RPGWatch - Gothic 2 Retrospective

Yeah, I'd say Arena is a lot closer to being the original Skyrim. Arena, of course, being highly influenced by Ultima Underworld, which - in turn - was highly influenced by Dungeon Master.

So it goes - and all great things have been inspired by other things, including Skyrim and Gothic 2.

Originally Posted by DArtagnan
http://forum.worldofplayers.de/forum…1#post23950081

21 pages and 400+ posts in a thread that was started just a couple of weeks ago. Very few games can still draw that kind of attention after 13 years.

well it is one of my favourites too, but gothic 1 is above all gothics.
it is simply innovation in its most powerful aspects, strong characters, mysterious plot, and the comeback at chapter 5 is simply one of the most fun things i ever played. serious thought has put into that kind of gameplay. where you are so lame and get your ass kicked at the beginning only to kick ass later near the end. really fantastic. not to talk about the immersion, it was simply astounding to hear that sound track and traverse the land, so much details has been put. gothic 2 is simply an improvement yes, but the true innovation and the essence is in gothic 1. it is simply grand in its own league. very few games can come close to that.

Originally Posted by DArtagnan
Yeah, I'd say Arena is a lot closer to being the original Skyrim. Arena, of course, being highly influenced by Ultima Underworld, which - in turn - was highly influenced by Dungeon Master.

So it goes - and all great things have been inspired by other things, including Skyrim and Gothic 2.

I haven't played Arena, but if it's anything like Daggerfall, I would say that Gothic 2 is a bit closer to Skyrim than it is.

A big reason I call G2 (and even G1) the original Skyrim is due to the large amount of NPC schedule scripting. I realize Ultima had some of this as well, but seeing it on such a large scale in G2 and G1 really reminded me of Skyrim, especially when G2 is played in first-person mode (as I played the entire game thus far).

Of course, we could probably debate all day, and I could write 10,000 words quite easily about the similarities and differences, but I'm not going to do that. I know I have to try the Ultima games at some point, as well as some of the others that have been mentioned as being influences for Skyrim. But in terms of recent games, I think G2 was a rather large influence for the Elder Scrolls games, albeit with some major differences as well.

DArt, do let us know how that mod works and if it improves performance. I installed the G2 System Pack, which unlocks a few features, such as boosted view distance to 1000% and higher. I stay at around 500-1000% and the performance is not ideal (drops from 60 FPS outdoors to 30ish around the harbor), so I just deal with it.

Performance wasn't that bad for me once I installed the System Pack. If you have performance issues, perhaps try dropping the view distance down a bit, or forcing settings 'on' in your GPU control panel. My GPU didn't want to use full utilization, so I'm stuck with performance hits even though my hardware is much more powerful than the required hardware to run the game, but it is what it is.

That is my one fear about advancing with new operating systems and hardware. I fear these older games are going to get harder and harder to play for new systems. Thankfully, it seems there are modders and tech geeks who still intend to keep this stuff alive for as long as possible. God bless them!

Sure, Fluent - I'll check it out and report back

As for which game inspired Skyrim the most, I agree we could talk about that endlessly - and it's better left for another time.

Well, can't get it to work, so….

Sorry to hear, DArt. I was looking forward to your thoughts on that. Maybe I'll try it myself sometime in the future.

I wish that Skyrim would have taken anything from Gothic 2, unfortunately it didn't. So I don't see in anyway how it can be influenced by Gothic 2.

You talk about NPC schedules, but the NPC's in Skyrim are just empty shells, unlike Gothic 2, which makes the schedules pointless. Also Ultima 7 did it much better 19 years before Skyrim. Other than that they both have NPC schedules which was taken from Ultima I don't see anything Skyrim has taken from Gothic 2 unfortunately.

In Gothic 2 you have a beautiful hand crafted world, a story, and some nice challenging combat gameplay. You have NPC with personality and quest with real stories and choices behind them, also the graphic is beautifully hand-drawn no autogenerated crap.

So I am very curious as to how Skyrim was influenced by Gothic 2 ?

Great write up on Gothic 2 fluent. One of my favourite games of all time but being slightly odd I rate Gothic 3 in all it's flawed awesomeness slightly above it. Possibly because I played the Gothics many years after they were released but something in G3 just sucked me in and never let go and I've replayed it several times sinking 100s of hours into it.

As for G2 influencing Skyrim I'm kinda with GothicGoodness here in that I doubt Gothic 2 had any influence on it. If anything the Gothics are a lesson for the like of Skyrim on how it should be done. I often think the modders have influenced Elder Scrolls games more than anything else because you will see things in Skyrim that you know was a mod for Oblivion and so on.

Sadly I can't see PB ever creating a game quite on the same level but I live in hope.

I played Gothic 2 in first-person mode, so maybe that's why I see the similarities between it and Skyrim easier.

Walking around in first-person mode just really reminded me of Skyrim. You can see the attention to detail in the world, such as a net hanging from the ceiling, or a shield on the wall. The NPC schedules and general atmosphere are very similar. The music and ambient sounds are similar. The attention to detail is high in both games. Town design is similar.

Then you have things like interactive blacksmith stations, alchemy labs and rune tables - all similar to Skyrim. The dialog system is also a bit similar. You even have things like a priest in Khorinis preaching all day to the masses, similar to the preacher in Whiterun. I noticed a lot of these small similarities.

Yes, they are very different experiences overall, but I can't help but get the feeling that Skyrim was influenced quite a bit by Gothic 2.

During my first playthrough of vanilla game I didn't think too much of it.
But after playing some other games and especially a few Morrowind expansions, things seemed rather backwards compared to G2 experience. After Notr I came to conclusion this must be my favorite game ever. Tough as nails, very rewarding.

I have to say it but new PB titles just fail compared to this.
I read somewhere how they slept in offices and were obsessed with every detail during G1/2 development and now it's all business compared to those days.
Well, it shows.

And I want to once again thank all you beautiful people for commenting on my little retrospective. You guys and gals make writing for this site beyond worthwhile for me! So thank you all and cheers!

Well, out of curiosity I decided to test the Directx11 renderer thingy, and maybe my eyes are playing tricks on me, but the game looks sweet with this enabled! Unfortunately, my performance is still shaky at times, with FPS drops into the 20s and lower if I look in certain directions. Hopefully I can solve the FPS problems and play more, because the game is looking better than ever with this new renderer.

Well, I just had a fun half hour! Here's what happened:

I installed the DirectX11 renderer, and had quite a bit of trouble getting everything to work, but finally, it did. And how does it look? Wonderful! It really is easier on the eyes than the standard game, but the standard game is by no means ugly. This just makes things a little nicer overall.

However, it's not quite cooked enough yet for me to continue my playthrough using this. For one, previous saves were kind of wonky with the system, and none of the characters voices worked! It looked nice, but I'd rather continue my game and not start over, so I went back to the System Pack 1.1 and a few other fixes.

Here's the absolutely wonderful part. The game now runs beautifully at a steady 60 FPS with no hiccups at all, even with the view distance multiplied by 10 (300% x 10 = 3000%)!!! It's amazing. I think it has to do with the fact that I installed it on a 7200 RPM hard drive. Before, it was installed on my SSD, and I could only have the view distance max at 400%. Even then I experienced some lagginess and framerate drop when I looked in 'busy' areas.

But now? Absolutely butter smooth performance. If anyone would like to know the step by step process I did to get this excellent performance, here it is:

1 - Install Gothic 2: Gold from Steam. (Would not advise installing on an SSD, use a normal HDD.)
2 - Install Gothic2_fix-2.6.0.0-rev2.exe
3 - Install Gothic2_PlayerKit-2.6f.exe
4 - Install G2NoTR-SystemPack-1.1.exe
5 - Play and enjoy!

It's that simple. I'm on an Alienware laptop with the Radeon 7970m GPU, Windows 7 Professional 64-bit, 8 GB RAM, etc., and it's finally running super smoothly. Hope that helps some of you.

I'm now testing the D3D11 renderer, and let me tell you, it looks purty! The NPCs seem to really stand out now, as they are nice and smooth (hehe) and look great! However, there are still lots of bugs it seems, such as flickering lights and some strange anomalies. However, I will probably make a quick video now giving a quick tour of the game using this renderer with all options turned on. I'll be back when that's done with a link.

Originally Posted by Fluent
I'm now testing the D3D11 renderer, and let me tell you, it looks purty! The NPCs seem to really stand out now, as they are nice and smooth (hehe) and look great! However, there are still lots of bugs it seems, such as flickering lights and some strange anomalies. However, I will probably make a quick video now giving a quick tour of the game using this renderer with all options turned on. I'll be back when that's done with a link.

Screenshots?

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Es_tfpvIWWU

Here's a quick runthrough of the world in DX11 >

So, let's talk some Gothic 2!

What do you guys think of the game? Better yet, here's a little Gothic questionnaire for anyone interested!

#1 - What are your favorite design aspects of Gothic 1 and 2?

#2 - What's your single favorite feature of Gothic 1 and 2?

#3 - Would you prefer the open-world of Morrowind or Gothic?

#4 - What's one thing you want to say about Gothic 1 or 2?

#5 - Optional. Talk about your Gothic 1 or 2 experience.

Let's see what you guys have to say about this game.

I think it's a discussion that should include all 3 of the Gothics. I know many would consider the first 2 far superior to the third but every year I replay all three and I'm not thinking "oh no I have to play the third one now". I get as much if not more enjoyment out of 3. It was so ambitious which I admire even if it was a step too far for them but regardless it sucks me in every time.