Gaming History: Gothic "Immersion redefined"

the year was 1997 Ultima 9 was teasing us with what would be a great disappointment but at the time seemed to be one of the greatest video games ever made and 22 people from various Studios in Germany got together to make their own video game one inspired by one of the best movies ever made John Carpenter's Escape from New York with such a source of inspiration you bet that the game was gonna be a fantasy role-playing game that's how gothic started it started with a few people wanting to make high-quality video games games that not only looked good which Gothic did look good with I promise you it looked good it looked amazing when it came out it looked fantastic in 2003 it didn't look too shabby in 2004 either especially when you take into account the night sky the flashes of lightning and the dome the forests and how thick they are and how leaves would sometimes glide down giving a sense it is you were truly in the forest not in an empty field with two trees like in every other game ever made in the history of mankind and those people that wanted to make this game gothic set out to do so with a few objectives they wanted to make a game that made sense one that would give you immersion through the fact that there was very little in the game that would actually take you out of the fantasy now if you're a Diablo 3 player you're probably wondering what why wait game developers can do that and yes they can for you see initially gothic had almost no interface not even statistics they added it later because it's easier to understand a few things if you have statistics like what damage your weapon does though to be fair a rusty weapon sort of makes sense to not be as good as a brand new gigantic battle-ax that you wield after 50 hours of gameplay when you've trained your combat to the point where no trainer in the game can actually teach you more that immersion came from stuff like this it came from the game not having let have skill points it was an RPG it did have skill points but you didn't put them into anything you went the people and they would teach you and they would tell you how to fight and wouldn't you know it the way you swung your weapon changed the way you sneaked change the way you jumped you could roll later you had different abilities that you could see this game was natural it had that feeling of everything it's where it should be where it could be in reality and it's not just about what the player could learn what the character could do it was about everything absolutely everything when I first played Gothic I was astonished by what I saw Granta there was one of the first 3d RPGs I ever played but still I was astonished by what I saw even today even compared with things like Skyrim the world of Gothic is still one of the greatest ever made I don't mean sadist rule or story or location no no true simple design which is kind of running because the design of gothic is not simple the people at piranha bytes for long time were the best level designers of open-world games in existence because when they made a world map they didn't just make an empty field and dotted some towns on it and call it a day no no they made it on so many levels that even to this day there may still be stuff I haven't found and not because the game is so vast I mean it's so huge that I would have to walk days and days to find something now the game is about 1 kilometer in diameter so we'd have to make it and I know maybe 2 square kilometers something or 2 or 3 square kilometers that's about it I guess it's not huge compared to the RPGs we have now it isn't the size The Witcher 3 it's not the size of scam it wasn't the size of Morrowind but it did have a surprisingly high amount of content in that world because everything was not exactly stratified but it was compacted in such a way it was wrapped the garret was assembled in such a way that it did not waste space verticality was something that the game used to its advantage you could go up to ridges up the hills you would find treasures you would find enemies you would find ruins you would find all sorts of stuff you'd find tunnels that'll led you who just about halfway around the map or not exactly halfway but still a lot of way around the map and the thing that really stuck with me was how this game used slopes am i joking look at just about every RPG you know and look exactly how sloped the pathways are like not the sheer mountain that they just ran on my chariot no the paths the places you walk through they're generally very very straight they're not inclined in such a way that would almost make you feel dizzy now how traversable those would be in real life that's that's discussion for another day but it gave God a castle things go up in this game things go down things go under things go through and that made everything feel like it was an actual place it was carved out by people that grew naturally that was moulded that that existed and that's just a level of geology the creatures in it were amazing this was a game were very few creatures like maybe the orcs because their [ __ ] would actually try to kill you on sight the rest of them there were just creatures yeah one of them was a dinosaur chicken but still there were just creatures in a forest minding their own business they weren't there to kill you they were there to live they would sleep at night they would go around I believe collecting food but you didn't actually see them collect food you would see them do animations as if they were eating but still they didn't collect food and they wouldn't just attack you on sight they would threaten you they would give signal saying you you yet this is my turf back half buddy where I'm gonna back your head off any of you insisted they would trust me you haven't lived until you've been chased round the map while not on the map because they would eventually decide okay we've chased him off let's go back by giant reptile chickens there were also kind of tiny t-rexes will not tie me they were still about as big as you that thankfully couldn't climb up walls and threes the orcs couldn't climb up reefs - which was nice because duties and glitches in the game you could climb up well you could fall off things and in threes I'm not ashamed to say that I abused a lot of physics glitches in this game like things that would let me bypass certain units it would otherwise been locked things that would let me fall from great heights without dying because this was something I didn't see in an RPG up until then this was something new this was a new dimension I could play with and gothic made sure you had a lot of options to do so a lot of opportunities that sort of don't really show up in a lot of newer games like Skyrim for example or even The Witcher like The Witcher 3 doesn't really have that much vertically to it there's very rare instances of it and what you made this game feels so natural wasn't just the geology and the fauna the floor I've said already you had forests that just felt like forests it was also the fact that it was governed by laws like social laws that affected everyone there's something you don't see in a lot of games like tons of games laws only apply to you as the player character if an npc breaks the law the law doesn't actually apply to that character in this one it does and this one everyone is equal everyone that paid their dues and everyone that's good with the guards in certain areas is equal if you draw your sword everyone else will tell you to stop doing that and it will build draw the resources rule they start casting spells if you don't stop if you take someone's food from their home they will get mad and they will start punching you now if the guards get involved because you know that guy paid him something they may shoot you with arrows but they won't kill you because theft is punishable by that no no they'll just knock you out let you recover on your own and rob you blind see this is one of those games where robbers or guards in this case would actually rob you which is something you don't see in games like at all yeah you maybe do and they were six men kind of idea where if you break the law you wake up not dead then minus some cash but still it wasn't anywhere near as complex as this game was and every character you will find in the game world doesn't just stand there and wait for you to interact them no they they had stuff to do this was Ultima level of NPC simulation they would go to bed they would make food they would eat they would stand by a campfire at night and listen to stories and talk to each other over roast boar they would work on their houses they would patrol they would not stand still in the rain what a torch at night waiting for someone to talk to them like those three idiots and Balmorra and morrowind you know the ones I'm talking about right they were always there like morons but not here and mind you this game was released a long time like two years or three years before morrowind it's not like I didn't have time to improve their radio I want to be fair oblivion had the radiant hand it wasn't that radiant eater now there are some things that people may have against garlic I mean apart from the fact that it sort of looks a bit old right now it did have a control that it didn't show that well with people I for one I got used to it because at some certain level it made sense you see every action you had to do by pressing Q buttons you had to press click or ctrl and forward for sometimes that didn't make sense but I was opening a crate one day and I realized yeah this does make sense by clicking I'm putting my hands on the crate by pressing W I'm lifting a little suddenly gothics control system made sense now it took me even longer to figure out the combat and how these things swung and you could chain them together but still it's it's an interesting approach to controls which they sort of they relaxed it a bit in the sequels a bit too much in a third one and it too much and while it may take you some time to get used to it it is okay control system for Gothic one you know I are you know feeling I haven't talked at all about the story well this this is the part that actually makes this game shine I mean apart from everything else in it you're not the hero you're not the Messiah foretold by lodging you're not yeah but are you're just some common criminals some common thug that gets thrown into a prison a prison colony guarded by shield that with the let things go in and would let things go out only problem is the things that go out end up being very dead very quickly the moment they get out it's a good prison and when you're thrown into it the mage comes to you and say hey you yeah you were a stupid face take this letter give it into fire mages they'll give you some reward and then they just for you in there and from that moment you are everyone's [ __ ] like everyone is absolute [ __ ] the first thing that happens to you is that you get punched in the face and that's one of the least worst things that happens to you in the game but you do meet some friends you do meet some people that aren't out to kill you or rob you they are serving their own interests where they're helping you so you would help them or so you would join their faction because there are three factions there was the old camp which is made up of the most well richest people in the the prison colony the ones that deal directly with the king outside that wants the magic or in the colony to fight the orcs well by some guy named Gomez there is a new camp with some water mages would want to blow up the barrier using some ore and there's the swamp colony filled with a bunch of cultists that smoked weed all day you can smoke weed too damn sure gives you magic points there was supposed to be a fourth colony but they they kind of axed it there was also supposed to be an assassin faction but they were replaced with the Rogues and they didn't really do that much for the story the story is of course you have to deliver that map and then things happen I won't go to details I don't want to give you any spoilers but it's it's a 15 year old game you end up actually becoming a hero but mostly after a really long time and only because everyone else is either an [ __ ] dead or not as good as you've become the evolution from being everyone's [ __ ] to being a hero is actually quite nicely done in this game because when you start out you cannot fight to save your life but if you learn like if you actually go to people and they tell you hey swing your sword this way and that will reflect on how you actually swing the sword you will eventually become a good fighter you will become a mage now magic is kind of difficult to use in combat in this game the words powerful you will become nearly an almost unstoppable force compared to what everyone in the colony can actually do so it makes sense that you will be the here because you become the most badass og in the place now the story itself is something I'd say deserves some sort of award the characters aren't real that interesting either but hurry all combined with this world with this organic world with this world that seems so alive that's what makes this special this there's no trickery to it there is no magic teleportation where a character vanishes from one placing shows up in another world where some character is just immune and immortal and you can't kill them you can't kill everyone but from the get-go if you have a big enough sword if you cheat yourself a big enough sword you can kill everyone and the game doesn't care the game will go on the game will make sure things get done no actually I can't really remember if you could if you could or couldn't kill Zardoz also yet there is magical teleportation there are rules for that that you can use but up until you become the best hero of them all you are everyone's [ __ ] like the game has has a high difficulty level you cannot set a different one it's hard from the get-go and will get easier the more you play it and the more you'll learn how to play it especially if you you're in the habit of abusing certain physics bugs that let you fall from great heights when you're being chased by enemies that may actually take damage when they fall and you can then kill them easier now I'm not one to over exaggerate but this game saved action RPGs before it we had ultima 9 which was crap some people will still defend it I know some of them personally they are wrong Ultima 9 was horrible it killed the series it sort of gave people no hope of the genre doing something meaningful and then got it came god they came and saved us gothic came and gave us what Ultima 9 should have been a new golden standard for the genre for gaming itself for design for atmosphere for everything maybe not story but still for everything and you can see bits of it in most games today some would say you could trace Dark Souls back to gothic and you probably could well via severance to play the darkness but it probably could so I encourage you to play it you'll find it on GOG for about nine years yeah it may not be as pretty now as it was back then it may be a bit clunky and for some reason I get framerate drops and a machine that would just run every game made before 2004 would like no problems and actually maybe four of them at once with no problem but even so this is something you have to experience this is something you have to understand this is a game that at some point gives you a quest to give some water to a bunch of field workers and it doesn't do so so you'd have a quest to do X things together we all know it does so because you'll get to talk to those people they will let you in and a couple of secrets about the area about not series and second about information things that may be useful to you you even find a trainer that way it's this game is well thought out like it was made with a purpose everything in it was made with purpose which is again something you cannot say about a lot of modern games where stuff is just put in there because it has to fill a quota Huronia bytes are masters at making video games especially action RPGs granted they seem to have stopped doing that since risen to I haven't played risen free I took one look at Barry and they decided that I don't know maybe they're compensating for the fact that in Gothic 1 they couldn't have a lot of female characters because they made some kind of high poly models for the female characters so they couldn't have them everywhere so they only had a few of them and they didn't really have dialogue that much it was kind of a sausage fest but still they're making a new game now called Alex which is their first non medieval one it's set in the future a post-apocalyptic ish techno magical future with swords and jetpacks and accounting using the same lighting engine as in risen 2 which was a horrible lighting engine still piranha bytes deserve credit where credit is due they constructed one of the best video game series ever made gothic gothic 1 & 2 are peerless they are standards of gold and platinum that people must aspire to like noir gothic 3 because it was a Joe at thinking Joe it does stupid stuff up there until it died and they also made recent one which is again what was more in the vein of Gothic 1 then it was very well done and that would be it for this show I just wish I had some better video footage for you on the background I did have some for an old Early Show I did but that was five years ago so very equality wouldn't be we up the snuff for today's standards you also get to turn to a bug in this game which is nice look I also turn to Raptors and chickens and you get to chase people around arm see them running for the lives and implanting of cliffs play gothic you'll not regret it no one it plated has if you enjoyed the show hit the like button subscribe and share it with your 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Channel: GaminGHD

Views: 82,487

Rating: 4.9223523 out of 5

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Id: UDA1uBNp3dA

Length: 20min 56sec (1256 seconds)

Published: Fri Sep 02 2016