Gothic 3: Forsaken Gods
What kind of game earns 36% average on reviewsites and lead to the publisher to officially apologize for the game? Well, to find out have been my mission for the past few days.
Gothic 3: Forsaken Gods needs an explanation first. It's not the same game as "Gothic 3", but a stand-alone expansion and sequel.
It's also the prequel to the upcoming game Arcania: Gothic 4.
I loved the Gothic series, and I found Gothic 3 to be really enjoyable. Since it's release, the community have patched it up to make it a really solid title that can be enjoyed by anyone who enjoy large, free-roaming roleplaying games with a heavy focus on exploration.
However, Gothic 3 was released in an unfinished stage. The AI was broken and caused issues like insta-killing boars, quests that couldn't be finished, repeated crashes, and the worst of all; trashed savegames. It could be debated on why this happened, G3 was a very ambitious title, possible the most ambitious large-scale RPG in the modern era. The result however, was that the developer (JoWood) and the publisher (Piranha Bytes) went separate ways, Piranha Bytes later produced Risen, a game that carry over a lot of features from Gothic, but with a new setting. JoWood instead hired the Indian company Trine to make an expansion for the game, called "Forsaken Gods". However, they weren't allowed to get too much time to publish it, they had to do the impossible; to design a large scale RPG in a very short time. Due to the restraints, they had to go with what they got; someone elses game, someone elses engine, and lack of resources. The expansion was thus doomed from the start. Yet it was published, and there were even a collectors edition too.
Playing the game with the most recent patch is still like playing an alpha version, a gamemod in progress that was only just started. FG is not even "beta", and it's far less complete than G3. Explaining some of the surreal issues is what I will do in the rest of this minireview that would be fitting an episode of Angry Video Game Nerd or any other harsh videogame reviewer.
Story
FG takes place right after G3. Not given too many spoilers away for those who still would like to enjoy the first 3 games; the hero left the land after bringing it peace. But peace didn't last in his abscense. New factions arised, the challenged eachother, war broke out again. Scrying Myrtana from afar, the hero decide to return to the land to set things right again.
The hero begins with Inog and Anog, two brothers in the west of Myrtana. Thorus have gathered the orcs who fights against humans under Gorn. To the east, Lee have taken the throne of Vangard and hope for peace in the land.
To be able to end the war and build an alliance between the factions, the hero travels from city to city, speak to people, solve issues and collect loot from everthing that isn't nailed/glued to the ground.
This could have been nice setup. But the execution is awful. Since the game is unfinished, quests are likely to break so you can't finish the game, much of the dialogue is simply missing (giving you empty dialogue bars, or for some reason written in latin or missing voice acting). Some cases dialogue is spoken by the wrong person, which is very confusing, so the hero asks the NPC's question that the PC then responds. This makes it really difficult to understand what's going on, and the quest journal isn't helpful as it often gives wrong information, like "collect 1000" when you need to collect 3000.
As that wasn't enough, the actual game beneath all that have the kind of writing that reminds me of my own adventures I wrote when I was eleven. This makes Two Worlds look like an AAA title! They also trashed an almost perfect ending in Gothic 3, turning the whole awesomeness of that game upside down with the new silly plot that breaks the game and definitely shows that the original developers weren't around to stop the new ones from raping the NPC's the player got to love in the earlier titles.
Engine: Graphics & Sound
This is Gothic 3, with almost no enhancements whatsoever. Just like it's prequel it looks like crap at first, but once you tweaked the INI file, it can look quite good.
The game uses the same map from the first game, cutting Nordmar and Varant which leaves 1/3 of the map (Myrtana, the Middle Lands). It keeps the music from the first title, which is actually one of FG's only redeeming qualities. The music in G3 is often mentioned as "best game music ever". Walking around in the virtual nature, listening to the soft tunes, is strangely relaxing.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DLyqSQhS6E0
As I mentioned in the Story, the voice acting is screwed up. But there's another thing I would like to mention; when a NPC have nothing more to say, they tend to speak using the generic NPC voices, which means you can talk to someone who suddenly speaks in a drastically different voice.
Gameplay
Imagine you had a complete game open in a toolset. Then you begin to wildly delete items that someone else placed in the toolset, such as NPC's, but even if you delete a lot there will also be a lot still in the game that you hadn't time to delete.
Traces from Gothic 3 is everywhere in FG. In fact, some of the patches were "delete patches", that simply removed Gothic 3 stuff that shouldn't be in FG. Still there is a ton of stuff from G3 that weren't changed at all. Chests are everywhere with the same items inside. Monsters stand at the same spots, including those related to quests in G3. Some might even give you G3 rewards when killed.
But at least they filled up with new content in the areas they deleted to build the new story. That's fine right? Where as Gothic 3 had about 20-30 NPC's per city that was worth talking to, FG might have five. Quests are usually "guide NPC", "bring me # item X" and really annoying. Many RPG's have at least a few silly quests that are clearly there for humerous relief. In FG more than half of the quests are awfully silly, pointless and stupid and they aren't even funny. There's for example a whole ton of "crazy people" who are clearly out of their minds. One or two might have been fine, or funny, but FG have them everywhere.
To really get through this game, I took no chances. I used a full walkthrough that do not only give hints, it also tells outright when one of the hundreds of gamebreaking bugs pops up, how to avoid them and how to use the console to fix the game if it happens. I used the console all the time to be able to even finish the game. I also used it to shorten the time it took to play the game using the GOTO NPC command that teleports you to key NPC's. Some quests involve going back and forth between cities multiple times which might cause hours of meaningless strolling in areas you already explored and cleaned out. Unfortunately, there's also a lost of quests in which you need to guide NPC's over the entire continent which provide some frustrating hours of simply walking and making sure the NPC isn't stuck.
Let me give you one example of the quests you will find in this game. In the first city you get a couple of missions, including "find my brother and take him here" and "kill the owner of the inn, he's an orc sympetizer". In the second city you talk to the brother who do not want to leave the city until you have done quests for him, including "collect taxes from the owner of the inn". You have of course killed him already, causing the game to break. I had to respawn the NPC using the console. In other cases you need key items that other events delete from your inventory, so you have respawn them again. Then there's key NPC's missing and you have to use GOTO to find them. In one quest you have to find a Black Mage who will only spawn after speaking to 5 NPC's, including people in other cities, who when you speak to them only give you a generic response, but the quest still updates when you do.
Balance is out of touch. You can find the best armor in the game early on, but finding a mage that can teach you will take ages unless you know where to look. There were a trainer in the second city prior to the 2nd patch, but now you have to go through over half of the cities before you find one, unless you go there at once, which I actually did. I walked over the entire continent, collecting every teleporter stone, reading every book (skillbonuses) in the beginning of the game before beginning to do quests in the first town, just to speed things up.
Most traders have the same content, making it easy to get some generic items, but impossible to get others. I found only one shop in the entire game that sold empty vials, neccessary for alchemical potions. The only one selling robes refuse to sell it. All helmets have the same stats. Getting into Vangard got me every magical weapon in the game and the best armor in the game within the first hour of playing, since they forgot to make items solid. That means you can simply grab stuff that are used for decoration in the throne room for example.
There is no logical placement of things, you will aquire so much loot and money from every chest you see that you will eventually stop bothering to loot.
Being a mage, I quickly realized that the fireball you get from the beginning of the game is better than everything else you can earn, so I never got to use anything else. I also realized that many of the mages skills, such as Light Armor Proficiency (that should double robes protection) simply doesn't work. I also realized that my damage 45 staff did more damage than my 140 damage sword, by only draining 5% of the stamina the sword does.
Final Conclusion
Well, I did get through the game. Now at least I feel prepared for Arcania. FG was often a surreal experience and I am happy I didn't actually go out and BUY this game. Alphas stolen and uploaded to torrent sites are sometimes in better shape than this game is, despite the patches the game received. The games only saving quality is that Gothic 3 had great music, which is reused in FG. There have been talk about a community patch, but I say do not bother. Even if all bugs were fixed in the game, the bad writing, the pointless quests and meaningless content makes up the bulk of the game and if there's a silver lining somewhere, I couldn't find it. Buy the Gothic 3 Official Soundtrack instead.