to pick up this title at this point.

 

[Zloth]

There seems to be an awful lot of people here who think the retail game is going to be radically different from the demo for some reason.

That would be because they always are. Most plop you down into the tutorial and end when you're done, so you only get to see the most basic things. Some plop you down more toward mid-game, which can work pretty well if you've got a simple system. (It completely failed with Last Remnant.) A few are pretty much just technical demos that are there simply so you can see if your PC can handle the game.

Risen plopped you down on a small beach with Female Clone #1. You got a little exploration along that beach then you went up a very linear mountain path - and not for very far. Did they even give us a bow to play with? We certainly didn't get any hints about how the magic system would work.

This one was the same idea with a twist - it went into fast forward at the end. Was it easy? Of course - it's Tutorial Island. How many times do you expect to get killed off in the tutorial!? You don't make it a big, open area either. You stick them on rails and teach them each bit, one by one.

So what's all this about the AI being bad? If anything, that's MORE Gothic-like. I remember standing on the ramp to a castle in Gothic 2 and clearing out several dozen orcs because they simply couln't fathom chasing after me. I remember giving up on trying to get an NPC to follow me back to camp in Gothic 3 because the AI was so horrible that it couldn't find a path around a boulder.

There was one big thing that was very un-Gothic-like, though. I was wandering back to town once and heard a rumbling and crashing behind me. OH MY GOD! WILD BOARS!!! But no, it was just some harmless goblins.

P.S. Where are all these invisible walls? The only ones I found were water areas and once when I tried to get around the bridge by jumping the stream. The rest of the walls were very visible rocky ledges.

 

[JDR13]

That would be because they always are. Most plop you down into the tutorial and end when you're done, so you only get to see the most basic things. Some plop you down more toward mid-game, which can work pretty well if you've got a simple system. (It completely failed with Last Remnant.) A few are pretty much just technical demos that are there simply so you can see if your PC can handle the game.

I'm talking about fundamentals here, not something as simple as item and character placement. I've never played a demo that was significantly different from the full game, especially when the full game was within 2 weeks of going gold.

So what's all this about the AI being bad? If anything, that's MORE Gothic-like. I remember standing on the ramp to a castle in Gothic 2 and clearing out several dozen orcs because they simply couln't fathom chasing after me. I remember giving up on trying to get an NPC to follow me back to camp in Gothic 3 because the AI was so horrible that it couldn't find a path around a boulder.

Those are examples of specific situations, none of which compare to what I experienced with the Arcania demo. I could literally fire arrows at enemies with no response whatsoever, as long I led them a certain distance. It almost seemed like their AI shut off entirely if they left their designated area.

P.S. Where are all these invisible walls? The only ones I found were water areas and once when I tried to get around the bridge by jumping the stream. The rest of the walls were very visible rocky ledges.

How about not being able to jump off a simple slope with a small ledge? I would consider that an invisible barrier. Also, water was never a barrier in previous Gothic games, except to prevent you from venturing out into the deep ocean.

 

[Dez]

There seems to be an awful lot of people here who think the retail game is going to be radically different from the demo for some reason.

This is also beyond me. Shouldn't demo suppose to tease us..Telling us how awesome the full retail is going to be? I remember playing gothic 1 demo back in the day and I was hooked in right from the begining. Arcania demo on the other hand doesn't excite me one bit.

-Combat is a lot worse than in g3 (cp 1.74). Its way too easy, repetative and chaotic for my taste.
-Game doesn't look that good really and yet sys requirements are quite high. To my eyes gothic 3 still looks superior.
-Gameworld feels quite static. In gothic games the big thing was how alive the npcs felt. Remember seeing the old camp first time around? now compare that to Arcania.
-Empty gameworld..it just lacks detail and content. I fear that the full game is going to feel quite similar.

Arcania is not the sequel i waited for. In many ways Risen already feels like a direct sequel. Heck even the setting makes sense storywise. A mage banishing the old gods etc…

 

[Zloth]

I can't say as how I jumped off every single slope, which one are you talking about JDR? I know the game was quite happy to let me jump off the ledge with the waterfall (to my doom).

 

[bemushroomed]

I tried jumping off the ledge at the sides of the waterfall, no go, invisible wall :/ there were also quite a few other places (i didnt try many places) where you couldnt jump up to or jump down from, felt really restricted.

 

[booboo]

I had a quick run through with everything maxed and I must say that while my initial impression of the graphics was very good, I've revised that somewhat. There are quite a few LOD issues - which are always immersion-breaking. Those popping up plants are really irritating; then there are the model/texture LOD's for world geometry - like cliffs etc. Some seem to swap in a texture that looks worse as you approach, with different lighting At the very least they should normalize intensities correctly. Of course, very few games do good LOD (even though it is 'technically' a solved issue - no real research left, apparently). Then there are shadow issues - I think I know what the stuttering is: if you have shadows maxed and you look at cliffs etc, you will see the shadows they cast being updated every N frames. They do a little skip as the accelerated day/night cycle ticks over. I think the trees are doing the same things - hence the animation skip. No doubt this is meant to give 'dynamic' shadows more cheaply. But it just looks fake and crap. They should just pre-compute static scene shadows (honestly, who would notice and its cheap) or use some ad hoc scheme to fake a more dynamic shadowed environment. Its almost as though they were given an engine which don't quite now how to use. The modelers did a really good job (except on the human animations), but the people who set up the LOD etc did not.

 

[Zaleukos]

Tried the demo. It doesnt feel much like a Gothic, but I'll probably still get it. I was pleasantly surprised by how well it run on my rather dated system compared to other recent titles. I can live with the barriers (as a player who enjoys Bioware titles I obviously have the stomach for that crap).

 

[GothicGothicness]

the head of the characters popped off when they were talking... and my characters animation hanged up.... instead of walking he was flying.... so I saved and reloaded... animation still locked... quit the game, start it again.... nope still locked... ok give up... maybe it is a driver issue... but it is quite obviously they spent lots of time on making grahpics... but voice acting and story feels like.... I don't know... like a joke ?

 

[DarNoor]

Is there a walk option? I can't stand having to run all the time.

 

[Hindukönig]

No, but when you're in a house or draw your weapon, you're slower. Great, isn't it?

 

[Ovenall]

Seriously, is anyone really surprised by any of this considering how lousy G3 was as a finished product?

If you're the type to want to buy a game, install it, then hunt around for mods and fixes online, then go for it I guess. G3 was a nice looking mess. This sounds like the same. Unless there's some glowing reviews, I'll pass.

 

[Anderson]

This is like a 6 or 7 for me. I can enjoy it for cheap, during a dry spell, later.

 

[KayAU]

This might turn out to be a decent RPG, but it certainly doesn't look like a worthy successor to the previous Gothic games. Apart from the invisible walls and general extreme linearity, which might be just due to this being a demo, they seem to have missed much of what made the Gothic games great.

This feels like a simple action RPG, and not in a good way. In previous Gothics, you would be tossed into a living, mostly believable game world, and had to figure out how to succeed. NPCs you met would appear to have their own lives and interests. In Arcania, however, it seems they are just there for their roles in the PC's quests. When they have an exclamation mark above their heads, they have some role to play, the rest of the time they are just part of the scenery, like rocks and bushes.

Also, the difficulty is ridiculously low. I though Gothic 3 was too easy, but here, there is no sense of danger at all. Combined with the linearity of the demo, this makes for zero challenge. The only thing I found somewhat difficult was listening to the witch character.

I'm not disappointed, though, as I never believed it was the name or the publisher which made previous Gothics great. I trust Piranha Bytes will continue to provide me with exciting, immersive open world roleplaying games.

Kay

 

[Tragos]

When they have an exclamation mark above their heads

lolwut
punctuation is so much immersing , how about emoticons ?

Now that most people agree this isn' t Gothic i will give it a try .

 

[Maylander]

@Dez
Comparing it to exploring the Old Camp huh? That's not fair, hehe. Exploring the Old Camp (and later on the Swamp Camp) is among the greatest gaming experiences I've ever had - it was incredible. Stunning! Everything felt so real, so alive. I very much doubt I'll ever experience anything similar, as it was something of a revelation for me: It was the first time I realized the possibilities of creating a living, breathing 3D world. Before Gothic, 2D games were just as good as 3D games at presenting a living world.