Arcania - E3 Trailer, Video Interview

Hate the camera, let's hope for an option.. as for the game itself, it looks ok.

Looks ridiculously generic.

Lemonhead said:

In my opinion that's a really dumb reason not to play a game.

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:-D thanx.

KapitanUnterhosen said:

Looks ridiculously generic.

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Yeah, that's kind of my problem with it, too.

Yeah, nothing new. Yawn.

GameTrailers took some cam views of some E3 gameplay:

Part 1: http://www.gametrailers.com/video/e3-2010-arcania-gothic/700809
Part 2: http://www.gametrailers.com/video/e3-2010-arcania-gothic/700807

The first video uses the 'A' word right off the bat... <suffer> ... but it gets better as it goes on.

Hmm, looks a bit clunky and awkward. Not really what I was expecting after all those beautiful screenshots.

Time will tell, but it's down to "meh" status, I'm afraid.

I'm surprised by the negativity. Looks quite a bit like Risen. A couple things I didn't like were the "!" over the enemies head, the mini map and the multiclass balance. I don't think those are showstoppers though. Looks fun.

Not sure about the "!" but at least the minimap is a toggle. They are going to have a very customizable interface where you can activate/deactivate all the helpers as you please (at least for the PC version, not sure about the consoles which this footage was obviously from).

What I disliked was the seemingly hack'n'slash style of combat in that dungeon. In combination with the awkward monster names it had a bit of a Diablo-/WoW-ish flair to it. Hopefully there's not too much of that boring click-dead-click-dead-click-dead kind of combat in the final game.

Also, although I have to admit that I was too lazy to go back and slo-mo my way through the bits of dialog that were presented (well or not "presented" since he skipped through it all like mad ), I got the impression that the dialogs and voice acting were pretty weak. The hero's voice actually sounded like Butthead or something.
That one quest he picked up also seemed to be very simple (go and kill 10 wolves kind of material like in Gothic 3 and other MMO-/A-RPGs).
However, I guess that might be due to the fact that that particular part was from the starter island (Feshyr) as the presenter said so maybe this was only tutorial level stuff.

Everything else (graphical/technical quality, seamless game world, exploration, art style etc...) looked really great and I think that the game might have a lot of potential. I'm sure that we will get to see LOTS more at Gamescom in August and I'm looking forward to it.

Well, I got the impression from that quick quest glimpse that it was a "town rep" type where you have to do multiple small quests to marry the girl. Pretty typical of the Gothic series. The combat with the "y to roll" reminds me of Dungeon Lords, very similar mechanics. Not the shield block / strike from Risen but done right it can be fun. The roll would be alot more effective if they implemented CTRL cycling target locking and I suspect they did not. Hard to say. I'm not going to dismiss this outright however, looks promising if you can forgive the departure from Gothic mechanics and the "accessibility" changes.

ToddMcF2002 said:

The roll would be alot more effective if they implemented CTRL cycling target locking and I suspect they did not.

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Not sure if it was in the GT vids but in one of the Arcania presentations it was mentioned that you could lock on targets by pulling one of those front trigger buttons on the X360 controller so I'm sure there will be a target lock on the PC, too.

Hard to say. I'm not going to dismiss this outright however, looks promising if you can forgive the departure from Gothic mechanics and the "accessibility" changes.

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Personally I'm finding that very easy to do. The changes are fine with me for the most part. I mean if I want to have a "real Gothic" experience then I just need to go here.
I think I'm almost more worried about the story than about the mechanics and accessibility changes. The premise is pretty awesome in my opinion. It should be fairly exciting to find out why exactly our beloved hero from past adventures has turned into an evil tyrant. Should be fun unless it's some bland and boring "possessed by demons" cliche crap. I hope there is more to it. There is definitely a lot of potential in that premise. And it should also be fun to experience Gothic from a fresh, new perspective with a whole new angle on everything. Let's hope for the best .

The premise is great that I agree. Spellbound has certainly crafted an intresting setting for the new gothic tale to take place. I can hardly wait to meet diego and other old friends and hear what they have to say about old nameless. Furthermore the gameworld looks quite gothic-like. They seem to have a good understanding how important non linear gameworld is to gothic games. So I have no doubts of the exploration aspect. I just hope that spellbound pays same ammount of attention to detail as piranha bytes did. So far the videos have been promising.

Yet we have seen very little in terms of how the skill system is supposed to work in detail. The quality of dialog remains as a mystery too. Generally speaking I have serious doubts about some of the gameplay related design choises. Those rolling moves feel quite false. If you're wearing a massive armour, you're not rolling on the ground with lightning speed or thats what I used to think. I hope there is atleast a skill gorverning evasive moves and they should drain stamina or something, otherwise it becomes a silly spamfest.

Dez said:

Those rolling moves feel quite false. If you're wearing a massive armour, you're not rolling on the ground with lightning speed or thats what I used to think. I hope there is atleast a skill gorverning evasive moves and they should drain stamina or something, otherwise it becomes a silly spamfest.

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In Gothic 1 you could roll around in full armor as well if you picked up the acrobatics skill and in Gothic 2 they took out the skill but you automatically got acrobatics-like moves as soon as you reached a dexterity of 90+.
So if it's skill-based in Arcania as well then -in spite of the mild silliness- it is at least sort of in line with Gothic continuity .

Lets not forget all that full plate armor swimming!

ToddMcF2002 said:

Lets not forget all that full plate armor swimming!

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That reminds me...

I wonder if there will be any swimming/diving in Arcania.

That dungeon looked ultra-boring. As the company used this as showpiece, I'm not too optimistic.

Hindukönig said:

Yeah, nothing new. Yawn.

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I agree, too bad, I would really like to enjoy these more. I guess asking for some improvements in our games is asking too much, maybe it's just really really hard to do, so we're lucky we get 'new' games at all. Or maybe not..