The Elder Scrolls and the Gothic Series
Hi @ all in this Forum.
First of all I want to say, that I really love both Series TES and Gothic.
When Oblivion was released most of the People said "Best RPG at the moment" and asked "Can Gothic 3 beat Oblivion?"
I wondered WHY anyone could think about comparing this 2RPG Series.
TES always had really BIIIG Worlds and you were always free to do WHATEVER you like.
Kill the whole world? No problem! (in Oblivion you weren't able to kill Mainq-chars - in Morrowind you were able to do that...)
Be "the one" and rescue the world? No problem!
You want to be in the mage's guild but also in the warriors? No problem! Join all guilds!
Do not care about the "Mainquest" and only explore the world? No problem!
In addition the "leveling-system" was, like you mentioned "level it by using".
With Oblivion they made some very good changes from Morrowind.
For example every dialogue was spoken - in Morrowind sometimes you read up to one hour only a conversation between you and a character. And the complete world looked better than in Morrowind -> the desert in the north of Morrowind with the 7/24 Sandstorm....1h running through it and you think about suicide..
Choose your charakter - they all have different attributes and class-abilities...and animal-chars had problems in the world with racism...nice idea
-> The mainquests are only one storyline...not the best, not the worst...only qs...and when you finished them (in oblivion) the game was not over...it had NO end!
Gothic Series were focused on large (not BIIIIIG
) worlds, but all "hand-made" the world looks more realistic and you had many cool details.
You always had to choose between factions (g1 = new, old and swamp camp; g2 = rebels, mages, paladins; g3 rebels, orks, slavehunters) - take care what you are doing for/against the factions.
G1 + 2 had "act"s and they followed a Mainstoryline. Within the acts you could do whatever you want, but you MUST finish the mainquest to get further and to the end of the game.
Leveling through killing enemies and getting exp...and "buying" a better character with it.
In my oppinion you can't compare TES with G1 +2 (and NotR). Thats why I was wondering about all the people who wanted/hoped that Gothic 3 is "better" than Oblivion.
Now that I played G3 i must say...G3 is a very, very good game, but it is more a Golivion or Obthic3 (thats why i took this name...)
Piranha Bytes WANTED at first priority (maybe because of the media - I don't know) to create a >better< game than Oblivion and only in second priority to make the new Gothic - a Gothic 3.
Why I am saying this?
The world of Gothic is BIIIIG very big, its nice, but with this comes a problem which Gothic never had before and people criticised at TES....all the dungeons and most of the houses were looking the same....in gothic3 you can see this too....i personally hated all the buildings in nordmar...they looked all like clones.
And many dungeons have the same structure...
In the former Gothics every person in the world was somehow connected and had a story (ok, ok not the patrols in towns and camps...) but now with the "liberation" of towns....after that you have so much connetion to the new members of a town like to a person you never knew it was born....the liberation is a nice idea but lacks a little bit after liberating :/
And the biggest problem in Gothic3 is that you are "free to do whatever you want"....the Mainstory...hmm what was that?!...hmmm think one of the questseries in this game which leads to the end....video? Hmm no they had no time....what a pitty...the mainstory was always the best of the game...
As a Gothic fan i really love Gothic 3 and hate Oblivion. I think of it why? Here is the answers:
If you hate it, don't play it...
1) Like traditional RPG games, monsters in Gothic 3 have their own level and they do not level with you (Unlike Oblivion where monsters level are determined according to your level). So, you can not go wherever you want with Level 1 character. This gives the player the urge to develop his character to see new locations and solve new quests.
There you talked about the most critical point in Oblivion, the new monsterlveveling and determining of monsters is a very good option that the player can go wherever he want and do whatever he likes. Not everyone likes it, but hey that's life...
But with this system Bethesda made some mistakes:
1) Friendly NPCs have a static lvl....critical if you want to do a helping q at lvl 30+...the NPCs die with 1 or 2 hits -.-
2) The balancing problem...if you "poverlevel" only attributes which won't help you kill enemies (acrobatics, alchemy, smithing) the game will be hard, because enemies are stronger and stronger, but you still can't fight - on the other side...if you only level attributes for fighting the game is "too easy".
3) It is not very realistic to see only goblins and wolves at the beginning of the game and later on as a real hero only see deadra princes, xivilai and ancestor ghosts at the same locations
2) Monsters do not spawn in Gothic 3. Cleaning areas from monsters gives the player strong feeling of progress.
Another point that some poeple like and other don't like....i personally don't think that it is realistic that you kill everything in an area and 30days later there is still everything dead - but the way Oblivion chose is not better too...you can kill and kill and kill...you never see less mobs.
->There I would prefer something like in Sacred...if you "pacify" an area, that less mobs spawn..or that it takes longer. Or like in Sacred 2: on streets and ways enemies won't respawn, but in deep forests and in the wilderness.
3) As a personal taste, i always prefer counting my XP point to a skill base system.
Like you said "personal". For me...I don't care if I get xp and "buy" my character or if I level him through using things....both are nice ideas and have their (dis-)advantages.
4) Finally, Gothic series' biggest strength is that they can give the player to advance in society and you feel your stature in society in every aspect of the game; something Oblivion can not achieve I'm afraid.
Yes there you are right, thats one of the biggest strengths of Gothic series and is very well done in G3 too - there Oblivion is not that good as Gothic is.
But another fact where you can see that the guys at P.Byte put themselves under pressure....the huge amount of bugs in the release version of Gothic and that still (with patch 1.09) a Perk, some People and Master-Trainers are missing and the questlog is a complete horror...the same s*** like the diary in Morrowind :/
I don't know if we have to blame P.Byte and their beta-testers or if we have to blame Jowood who wanted to release the game. But in fact Oblivion was well playable when it was released
I don't want to blame anyone and hope I haven't forgotten anything I wanted to say
For people who read my whole post...thanks for having the patience...to all others: sorry that it is that long....was not intended
Greetings
PS: And the best quest i know so far is the painting-q in Oblivion =D
Edit: Ah what I really really miss in G3 are the nice possibilities for answering...now you have most of the time only one or the rebel, the orc or the slavehunter - answer....not the yes, the no and the "shut up" ,)
