Arcania - Updated System Requirements?

Dhruin

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It looks like the PC version of Arcania: Gothic 4 might have some hefty requirements - particularly for the CPU.
Alistair wrote in pointing out some comments by Desslock over at the Qt3 forums about revised, rather beefy system requirements. I asked Desslock about the new specs he posted - apparently these were supplied by NA publisher Dreamcatcher (which is owned by JoWood, anyway) after they agreed the existing ones floating around the 'net weren't accurate. Here we go:
Here are the revised system specs (note that a Core2Duo CPU isn't sufficient, and 3 GB RAM is also required to "comfortably play the game." The video card requirements are more modest and should raise less issues:

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
More information.
 
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Ouch.... a 3 core CPU and 8800GTX *minimum*?

It's not an issue for me, but I can understand why a lot of people will need to upgrade.

These better be some damn good visuals...
 
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Count me out, too.

After my old mobo went down I bought a new one and a new cpu, but it turned out no new mobos compatible with my other stuff had 4 memory slots. I had to downgrade from 3 GBs (1+1+1/2+1/2) to just 2 GBs, figuring it most likely wouldn't make a practical difference for gaming since I have a new gfx card, too. Whoa. How fast have I been proved wrong…

edit: WHAT? 3-core CPU minimum? This has to be a joke.

edit2: Desslock (http://www.quartertothree.com/game-talk/showpost.php?p=2359101&postcount=50): "my C2D 6700 (266 ghz) is unplayable, even paired with a high end GPU (Geforce GTX 285 1gb). Quadcore effective minimum, as I wrote above (those stats came from the publisher)."

So they took the franchise from PB because, for instance, Gothic 3 wasn't properly optimized, right? ;-)
 
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In the posts they said that the core2quad 2.67 I have couldn't even handle it. So even the quoted specs don't cover it.

I guess, that unless reported otherwise, I'll have to wait till I have new system to try this one.

That leaves me with New Vegas and Two World II as options.
 
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Haha, you can already tell this game will run like Gothic3 or worse, just like i predicted.. i bet it has the small stutter every 15 sec too. and the visuals arent even THAT good from what i've seen in the 1080p videos..

very disapointing.
 
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If it's the CPU, then it's probably not a matter of the visuals, it's the brains. I wonder if this means the NPC AI won't be so insanely stupid as it was in Gothic 3?

According to Steam, only about 30% of gamers have 4+ CPUs. This is going to hurt sales BAD. If I was selling it, I would stick post-it-notes on each box saying it requires quad core to try and keep the returns down.
 
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I think we'd be relatively happy if a really rich world and clever AI were pushing the CPU... but in the videos I've seen he's hitting molerats :)
 
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Interesting that they are planning to release this on consoles. If they optimise well for the PS3, it's potentially a fairly powerful piece of hardware, but still... neither console has the power of a C2Quad - and they each have only half a gig of RAM total, so I don't see how it is that they can get the game to run on a 360 with 512MB of RAM shared between system and video, but they can't get it to run on a PC with 2GB of system RAM and 512MB of video RAM.
 
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Mind bogglingly stupid move on their part and it is certainly going to cost them. Count me out too I guess.
 
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To be fair, you probably need a CPU like that to run G3 smoothly as well.
 
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Well it doesn't bother me but I can see why some might be annoyed with this.

Sales will be hurt and I thought JoWooD can't really risk that at the moment.Presumably they're counting on visuals to bail them out.

I'm not really up-to-date with most games but I think this is the first cross-platform game with such high minimum requirements for CPU and Video Card.It will be interesting to see how that will work out.
I think we'd be relatively happy if a really rich world and clever AI were pushing the CPU…

Don't hold your breath ;)
 
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To be fair, you probably need a CPU like that to run G3 smoothly as well.

No, you don't actually. Gothic 3 out of the box only had rudimentary multithreading support and as of patch 1.6+ multicore support has been all but removed by Spellbound because it was broken beyond repair. A quadcore will not do you much good for Gothic 3. What you need for Gothic 3 is raw power, i.e. a high clock rate but not multiple cores.
 
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Wow, I haven't seen anything push my computer since Crysis. As a lot of games are console ports as well at the moment the system specs are always quite low.
As said above I can't see how this would run on a console. I think 1 frame per second would be optimistic!
 
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Well, I have no intention of buying a quad just to play a game from JW. One more sale gone!!
 
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They're probably focusing on consoles, that have multi-core CPUs - with the code optimised for that. This also means it's not QUITE as stupid a move, because I'm sure they expect to get the most sales from that market.

The thing is, though, that the console market hasn't had a Gothic game - so they're still pretty damn stupid ;)

That is, unless they manage to market it properly.
 
Well, I upgraded my computer for Gothic 3, but that was a Piranha Bytes game. I am not willing to upgrade just to find out if Spellbound knows how to make an open-world RPG.

Gothic 3 still ran rather poorly, by the way…even after a second hardware upgrade it wasn't as smooth as I'd like. The engine seems to me more or less immune to hardware. Still, it's a great game, easily my favorite RPG to come out that year, and one of my favorites of all time. If only the had the time to finish it before release…

Kay
 
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Lol, way to shoot yourself in the knee. A quad core as minimum demand? Ok, the game looks good, saw it at gamescon Cologne, but not THAT good. Heck, Crysis and it's like looked three times as detailled and ran well on my old dual core!

Somehow all these Jowood published games seem to be cursed with bugs and bad performance. They get an honor point for honesty, though.

Count me out as well.

EDIT: It's again a reason why I emphasis so strong the need for a demo at or before release. I am just sick and tired to buy games blind. Gods knows why demos got out of fashion these days.

EDIT: Correcting myself. Due to Gamestar we are supposed to see a demo at Oct. 12th. Source:
http://www.gamestar.de/spiele/arcania-gothic-4/news/arcania_gothic_4,43590,2317287.html
 
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