Gothic 3 wins award

And not the kind you would like

Sadly enough, and while I like Gothic 3, I agree … not the worst game of the year but certainly the most disappointing.

Just study Gothic III very carefully and do everything the opposite.

I don't know, I'm probably just little stupid fanboy… So from my norrow personal, stupid and biassed point of view, I'm getting bit suspicious that this overhelmingly negative reception of Gothic might say something (very little, of course) about where the industry is going. And that this is (again just for me, of course) something very bad…

Some of what is said is done to make the articles interesting, that is for sure. But can any fan of the game *honestly* say that it isn't rife with problems? That it is something they'd recommend for their casual gaming friends? Heck, I've given two ofthe highest scoring reviews out there and *I* think it is my disappointment of the year!

Originally Posted by txa1265
Some of what is said is done to make the articles interesting, that is for sure. But can any fan of the game *honestly* say that it isn't rife with problems? That it is something they'd recommend for their casual gaming friends? Heck, I've given two ofthe highest scoring reviews out there and *I* think it is my disappointment of the year!

Big fan of the original Gothics here (see thread 'Top 10 RPGs' in 'General RPG' ) and I fully second the 'Greatest Disappointment' of the year sentiment. I'm just a little surprised that it comes from GameSpy. Since they rated the previous games -what?- 2/5(?) or something as low as that, well, how can they really be disappointed? Shouldn't they have expected another piece of shit Euro trash Gothic game? Weird.
Anyway, leaving LameSpy out of it, it is for me personally definitely my most disappointing game of the year. Still waiting for another substantial patch here before I'm even going to begin to attempt to finish the game.

Yep I have to agree, a lot of balls hit the floor on this one. I tried really hard to enjoy this game, harder than a fat frat boy at a mixer, but I came away utterly disappointed. I didn't finish it and I don't care to, I am holding out with a truck load of hope for the next patch. Though, I have a feeling that my wild-eyed optimism will become the biggest let down of 2007. Here’s hoping it doesn’t come to that.

I do disagree with the note about voiceacting and I think Gothic 3 should have won "Music of the year".

Even if it was unfinished I still consider it a great game if you avoid the bugs.

Originally Posted by JemyM
I do disagree with the note about voiceacting and I think Gothic 3 should have won "Music of the year".

I very much agree with the music being better than *anything* this year.

Also, the voice acting wasn't stellar, but there is stuff that is so much worse that I don't get GameSpy's hang-up with it?

It's also got a pretty generic fantasy storyline, terrible voiceovers, lousy art design, a bad interface, and a combat system that relies as much on prayer and random chance as player input.

No, no, no, no, okay perhaps. Well, I guess 1 out of 5 isn't bad. I really don't agree with the first four and I'm not just saying that to defend PB or something. Bugs, performance issues and combat stunlock aside, I thought that all of the rest was pretty much excellent.

Originally Posted by Thaurin
No, no, no, no, okay perhaps. Well, I guess 1 out of 5 isn't bad. I really don't agree with the first four and I'm not just saying that to defend PB or something. Bugs, performance issues and combat stunlock aside, I thought that all of the rest was pretty much excellent.

True. Gothic 3 have a better than average art design. Despite the bugs, it is a beautiful game both in modelling, landscape and characters. The voiceacting is definitely not terrible, In some places I even consider it great, especially considering Gothic 3 spans 3 different worlds with different dialects not to mention the way Orcs talk. I also cannot see why the interface is terrible. It's pretty much the same interface as most games atm, with the quickbar in the bottom.

Gothic 3 didn't even get nominated in GameSpot's list … Dark Messiah did, though …

Originally Posted by JemyM
I also cannot see why the interface is terrible. It's pretty much the same interface as most games atm, with the quickbar in the bottom.

You can't see how much life/mana you have - only a red/blue line. You have no "Minimap"and can't change the interface in any way.
I don't blame them for the interface, it's better than in G1 + 2 and I don't need to know how much life I have- and a minimap is not really realistic in a game like gothic..
But many people are comparing the interface with MMORPGs and want that you can change your interface your way like in EQ2 or WoW (with mods).

Greetings

Originally Posted by txa1265
Some of what is said is done to make the articles interesting, that is for sure. But can any fan of the game *honestly* say that it isn't rife with problems? That it is something they'd recommend for their casual gaming friends? Heck, I've given two ofthe highest scoring reviews out there and *I* think it is my disappointment of the year!

I wouldn't rate it as a real dissapointment for me. I don't have problem with them choosing it as their biggest dissapointment (nor with you rating as yours biggest dissapointment of this year). I understand people have much bigger problems with the game stability, smoothness… than I do.
But I don't agree with their reasoning. I do think many of the points their made are not valid. Voice acting seems to be great for example (I'm not native English speaker). Orcs speak differently than normal humans (their "mora" is great), hashishin have their special style (pronunciation, the "son of a …") and so on.

Generally speaking their section about bugs is probably true (even though I've not met single crash or freeze that they are talking about). The second section starting with "Here's the worst part. Even if all of the bugs were magically fixed tomorrow…" is something that I don't agree with, at least with most points in there…

Last year, my biggest disappointment was Dungeon Lords!! G3 isn't even in the same universe!!

It's not only the bugs, it's the stupid quests, stupid npc's that accuse you of thieving and attack you for no reason and things like that get you down. I mean when you first meet king Rhobar, he only has about 3 lines of speech! For god's sake, even the paladin in G2 at the start that explains the rules of town of Khorinis has more text and is more interesting, and here we talk about THE King, wtf were PB thinking?
The game is not completely bad, bud it's a big dissapointment for me because it's not at the level of g1/g2.

I agree that Gothic 3 is a disappointment but I still think it's a very enjoyable game. The thing I miss the most is not a bug-free game though, it's the same kind of depth and story from Gothic 1 and 2. The world just seems too big and "disconnected" - no deep threads.

"Our "North American" box version included such gems as vicious memory leaks, crashes to desktop, a lockup that froze the whole computer, along with landscape bugs, movement bugs, collision bugs, and (our favorite) one that kept our mouse from being recognized in combat."

It's strange. Maybe my computer is just paranormal but I never experienced any of these bugs - not once - and I have played the game _a lot_ starting at the Europe release. Even without any patches!
Gothic 2 on the other hand crashed often on my PC.

I think this little gamespy article was much too harsh. I mean, do they realize that some people (including myself) have not experienced a single crash or glitch like they are describing? I would think that someone reviewing for Gamespy would have a top notch PC. I'm playing on an average PC, and the Euro version at that!

The comment about horrible art and design was just stupid. It's obviously a very prejudiced comment, and in my opinion this is a case of someone starting to rant and can't control themselves.

I thought the character models were quite ugly. While I liked those of G1 and 2 as well as the landscapes and buildings of G3, people in the G3 demo* turned me off… I saw the first slave and thought, 'Huh, who's this freak?'. But since all other slaves looked pretty much the same… *shrugs*
While in some games ugliness seems to be a conscious design decision, the Gothic 3 'people' feel more like 'just couldn't do any better'.

_________________
*Still haven't bought the game, but I doubt people will look better in the full version.

Yeah, i suppose that seems about right re: [I saw the first slave and thought, 'Huh, who's this freak?'] it fits the story image of a 'depraved' slave quite well, yet if later (after liberation) the slaves could have become more tidied-up in appearance with say upgraded clothing, the game maybe would have had more realism and be more "before and after" believable.

"…we can only imagine the European version killed a family member as soon as the box was opened."

I don't care who you are, that's funny right there.