Gothic 3 - Review @ Pro-G

Thats a standard policy for a few reviewers. Firingsquad used to do that if I recall, don't know if that's still the case.

Patch policies are changing at most places - especially when you have games like NWN 1 & 2 with an update button on the front panel, or Dark Messiah where you need to connect to the internet to authenticate. But it is still a gray area in many places, especially for something like Gothic 3 that is single player only.
 
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gothic 3 has an automatic updated that runs on mondays. even when you shut it off!
 
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HI :)

I have been playing the demo for a days now. I've found that the gameplay, story etc. are very well crafted and the sound and visuals look great as well. Personally, I like the graphics and how the game has that old Gothic feeling - much better, imo, than Oblivion's very polished & shiny graphics.

I get the feeling that I'm immersed in a realistic game world in which my choices have real consequences. In Oblivion, I just get the feeling that I'm in somekind of - themepark ? - ??

I like nice visuals as much as the next one, but I like gameplay, story etc. much better.
 
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I don't think anyone here is suggesting the graphics are bad - its the system requirements given the graphics.
 
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But how can you judge that? How do you know what sort of requirements should be required? Do you have a baseline other than Oblivion, which as I said, has to load every interior cell even the size of a toilet cubicle?
 
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becuase innos has forsaken him and he must learn gain the favor of adanos.

kidding asided - the suggested requirements may be wrong/unfair, but running everything on maximum except textures on a computer over 3 years old makes me love the developers even more. as reference i can play gothic 3 with far more features than i could when gothic 1 and 2 came out, not that that is a basis for anything other than my happiness. gothic 1 took me over 5 minutes to load a save game at the time too, worth every minute too. realisticly they could put loading zones between the 3 zones, but would that improve performance all that much. if you remember from gothic 2 you also couldn't use transporter stones between the different 'worlds'. this would cause huge problems in gothic 3, having to transport to the pass between each, walk to the other side, and then transport to the city you want.
 
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I think 3 loading zones would improve things tremendously. In fact, if the rumours of an xBox360 port are true, they will have to rearchitect the game since it utilizes a shared 512 MB buffer.

And Dhruin, if you turn off the annoying "Loading Area..." message in Oblivion you'll barely notice the transitions - and its not as if Gothic 3 doesnt stutter anyway? What exactly have they gained over Gothic 2 and its 3 zones? I'm not trying to bash the game - I'm just saying that the games visuals don't justify the system requirements. Ironically though, those requirements have nothing to do with the visuals, but for reviews it doesnt matter. Sure its seamless, great. But it still stutters enough you might as well have Oblivion streaming methods and allow your game to run on more common hardware. The game would be far more stable and the reviews would be better.
 
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But how can you judge that? How do you know what sort of requirements should be required? Do you have a baseline other than Oblivion, which as I said, has to load every interior cell even the size of a toilet cubicle?

There is no objective standard - but I tend to make these comparisons for shooters. HL2 compared to FEAR compared to other stuff - there is a constant 'what I get for what price' comparison, even when there are many disparate factors. I think that the fact that Gothic 3 is a 'performance pusher' makes people ask the questions - sort of like NWN2.
 
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Another point - there are only two high end, open world games on the market for comparison. We pretty much have to wait for Crysis to change that.
 
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Another point - there are only two high end, open world games on the market for comparison. We pretty much have to wait for Crysis to change that.

Speaking of which, think about when Far Cry came out - the performance was piggy, the load times horrendous, but everone talked about the huge island area you got to see ... and it was all good ...
 
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Yup I remember that. Its one of the few games out there where they actually delivered big time on performance boosts. I hope the same happens here.

On a totally unrelated topic - the 8800GTX is flying on Crysis. Did you see those clips? Now that is performance!
 
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And Dhruin, if you turn off the annoying "Loading Area..." message in Oblivion you'll barely notice the transitions - and its not as if Gothic 3 doesnt stutter anyway? What exactly have they gained over Gothic 2 and its 3 zones? I'm not trying to bash the game - I'm just saying that the games visuals don't justify the system requirements. Ironically though, those requirements have nothing to do with the visuals, but for reviews it doesnt matter. Sure its seamless, great. But it still stutters enough you might as well have Oblivion streaming methods and allow your game to run on more common hardware. The game would be far more stable and the reviews would be better.

You're only talking about one aspect, though, and I wasn't comparing to G2. I don't really care about Oblivion's "loading" message at all -- what I care about is the door transitions. As I said, having real windows, being able to see people working from outside the doorway and entering/leaving freely adds considerably to Gothic's atmosphere as opposed to Oblivions teleport-to-an-enclosed-cell method.

I would have been happy if they simply used the G2 engine and created the new content they wanted, but reviewers and mainstream gamers wouldn't. I accept they missed their goal but what I'm saying is that was a worthy goal to try for.
 
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IF a large part of the performance issues is due to a seemless world, which seems likely, I would have preferred to have "strategically placed" loading zones. With the amount of caverns, geographical differences, etc... that Gothic 3 has, why not put loading zones in these areas? E.G: For a lengthy cavern romp like the quest in Reddock (early in game), why not break up the cavern into a different zone? As you're walking into the cavern it would not seem so jarring as say, Morrowind, which pauses mid-stride in the middle of nowhere to load more landscape. With all of these "strategically placed" loading zones in G3, the result would be better performance without sacraficing too much immersion.
 
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