GRIMES: "Have you ever dug ore, boy?" [angered hissing and rattling] "Ohh!" As far as role-playing games go, "Gothic" is considered a cult classic. Not here in the States, somewhere in Europe. It wasn't even available outside of Germany until late 2001, and by then the "Morrowind" type machine was in full effect. The native German version of "Gothic 1" came out in early 2001, and it's basically a household name there. Then again, most of you are from Europe, and likely already know this. As for playing "Gothic" today, there are a few complications. If you're playing the GOG version, the good news is: it'll play just like it did back in the day. The bad news is: it'll play just like it did back in the day. The engine is capped to something around 25 frames per second, which is... cinematic? It's not ideal. It also lacks proper widescreen support, which you can kind of fix, but the UI doesn't scale very well. It also has a fair share of bugs and crashes, so we'll download something. First, we need the Player Kit. It's an easy install. It serves as a handy launcher and mod manager. Now we want to grab the SystemPack. This fixes lots of bugs and crashes, adds support for widescreen and higher frame rates, and even restores the surround sound if you're not using something else. There are some more unstable tweaks, like using DirectX 11, but I'm not using those. I'd say the SystemPack is essential for playing today. If you use the Steam version, well, you'll have other steps. It's not using the newest patch. Normally, this won't be a huge deal, but when I try to play Steam "Gothic", it crashes. So you'll need to get the latest official patch separately. So now that it's all fixed up, let's get started with the backstory. NARRATOR: "A kingdom of Myrtana united by King Rhobar The II." NARRATOR: "During the long years of his reign, he was able to defeat all foes of his realm." NARRATOR: "All, except one..." It starts with the tale as old as Tolkien: humans fighting orcs. However, the player isn't involved in this orc war. The conflict drags on so long that the king sends prisoners to dig up magic ore for the war effort. The humans are losing the war, so they're sending more and more people to dig up the rocks. To prevent convicts from escaping, they throw up a magic barrier to keep them inside, and that's when things go wrong. Instead of just covering the prison, the barrier covers the entire valley that they're in. The prisoners stage an uprising and take over the colony, but the king still needs his ore. So the king strikes a deal: they keep mining the ore, and the king will send materials from the outside world. Food, alcohol, the ladies: you name it - they got it. If you couldn't tell already, this isn't your normal heroic fantasy kingdom. This is when the player comes in. Fresh meat for the prison. You're literally thrown into jail and then the game starts. You've entered a strange, hostile world. What's inside? What secrets does it hold? How do I pick up this torch? "Gothic" has an interesting control scheme. Let me go over it. By default, you use the arrow keys to move, which isn't unusual for this time, but it's a sign of things to come. To put it simply: you don't need a mouse to play "Gothic". If you rebind your controls, you can easily play it with one hand. You perform an action by holding the action button and then pressing the forward button. So to do just about everything, you hit two buttons. Simple enough, but things start to pick up. To move items between inventories you use the strafe keys. Those are Delete and Page Down by default. You don't want that. If you want to go WASD you want to change strafe as well. But remember: you need two buttons. So you'd use Ctrl+E to move stuff to your inventory. At least in stacks of 10. But moving items one a time is your movement keys. So, A or D. If you use it without hitting Ctrl, it'll switch to a different menu. What about bigger stacks? Ctrl+E/Q+Shift. Assuming you don't want to use these native controls. Spacebar to draw your weapon, Ctrl+W to hit this thing, Ctrl+W to open up its inventory, Ctrl+E to move it over. Ctrl+W to start a conversation... You get the idea. For the entire game, you're only pressing a small handful of buttons, and it takes your brain a while to get used to. Getting used to the controls is one of the biggest cliffs to overcome. Most games nowadays have a special button dedicated to just about everything. So now you need to wrap your brain around mainly using one with Ctrl. The thing is: once you get used to it, it's very intuitive. I wasn't kidding when I said you could play this game with one hand. It's that easy to use. It's to the point where I almost wished more games used it. Almost wished it. Trading would be easier if I could just click drag. There's also the combat, which for now I'm gonna save off until later. It's a whole another monster in its own right. When you first enter the prisoners' camp, things look pretty normal and understandable. I could feel myself settling in a bit. Then a pig starts shaking me down for protection money. As far as prisons go, this is the pleasant option. But this is an RPG. You're the hero. HERO: "You mean you want me to pay protection money? No, thanks! I can take care of myself." BLOODWYN: "Have it your own way, kid. You'll soon regret turning down a friendly offer." I'm sure, I'm sure... Then the guy asks you to do a standard "retrieve an item" quest, but he tries to fleece me, so I know better. GRIM: "Okay, okay, 50\50." Alright, now I've got a solid start to work with. Now I just need to go down- GRIM: "...regards from Bloodwyn." What, the guard? What!? GRIM: "Try that again, and you'll regret it!" Oh... Oh, they're actually robbing me! DIGGER: "Thanks for the ore, you hero..." What looked like a generic quest was a ploy to mug me near a ditch for not paying a guard protection money. This game is... pretty cool! Where so many RPGs treat you like the Chosen One, "Gothic" does not. It's gonna make sure that you know, you're at the bottom of the ladder. These big chickens? They kill you. These Beedrills? Definitely kill you. Okay, that goblin's small. He's like a little gremlin. Then BAM, I'm dead. "Gothic" is an excellent teacher. A lot of role-playing games will make you The Hero far too quickly. A lot of stories will use the "hero's journey" format, and games are no different. Where there are big differences is typically in the pacing, since games will really speed up those beginning stages. You don't want the players getting bored and returning the game, so you have these big dramatic set pieces in the first hour, or sometimes even the first 10-20 minutes. If there's any heavy world-building elements they're usually scattered around later. It might be through a conversation, or you might find a collectable telling you how the dwarves lay eggs. Games can be afraid to keep you in the ordinary world. They want to move you right into that "call of adventure". In "Gothic", you can easily spend half your time in that first stage. Sure, you do have your "call to adventure" and "defeat the Great Evil" quest eventually... But not for a long time. When the fantastical elements come out, they have more of an impact, because you weren't being showered with them constantly. There's a lot that goes into making this work, so I'm gonna break it down by section. Let's start with the world-building. If the setting is boring, then yeah - being stuck in it would suck. The setting of "Gothic" is a lot smaller than other RPGs, but it's a rich setting. There are three main human factions, and while you might expect them to be broken up into mages, warriors and rogues, they're a little more complicated. Let's use the first area, the Old Camp, as an example. Like everyone else inside the barrier, everyone in the Old Camp is a prisoner. The guards in the Old Camp are just wearing the uniforms of the old dead guards. As we learned earlier, if you want the guards' help, you have to pay protection fees, but this doesn't cover the entire campsite. There are only so many guards. Each one has his own posse that patrols over a certain section of the camp. So you need protection per area. On the other side of this, you can go around, mugging people. SHADOW: "A fight!" SHADOW: "Clear winner, I'd say!" Not everyone else in camp took the protection offer. If you both did, the guards won't help anybody, so you have the option to pay off the guards and go around... legally mugging people. It's a pretty efficient way of getting experience and collecting items. But what if you paid off one section of guards and not another, and the victim paid all of them? The guard here doesn't intervene - the one next door with the crossbow does. It's a little microcosm of how some revolutions go. The prisoners who rose up became a new establishment. The system that they put in is just broken, and even the guards aren't immune to it. FLETCHER: "I'm in debt to Scatty, right up to my neck." FLETCHER: "Now he knows I'm doing Nek's job, he'll be coming around every day..." Instead of a laid-back starting town, it's an ancap convention. A town doesn't feel static when there's a real chance someone might try and mug you. Did I mentioned that some of the mages who helped make the barrier are still in town? And the fact that this entire society is mining the ore used to win the war outside the barrier? Would overthrowing them really make things better? Each camp is dealing with the idea of being imprisoned forever in a different way. The New Camp has a logical idea of escaping, but their escape plan sounds really bad and dangerous. They claim to have more tight-knit groups than the Old Camp, but they treat people outside of it just the same. BALORO: "I think you haven't paid any ore taxes to me yet." Meanwhile, the Sect Camp has come to terms with being trapped. They're perfectly fine just hanging out in the swamp and smoking weed all day. I'm not even joking! There are several kinds to choose from, and it's very good for your mana. They claim it makes them closer to their God, The Sleeper, but I don't know about that. They even acknowledge that some people aren't religious, and, yeah... are just joining for the weed. Logical writing like that helps make it all more believable. Every group is portrayed in a way where you can understand the conclusions they came to, but might only agree with one or maybe none of them. I never had a moment of "why is this a group?" They're written as products of their situation, rather than what someone thought would be cool in a magic prison. HERO: "I could help you sell your weed to the people." BAAL KAGAN: "I can only entrust such a large amount of weed to members of the Brotherhood." HERO: "The Sleeper talked to me!" LESTER: "What did he say?" HERO: "He said: Go to the camp in the swamp and join the Brotherhood!" [cool 420 blazeit]
โช With so much drama in the L-B-C โช
โช It's kinda hard bein Snoop D-O-double-G โช Then again, the life of a mugger has its own appeals. It's all up to you. DIGGER: "You'll be sorry for that!" Will I? DIGGER: "Slowly, slowly, you've won!" The AI isn't groundbreaking, but it's very nice for an RPG. Drawing a weapon causes NPCs around you to draw their own weapons. If you keep it out, someone will attack you first. Animals will go to sleep, but a group might have one standing guard. Get close enough, and passive animals might freeze up while more aggressive ones start prowling towards you. Rather than always beeline towards you, some creatures will warn you to go away. Kind of like how real animals behave. [spooky ant boi] I'm not going in there. Animals might fight each other, eat each other, a character might talk about collecting stuff for an area, then you see them traveling between the areas. It'd be nice if more games had stuff like that. [cliff racer squeak] TEMPLAR: "You're an infidel. You don't understand." The last major thing that really reels me in is the atmosphere. On a technical level it is very dated, but the excellent sound and level design hold it up. Add a layer of branches to block out the sky entirely, throw in some fog, some ferns, and BAM - you've got a forest. They used what they had so effectively that it puts the forests in some modern games to shame. Combine that with an excellent soundtrack, and exploring is a joy. [quiet, sparse musical stings evoke the sense of cautious curiosity] [rising tune, backed by drumbeats evokes awe and promises challenge] [very spaced out musical stings make the sounds of the night forest paint the picture themselves] [wind instruments and drums play unhurriedly, almost lazily] [mysterious, ghastly ambience] Honestly, the reviewing part of my brain kind of turns off, and I just call it "special". I can't really put it into words. It's a handcrafted adventure, and you feel it the whole way through. The map may not be gigantic, but there's not much space that feels wasted. I vastly prefer this over giant maps that feel empty. The unique setting and presentation is probably the strongest part of "Gothic". Just roaming around, experiencing all the weird cultures and history that this prison has to offer. Though since I'm talking about presentation, I have to bring up the English voice acting. HERO: "Do you want some swamp weed?" It can be decent to pretty good. [the actor speaks with deep, confident voice]
AIDAN: "If you know how to cut up the beast the right way - yeah." But the bad moments? My God... [the character sounds like a dopey bro-dude]
NYRAS: "I've already found it! And I'm keeping it for myself!" NYRAS: "The Sleeper talked to me last night and made me his only tool!" ["tool" sounds about right...]
NYRAS: "Now I'll only serve The Sleeper! No more Templars or Gurus!" [the cringe is real]
NYRAS: "OOOONLY MEEEE ALOOOONE!" NYRAS: "DIIIIIIE!!" [delivery is inconsistent and overacted]
BAAL LUKOR: "Master, speak to me!" [delivery is inconsistent and overacted]
BAAL LUKOR: "Sleeper, reveal yourself!" BAAL LUKOR: "Noooo!" [actor makes a very unrealistic high-pitched, whiny voice]
KYLE: "Leave me alone, man! Everyone's a problem with me!" KYLE: "It all started when I built my hut." KYLE: ""Don't build your hut close to the ditch", they said." KYLE: "But none of those bastards told me what would happen if I still did it!" KYLE: "When I came back from the mine a few days ago, I had a second door!" KYLE: "Those pigs! I hate them! I can't tell you how much I hate them!" Some of it actually changes the tone of characters. In English, the boss of the Old Camp sounds like he's about to go crazy any second. HERO: "A couple of the fences in the New Camp." GOMEZ: "And?" [actor makes him sound grumpy and unstable]
GOMEZ: "Your lies tell me you think I am an idiot." GOMEZ: "I'm disappointed to see you think I'm stupid." GOMEZ: "I hate being disappointed." "It was a good fight!" Yeah, it was a really good fight. [S T A B] In German, he just sounds more bored by you. HERO: "Lares." GOMEZ: "And?" HERO: "A couple of the fences..." GOMEZ: "And?" The idea of killing you doesn't even work him up. [the actor sounds weary]
GOMEZ: "I'm disappointed to see you think I'm stupid." There was much more effort put into the German voice acting. It's all professionally done. You can change your version to German, copy the voice files, then paste on the English one. The English dub isn't unbearable, but most languages are better. MUD: "Great! We can talk while we're going." "What the fuck?! Did you shit yourself, you asshole?!" "No, not at all. I brought you some grub." "Goddamn bitch! You cockface, why the fuck would you do that?! Are you totally fucked in the head, you damn asshole?!" "Why are you angry? I brought you some noms." "Fuck, I knew it - you took a shit in there! Motherfucking degenerate..." The character progression in "Gothic" is fairly straightforward. If you kill things - you get XP. Complete a quest - you get XP. Get enough and you level up. When you level up, you get 10 skill points. You can't apply them yourself. You have to find a trainer. You can spend them point-for-point to improve your mana, strength or dexterity. You can only train these base stats up to a hundred, but there's more ways to improve them. You might get them as a reward, from an item or by using a stat potion. Without even trying to min-max, you can move your stats above a hundred. Way above a hundred. Better stats improve your damage with weapons and allow for more powerful spells, but skill points can be used for other training. When you're untrained with a weapon, your character will hold it very awkwardly. You can't really chain attacks either. If you're willing to spend an entire levels' worth of skill points, you can be trained in a weapon. This will give you a slight chance for critical hits, but also improve your technique. You swing the weapon better and you can pull off combos with it. Spend more and you can master weapons, improving your crit chance and your technique even further. Better weapons need better stats. So you want to go into a blend of both when leveling up. You can also use points for training non-combat skills, which can vary in price. You can invest a small amount in learning how to harvest from specific animals. Then, the next time you murder something in the Black Forest Big Safari, you can harvest it. Invest it in some good future trades. There's always gonna be some useful stuff to learn. [screamy worm boi] You'll have enough points to build into multiple skills. You're going to be USING multiple skills. A late-game mage can be incredible and have a ton of options to choose from. You can't really start the game as a mage. You'll want other combat skills besides it. It's just not viable with so little magic and so little spells. You can buy single-use scrolls to experiment with. Even if you want to be a warrior who doesn't touch combat magic, there's still some good utility spells. For example, you can transform into a lot of creatures. Why run around everywhere when you can transform into the Malaria Express? You can cut down so much time or go over water. Just don't talk to people because they won't like you. [insert death of Malaria Express here] Tired of being singled out and murdered by the Kaiser's raptors? Just turn into one! Go ahead and murder everything you see. They don't respawn. The game world has a set number of enemies. When you kill them all off, you get the XP and they don't come back. Instead, when the player completes a chapter, more enemies are added into the world. Pathways to later areas will be blocked by stronger enemies. You might be able to squeeze past. No matter how clever you are, at some point you will get laid out. They murdered me in Chapter 1. Maybe I could come back next chapter and... Oh, there's more of them now... Some enemies might be so strong that you can barely even scratch them, and they can one-shot you. But then, when you have better skills and equipment, you can slice right through them. Areas aren't physically gated off, they're gated off by fights. Fights that start off as "impossible" that later in the game become "challenging". These dogs aren't so bad now, but more were being added with every chapter. So now I'm dead. It's a nice way of gating off the map, but then you have human fighters. When you beat them in combat, you don't kill them - it just knocks them unconscious. If you use a weapon on them again while they're down, then you perform a finishing move. Unlike knocking someone out, murdering someone is a way to get a lot of people mad. Like in real life - save your murders for when they count. You don't get extra XP or stuff. You just give their mortality the finger. This guy has... 200 lutes. There's a good reason to try and beat people up if you're in their faction. Some of the best weapons in the game are carried by these NPCs. Not in caves, ancient crypts or on tough enemies. This really dangerous guy "has been there done that", so he has the best stuff. Makes sense to me. This might sound strange to you, and we're entering some problems. The crime system in "Gothic" is... broken. The act of lock-picking is a brute-force activity where you guess what the right combinations are. You lose lockpicks doing this. You don't have to sneak though. You can rob people right in front of them. They'll yell at you at first, but if you're quick enough, you can rob everything and get out. They'll just glare at you from their beds and let you walk out. Even if you're slow and they end up attacking you, once you get outside the house, they don't give chase. Your outside, so they don't care anymore. The guards say they'll try and stop you, but I've never seen it happen. The only thing stopping you from robbing the town dry is the amount of lockpicks you have. There's an unguarded chest in the smithy that nobody cares about, filled with raw materials, and you can take it at any time - no one gets mad. Then you can take the raw materials to the forge and make swords out of them. It's not a hard process, but you have a lot to go through. Try to beat the APM of a "Starcraft" player when you're dipping the steel. It's relaxing [totally]. When you're all done, you'll have a nice flock of swords to work with. You can sell them for tons of money and then buy tons of lockpicks. Go get yourself a nice pair of pants. You can then do the exact same thing in the Swamp Camp. It has even more materials, and no one even yells at you if you open it up. No one cares. This is just one of many ways to get ahead quickly. You can murder nearly everybody in the game, but still be able to advance through the main quest. Does breaking it make it easy? [rekt by fire] No, it doesn't... Combat is silly and it's entirely the fault of the controls. Ctrl+W does your forward attack, but your left and right buttons are your left and right attack. Ctrl+W+D+A = dead. You can also use your S button (your backing up button) to parry an attack. The enemy animations make timing a parry difficult. If you use Ctrl+S anyways. If you just backup and don't use Ctrl, then you'll automatically parry and then step back. Parrying doesn't work with animals, you can only leap backwards. But if you want to switch targets, then you have to use your regular movement keys. Which are also your attack keys. Parrying can work in a one-on-one fight, but with multiple enemies, it's a mess. You just want to whack them to death before they whack you to death. Even in one-on-ones, with how brutally the enemies hit, parrying usually isn't worth it. The safer option is getting them in a combo stunlock and then whittling them down. Moving and strafing is just a chance for something to kill you when you're moving. The hit keeps them off-balance. Moving or parrying gives them a chance to hit you and you die. You can really fumble with the controls when fighting a group. If you don't use a keyboard, let me put it this way: Imagine you're playing a "Souls" game on your console. If you want to attack, you have to hold the square button and move the left analog stick in patterns. If you want to move around, it's that same stick, but now you have to let go of square. It works okay when fighting a single enemy, but it just falls apart when you have a group. This is when you really wish you could use a mouse or anything that's not your movement buttons. You can't just avoid this if you make a ranged build. You are gonna have melee fights to deal with. Once you can summon millions of skeletons, you're good to go. I wish the combat wasn't so clunky. That's all there is to it. What makes this really bad is that some higher tier skills are restricted to certain factions. It's also the greatest effect from choosing a faction. There's no big story change, no choosing a side. Nothing like that. The interactions between the factions - one of the most interesting parts of the game - isn't expanded on. It just changes a few lines here and there and then stops mattering completely. There are some fun dungeons along the way, but the story of defeating the Great Evil is so generic that it's not even worth talking about. It's really strange to say. When the main story starts including fetch quests for plants - something is wrong. I wish factions mattered more, and that the main story was as interesting as its setting. It ends up being serviceable, but forgettable. VARRAG-UNHILGT: "MORTAAL! YOUR TRAVELS END HERE, WITH MEE!" HERO: "I'll send you travelling first, you mouldy maggot's idea of paradise!" Is "Gothic" worth playing? Absolutely. It's flawed, but the world was so rich and there was so much to interact with that I couldn't help but get lost in it. I put in a dozen hours before even touching the main quest. That time alone was well worth it. Is "Gothic" worth finishing? Uhhhh... Maybe... I wouldn't blame you for jumping out early. As the old German saying goes: "A man can only handle so many false ladders before he breaks." [Mandalore in background] Seriously, what the hell? You can get it cheap and it's a classic for a reason. What else can I say? Not a whole lot. My landlord says I'm on the end of my word count. I've got a lot to pack, I'm surrounded by these boxes. [Mandalore having a mental breakdown] What am I saying? Now say thanks to all of the people that gave money so the video could be made ;D Ya lil shi- These credits are combined for this month and the last month, because I ended up being late with this project, because I really am moving out, and it got moved forward, and I've been a very busy boy. But anyways, let's see the questions. "If I'm not mistaken, you said that you are not interested in modern games, but what do you think about the state of AA games?" I edited this one down a bit. I mean, I haven't played the really popular ones like "Hellblade" yet, but there are a lot of good AA games out right now. I know there are some people who think that I don't play newer games, but I do - I just don't make videos on them very often. I'm not happy with how many mainstream games have been putting in... microtransactions that affect gameplay. So when I hear news about that for a title, I just push it out of my mind. So I don't even know what's out right now. Anyways, AA is doing good. Next question. "Would you consider reviewing the FATE game series?" I wanted to test the waters for doing back-to-back games in a series when I did "Dead Space", but I couldn't do that in the timeframe I wanted. I was hoping I could do it all in October, but my real job became an issue. Which won't be an issue soon, but I don't know if I would do them all back-to-back. I don't know much about FATE. I remember having a demo copy for one of the games that came with my Windows XP I think? And that's my biggest exposure to it. Next question. "How's the weather?" Confusing. "Do you have a favorite dumb mechanic in a game that you can't help but love?" Off the top of my head, there's this thing in "EVE Online" where, if you carry slaves in a non-legal slave portion of space, they'll fine you at every Stargate. I know someone who nearly went broke from that. Alright, I'll see you when I'm done moving, whenever that is...
Love everything he produces, and Gothic 1 really is worth playing. It is worth the pain of getting it up to speed and learning the controls
Gothic 2+ next?
This is a game very dear to me. This was essentially mine (and many other Germans') Morrowind growing up. In fact, I can still load that game up and sink dozens of hours into it, while (ironically) I start Morrowind and just get lost behind the low draw distance, the random hit chance, the overcharged UI with tons of elements, etc... I usually don't make it very far, the game feels "hostile" to newcomers for me.
Very ironic considering Gothic's control scheme.
I just love how he makes all his reviews interesting even if it's a game from 2 decades ago that I don't even care about.
Polish dubbing is very professional and in Poland regarded as one of the best in older games.
Also seems that Mandalore made a big mistake there. It is actually possible to play with mouse and tbh it's probably the only way to really play this game, even if you can't use it in EQ. I can't imagine using only keyboard for Gothic combat. LMB + W instead of CTRL + W makes it way more intuitive and being able to turn around with a mouse fixes fighting multiple enemies. He would probably have a way better time with the game if not for that.
The comment about how Mandalore is the ego and ssethtzeentach is the ID is what gave me life in these draining days.
I have to disagree about the English voice acting, I think its amazing and not bad at all, The crazed guru's acted how they were supposed to. G1 has probably the best voice acting in the series. Gothic 2 will always disappoint me for not having Diago's voice actor. The less said about Gothic 3 the better.
I played Gothic 1-3, and liked them all. Even Gothic 3, which most people hate for some reason. The Risen games are also good, although the first one is the best I think.
If you like Gothic and Fallout, you should also try Elex, a combination of the two. It's a really great game.
Does anybody know how well the game works with a steam controller?
G1/G2 remain my some of the strongest and favorite entries in my RPG repertoire. G2 in particular has just about everything I want in my RPGs (though sometimes I wish I hadn't given my original discs to my friend following my purchase of G2 Gold so I could play without expansion if I wished to).
At the end of the day, I think Gothic's controls actually gives it a very stylized and hold up through time way better than many games of its' generation. It definitely is one that take time to get into the groove of, but becomes so natural and great for the medium.