Gothic 3: Forsaken Gods - Preview @ 1Up

Dhruin

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This is the first preview of Gothic 3: Forsaken Gods we've seen, with 1Up kicking up some brief impressions from GC. They were underwhelmed and unimpressed when the demonstrator had trouble with the combat (after explaining it has been improved) but the demo was only 15 minutes, so hopefully there's hidden depth. A sample:
What's new for Games Convention? I watched a short, 15-minute demo given by a frustratingly soft-spoken JoWood representative who explained where the expansion fits in the Gothic lore and how it will differ from Gothic 3. Fans of the series (which is especially popular in Germany and Russia) should be excited to learn that it continues the long-running story of the nameless hero who has been around since the original Gothic. Taking place two years after Gothic 3, the hero returns to the lands he helped unite and save to find that the nation has been split into a handful of smaller warring communities. Old friends and enemies from Gothic 3 now serve as mayors and leaders in these communities, adding a bit of nostalgic depth to the process of figuring out whom to side with.
The JoWood rep admitted that combat in Gothic 3 wasn't as accessible as it should have been; in his own words, most gamers would not be able to jump into the game unless they had played previous Gothic titles and were already invested in the universe. Trine has revamped the combat as much as is possible within the confines of the Gothic 3 engine, which it anticipates will lead to a smoother experience all around. Along with tweaked combat, the expansion, of course, contains the requisite new armor, weapons, enemies, and quests.
More information.
 
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I just don't get "within the confines of the Gothic 3 engine." There really is no 'confines' as the engine itself can be changed, tweaked, fixed, or unfixed. Any tweaking is minor at best. Why not just attack it at the source?

This is why I want to see what PBytes can now do w/o JoWood.
 
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Cost, I imagine. You send it off to an Indian studio to keep the cost down, I would think. They want to take the existing structure and assets, script up a new story, do some tweaking and get a quick/cheap turnaround.

In fairness to them, we don't know how hard it would be to make significant changes to the existing combat.
 
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To begin with, working with someone else's code is always a bit harder, depending on how well it is documented. In this case, I suspect all the documentation and the comments in the code is likely in german, so those Indian guys will have that much of a hard time working with it.

In these conditions, they're not likely to do much changes to the engine. I certainly wouldn't like to be in theirs shoes, anyway.
 
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The one who wrote the preview considers the previous gothics as hardcore RPG's. It's the first RPG I played and I don't consider it hardcore. I think he's more like an FPS kinda guy that had to write a preview about an RPG. -> worthless piece even with the little info.
 
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The one who wrote the preview considers the previous gothics as hardcore RPG's.

OR in his opinion the definition of "hardcore RPGs" has changed with these games ?

So that there's a new definition ?

At least for him ?
 
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To me this preview is at least as worthless as the author suggests his preview of the game by jowood was.

And Jowood should take care when demoing this game to all the 'top notch' game previewers out there so they don't set themselves up for shallow snide remarks about having to demo the game with invincibility on.
 
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"Cost, I imagine." "someone else's code"... d&c "is likely in german."

Good points.

Now they are just -10,001 points.
 
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