RPG Progress Report

[Ack]

Gothic

That nobody seemed to have put any time into Gothic piqued my interest, so I decided to give it a go. After some handling of resolution problems and reading up on the game to finally understand the controls, I fired things up and gave it a whirl. As someone who has beaten the first Risen game, a few things immediately stood out:

Risen is extremely similar to Gothic. Extremely similar. Both offer a protagonist trapped in an area dominated by three factions, one of which you must join in a story that breaks down into a chapter structure the same way in both games. Both use the same leveling/skill point system. Both feature permadeath for monsters, which you slowly but steadily wipe out to clear areas and open up pathways for exploration. Picking locks is done the same way, though Risen's is a bit more user friendly. Conversation and NPC interaction is handled the same way. Heck, even many of the monster designs are similar.

In short, Risen might as well just be a continuation of the Gothic series, just with much, much better controls. For some reason developer Piranha Bytes didn't decide to implement use of the mouse until the last couple of months of development. Instead, Gothic has a heavy emphasis on the keyboard, and you have to combo buttons together to do anything. Like pressing up will move you, but pressing action and up will interact with objects. When looting a body, you press action and up to interact and then action and right to move items to your inventory. Move right without pressing action, and you shift control to your personal inventory, so you could accidentally put stuff on the dead body as opposed to taking it off. Interacting with a ladder? Hold action to get on, and then press up or down to climb. Picking a lock? Tap action to interact with it and then left or right in an unknown combination you have to figure out to open it. Tapping up will open the chest if there is no lock. Combat requires you press the weapon button to pull out your weapon, then to attack you have to press the action button and one of your movement buttons to swing your weapon.

If you think all of this sounds silly, you'd be right. It takes some getting used to, certainly. While I've got a handle on things now, I had to adjust for a bit. These games have an entrenched learning curve, and you have to resolve quests and fight monsters to open up the world, which means you absolutely need a way to handle combat. While combat mostly involves you running up and hitting things(at least the way I play it), one of the positives of the experience is that you can feel yourself get more powerful as you slowly but surely work your way up to taking on nastier monsters. When I first started, I got one-shotted by a nasty giant lizard critter that looks like the gila monster's pissed off older brother. Now I can take a pack of these things and not think twice about it. But that's ok, because there are plenty more monsters out there that can still one-shot me, things that I can't even do damage to yet.

Enemy AI is something I haven't quite gotten a handle on yet because I'm not sure if the behaviors I'm seeing were intentional or are just sort of happening. Different animals tend to stick to their own kind, so you might find a small flock of birds or a pack of wolves together. Most of the time, these critters stay out of each other's territory, though there are some that get along and some that don't. The basic bird enemy is a great example; I've seen them go on searching for worms and not care about the giant lizards wandering around them, but a big wasp-looking bloodfly got too close, and the things freaked. I've observed bloodflies suddenly peel away from their group and go off on a world tour, while eliminating other predators has caused wolf packs to start wandering in larger areas in some of the forests. And yes, they do move in a pack. I've tried moving in to pull one without the rest noticing a few times, only to suddenly be swarmed by 6 or 7 wolves. I can't take that many wolves at once.

Different animals also behave differently in combat. Giant moles will run up and hiss but stay out of range and just make noise at you if you piss them off. I've sat in the middle of a pissed off pack and eaten my dinner before, all while they were freaking out just a few feet away. Lizards tend to attack one at a time, but bloodflies will attempt to circle behind. Goblins favor hit and run tactics, and wolves will often square up in front of you so their buddies can hit you from the sides. Other enemies, I'm not sure of because I can't yet take them. I don't know how much of this is scripted, but it's made for some entertaining exploits figuring it all out.

In the meantime, I have just saved up the skill points necessary for the second level of sword skills. The first was a huge improvement to the combat system, so I'm hoping that after this I can take on even more bigger and nastier critters. I've also been steadily opening up the world, and now there are safe zones to traverse of significant size. But I'm starting to reach the ruins that lie in the fringes, and those hold their own horrors that I cannot yet take in combat.

[Exhuminator]

What do you think of the lore, NPC dialogue, and overall plot so far Ack? How's the world building atmosphere and immersion?

[Ack]

The lore isn't bad, though it mostly comes in scraps and through dialogue, which is fully voice-acted. While some of the voice acting ranges in quality in my opinion, I find some of the more unusual vocal choices to be interesting. For instance many of the voices could be considered more effeminate than one would expect from some of the mercenaries and such you see. But then you remember that you're effectively stuck inside of a prison, and some of these guys might just have been tossed in here for "crimes against nature" such as homosexuality. After all it's a prison, so society's undesirables have all been thrown in together. Through discussion I've discovered I've met criminals who committed crimes such as murder, manslaughter, theft, and even one who was imprisoned for an act of bestiality.

The story is entertaining: the self-contained world is a mine used as a prison colony to haul out ore to fuel a king's war machine. To ensure nobody could escape the prison, a bunch of wizards erected a magic shell that would let things go in but only let ore come out. Try to pass through the barrier, and you get fried. Unfortunately the first thing that went wrong was the shell being much bigger than anticipated, so the wizards ended up trapped inside along with the prisoners, a large swatch of territory, and even some of the orcs the king is at war with. The second thing to go wrong is that the prisoners immediately revolted and butchered all the guards. The leader of the riot then set himself up as the "ore baron" and began negotiating with the king. The king sends in food, supplies, the occasional female convict, and tosses in new prisoners regularly for the baron, while the baron forces many of the low level prisoners to work. Some folks didn't like this and broke off to now serve under some of the trapped wizards as their mercenaries or as "free" cut throats who do what they want. Another group discovered that some of the plants in the shell with them have hallucinogenic properties, and they've now formed a weird religion around their hallucinations.

So you've done a crime which has not been named, and you get thrown in but are ordered to deliver a message to a wizard on the inside. As soon as you pick yourself up, a gang shows up and punches you in the face. Before they can pick you clean, their leader orders them to stop and suggests you come find work at the Old Camp, built from the ruins of the prison with whatever materials they can find. He also warns you about some of the monsters and the people trapped within the shell. Some folks are kind...and some are just as likely to slit your throat for a nickle. Everybody is tough, because everybody has seen some terrible things. I'm still in the early stages of picking which group to join, but the factions have you pulling quests such as robbing or murdering folks or monsters, learning to pick locks or other thieving skills, gathering up food, performing forced labor, etc. I have one quest I'm sitting on right now where I told a guard trying to extort money that I wasn't paying. He now has three guys waiting to jump me at a small campsite outside of the camp's gates.

There is a day-night cycle and the occasional rain, but the more impressive piece is that the magic dome occasionally thunders above you. Get too close to it, and you'll start to glow before it finally zaps you. There are occasional ruins, a couple of mines, a shipwreck on a small beach, mountains, swamps, forests, etc. I like it, but I also like that I clearly make progress whenever I kill a monster. The world is slowly opening up and becoming "safer" I guess, and I like seeing this progress.

[Exhuminator]

Thanks for the breakdown Ack. The setup for the story is definitely a cut above standard fantasy dreck. It will be very interesting to see if you come away with as high opinion as I often see others lay upon Gothic.

[BoneSnapDeez]

I enjoyed Gothic 3 (I picked up this compilation on Amazon a couple of years back, it was like 99 cents + shipping). I've heard that Arcania has some serious issues.

The older games look swell and are on GOG.com. I don't recall them going on sale a couple of months ago, so I never picked 'em up. Perhaps someday. WRPGs are tricky for me, as they tend to be massive and I'm always pressed from time. Interested in hearing Ackicle's thoughts.

[Exhuminator]

on Amazon a couple of years back, it was like 99 cents + shipping

You got Dungeon Lords for 99 cents?! You lucky bastard.

[Ack]

Gothic

I had a small breakthrough while playing Gothic last night. Previously I had been holding off on spending skill points from leveling until I could afford to master single-weapon combat. Sunday night as my last action in the game, I finally earned the amount of skill points necessary to go for it. As soon as I hopped in last night, I made it to a trainer and attained mastery. This lead to a string of events where I could complete quests by taking on bigger opponents while also swiping their weapons, each of which was better than the last. By the end my weapon power had increased 150%, while I also wrapped up a quest to give me additional strength, thus increasing my damage output.

So what did this mean? It mean I could kill bigger and badder enemies of course! This further means that the map has begun opening up even further. I managed to lay waste to a couple of new types of enemies, Reavers and Chompers. Both net triple digit experience, but both also offer a bit of risk/reward management because they can still easily kill me in a couple of hits. I can deal, I just have to stay on my toes and take them on one at a time. But packs of enemies that used to hold me up, such as lizards or bloodflies, I'm now able to wipe them off the map. While I'm still having issues with the larger packs of wolves, I've managed to purge a couple of the smaller ones.

Of course all of this means that I am now starting to bump into much bigger and nastier critters: shadowbeasts, goblin dogs, bloodhounds(some kind of demon dogs), fire lizards, black goblins, Orcs, and some dinosaur-looking things that I'm sure Fastbilly would by the skeletons of if he could. Many of these come in packs too, so even if I could take one, I won't necessarily make it against the group. I also know of a few places to find skeletons and zombies, so I need to move in and see if I can take them now. The last time I tried, a single skeleton kicked my ass. Maybe I can take him now and start opening up the various ruins within the map.

Plotwise I'm still in chapter 1...which isn't surprising. When I played through Risen, I spent at least half of all of my game time in the first chapter clearing out enemies and building up my abilities. Because there is a limit on enemies, there is therefore a limit on experience, so I need to make sure I complete as many quests as possible before moving on. Also it would be nice to be tough enough to handle whatever the game throws at me later on.

It will be a couple of days before I get to play again due to my schedule, but right now I'm looking at trying to take out more of the wolf packs to clean out the forests and find out how I fare against skeletons. After that I'll probably move into the sect camp in the swamp region and help the druggies with a couple of quests. After that...well, after that I will likely join the Old Camp and move on to Chapter 2. We'll see.

[noiseredux]

I'm really glad that I was able to restore my Witcher 3 save. I think I'm finally at a point where I am really into this game. I actually like Geralt a lot more now that you guys have sort of explained his character to me better. And I love Ciri and am enjoying the little bits of her backstory that's opening up.

I'm getting better at combat (not great), but controller does help a lot I think. Anyway, the big thing is the story. The writing is phenomenal. Although one thing struck me as funny: I'm in the middle of a section involving a Baron and there's really heavy stuff going on involving some very serious subject matter (alcoholism and a dead child are just the tip of the iceberg) and the Baron wants me to go off and at least get visual proof that his estranged daughter is alive and well. He urges me that there's no time to waste, and then one of the options in the conversation tree is "let's play Gwent."

[BoneSnapDeez]

Man Episode IV of Blue Burst feels kinda...... crappy. Sega was phoning it in at this point, I think. The first of two dungeons (the craters) doesn't even have a boss. It just kinda loops around and ends. The "rooms" are HUGE and mostly empty which makes exploration a pain in the ass. On a positive note, the music that plays is a gorgeous rendition of the PSIII title theme.

The second dungeon is better but, as I wrote in an earlier post in this very thread, it takes three godforsaken hours to traverse. And no, this game does not have save points. Save and quit are bundled into one option so when you save you exit the game with all your XP, items, etc. intact but your location is set back to the hub.

Still haven't attempted that final boss (and only boss of this episode). As I'm not averse to spoilers I checked your YouTube videos - it looks like a frighteningly hard battle. Hopefully these folks were playing on Hard Mode; I can't handle yet another installment of the "let's make the final boss harder than anything else in the game by a huge margin!" nonsense.

So yeah, I'm gonna try to roll through Blue Burst. The end may be in sight. Been itching to play some 8-bit imports (Famicom & FDS) as well, so I may also jump into something like Mother or Dragon Scroll soon. Who knows.

[BoneSnapDeez]

Oh wow I found a quest in Blue Burst that allows you to fight every Episode I boss within about a thirty minute span. Mad grinding opportunities. Wish I had discovered this earlier. Would like to get up to at least level 80 before I try to wrap things up.