[Morgannin09]

I was reading an article on Cracked about the disastrous game Daikatana, and one part at the end kind of stood out to me as relevant to this "marketing scheme" that we keep whining about:

If you keep a project relatively secret, you can make as many changes as you need to ensure the final product turns out good -- that's why Cracked's new rap label is evolving nicely. Zach worked on one game where they changed the main character a third of the way through production. They had to throw out a bunch of hard work, but it was necessary to improve the final product. But once you've announced, say, four time periods and dozens of monsters, you're committed to delivering them. As Zach explains:

"Once you have the people with their money spend their marketing dollars, they see that as a commitment. Especially since games have become much more expensive to market. It's become even more essential that you have a very clear message, and you're not going to have people spend their time promoting something too soon."

Obviously, the pendulum can swing too far the other way, as Deep Silver did with Risen 3 - the game was hardly advertised at all, even up to release. But it also stands to reason that we won't hear anything on PB's next game until they've got something damn good to show for it. This disaster happened in Gothic 3 as well, which barely turned out as advertised, as we all know.

[Maladiq]

Oh, another Cracked fan? I think it would benefit them to just say: Guys, we are working on Risen 4. Let's talk about this, wanna free climb? Want more pirates? etc.

[warstrike]

I was reading an article on Cracked about the disastrous game Daikatana, and one part at the end kind of stood out to me as relevant to this "marketing scheme" that we keep whining about:


This disaster happened in Gothic 3 as well, which barely turned out as advertised, as we all know.

No way ,i don't think that. I think Gothic 3 was their most advertised game as far as i remember.It was a pleasure to read the website and the news.Reading about creating of the world and stuff.

I think the problem was the bad decisions they made (see lack of chapters ,broke combat system,change of magic ) ,in-house built engine which lead to thousands of bugs and of course the pressure of the fans and publisher .Up to this day ,i haven't been so hyped about a game as i was 10 years ago for Gothic 3.

[Morgannin09]

No way ,i don't think that. I think Gothic 3 was their most advertised game as far as i remember.It was a pleasure to read the website and the news.Reading about creating of the world and stuff.

I think the problem was the bad decisions they made (see lack of chapters ,broke combat system,change of magic ) ,in-house built engine which lead to thousands of bugs and of course the pressure of the fans and publisher .Up to this day ,i haven't been so hyped about a game as i was 10 years ago for Gothic 3.

What I'm talking about specifically is how much they hyped up the game, before realizing the game couldn't turn out as planned. A lot of features didn't make it, the game only looked half as good and ran half as well as it should have, and none of us were satisfied with the story or the combat system. If JoWood had waited patiently, figured out what the game was going to be, and made reasonable promises based on the game's progress, the game might not have released with quite as much fanfare, but the expectations wouldn't have been out of this world.

[Maladiq]

Gothic 3 was supposed to be just as advertised. Unfortunately it didn't get there because of the time constraints. They bit off more than they could have chewed in that limited amount of time and JW didn't grant them a longer development time.

And yes, I remember nerdgasming about G3 with my cousin back in the day. That is how I discovered WoP and WoG, by looking for news about G3, and then.... a whole collection Gothic 3 videos, interviews, gameplay vides just popped up and we spent a couple of hours drooling over them. And then I discovered the G3 website with the dev diary and spent all my high-school computer classes translating those...

[Dino]

Up to this day ,i haven't been so hyped about a game as i was 10 years ago for Gothic 3.

I second that. Holy shit the suspense was killing me.

[foobar]

Gothic 3 was supposed to be just as advertised. Unfortunately it didn't get there because of the time constraints. They bit off more than they could have chewed in that limited amount of time and JW didn't grant them a longer development time.

I have my doubts about that. Sure, time was a factor. But Jowood, even with their backs against the wall (financially speaking), still gave PB six more months to finish the products. Let’s not forget that. And PB still couldn’t deliver. No publisher will grant extensions indefinitely because no one has unlimited money.

But that point aside: G3, even if it had been given all the time in the world, would never ever have been what most people expected. What I – and based on my observations most other people in the forum – wanted, was a “Gothic 2 XXL”. Basically the same game, just larger and with more options (shields and dual-wield and more spells and more armor and more guilds, that sort of thing). That is what we expected and that is the picture the marketing painted. Some information was considered problematic (like when they announced that there would be no chapters). But PB promised that (quote) “Gothic will stay Gothic” and we shouldn’t worry. And I, for one, believed them because their track record so far had been quite good.

But after release, we learned that G3 was never meant to be that game we expected. They wanted to castrate the combat and skill system. They wanted to avoid complex quest and story design (like the first chapter of G2, which, to this very day, I consider one the prime examples of RPG quest design). I remember Mike Hoge admitting only after release that they wanted to open Gothic to a wider demographic (read: go mass-market). And that they wanted to cater to people who couldn’t be bothered with all that complicated quest stuff and intricate stories. Who did not want to build their character before they could take on powerful enemies. People who (quote) “just wanted to fire up the game and beat up a bunch of orcs”. That was always the true target demographic of Gothic 3.

People tend to forget that and keep imagining this Über-Gothic we would have gotten if only Jowood had grown a pair and given PB more time. The ugly truth however is that this was never the plan. The fundamental game design was exactly as PB intended it from the beginning. With more time, they might have ironed out more bugs and maybe gotten more NPC models (especially ones with hair) and stuff like that. But G3 was always meant to be something of an Offline-MMORPG.

So yeah, the marketing hyped the game good. But it also betrayed the loyal fanbase. Not sure if I really want that.

[Dino]

So yeah, the marketing hyped the game good. But it also betrayed the loyal fanbase. Not sure if I really want that.

When money speaks loyalty remains mute.

That's how I see the case with Gothic 3. It felt like PB didn't give a shit what the core fanbase wanted.

[The Ore Baron]

I don't mean to sound like a smart-ass, but I knew Gothic 3 was going to be shit from the moment I saw the very first screenshots. It was obvious they were pumping most of their funds into graphics (naturally disregarding everything else) and 'hurr large open world' was an instant no-no to me, since I was sure they weren't going to manage filling it with interesting content.

Then it came out, and I was still disappointed, even though I wasn't expecting anything

So I don't really buy the whole "they ran out of time" stuff. Their priorities were not in order, methinks, and giving them more time would not have resulted in a much better game.

EDIT: read Foobar's post again, now I feel dumb, since I just repeated what he said

[Morgannin09]

I certainly agree with that, I've never denied that Gothic 3 would not have surpassed Gothic II simply due to its intended design direction. The storytelling suffered greatly from its intended openness, which thankfully PB seemed to have learned from - in many ways the Risen games still have terrible writing, but the games still put you in a forward progression where more quests open up and the world seems to respond to it - scripted, sure, but it still feels more organic than Gothic 3 or any of the Elder Scrolls, where nothing ever changes despite your monumental achievements.
But that brings me to another point of the legitimate false advertisement: I recall in a preview in a magazine, how they talked about Gothic 3's choices and how the world changed heavily based on anything you did, using a metaphor like "A butterfly flaps its wings in Nordmar, and so an uprising fails in Myrtana." Obviously an exaggerated description no matter what, but the bottom line is the game we got hardly had such dynamic consequences to your decisions - the only time that really happened was if you pissed off a faction so much that they would kill you on sight, effectively making the game unplayable anyway.
There's more to it than that, and I'd touch on it if I wasn't groggy and delirious for waking up at the crack of dawn, but this is one of the more egregious examples of misrepresentation of their product.

So, no, Gothic 3 would not have changed the world, and it did betray the desires of the core fanbase in a way that didn't work to its benefit as far as anyone was concerned. But they definitely got carried away with what they promised the game could do. Both JoWood and Piranha Bytes, really. Neither of them were really big enough to compete with The Elder Scrolls and Bethesda, and yet they really advertised themselves as trying to blow those games out of the water by doing what they did even better. Whether by lack of talent, misguided direction, or limited budget, they genuinely screwed the pooch on it, and at least 50% of the reason people hated it is because the game wasn't everything they told us it would be. It would have been a pretty standard, solid RPG if it was finished and fully realized - not the Gothic sequel we wanted, surely, and overall would have been unsatisfying by comparison to the classic fanbase, but I do feel that the disastrous reception for Gothic 3 could have been mitigated by not embellishing its expectations.

[Maladiq]

People tend to forget that and keep imagining this Über-Gothic we would have gotten if only Jowood had grown a pair and given PB more time. The ugly truth however is that this was never the plan. The fundamental game design was exactly as PB intended it from the beginning. With more time, they might have ironed out more bugs and maybe gotten more NPC models (especially ones with hair) and stuff like that. But G3 was always meant to be something of an Offline-MMORPG.

So yeah, the marketing hyped the game good. But it also betrayed the loyal fanbase. Not sure if I really want that.

Well, I know it was not a matter of growing balls. PB were just visionaries, while JW were going belly up, more time would have been impossible. The problem was that they bit off more than they could chew. It was JW's responsability to do a trimming of the ideas.

I never knew Mike said that, about opening to a broader category of players. But despite this, Gothic 3 had all the pieces of the puzzle and could have been amazing. It had passion, it had ideas. Take R2 for example: it just doesn't feel like anybody doing it was emotionally involved in the project. They just did it to pay the bills.

Case and point: Kai was nerdgasming over the orchestra, Sascha is still dreamming about those dunes in Varant (while we still watch in amazement the level design of Nordmar), the guys were modeling houses and were eager to show their work, while Mike was planning orcish invasions into villages.

Sure, there were crappy aspects about G3, but goddamn it had passion behind it. And you could still feel that passion in R1. Then... it just went away.

Meh, maybe it is just about Kai leaving. As Epic Rap Battles of History put it, half of Spielberg's millions should go to John Williams.

Or maybe it's Bjoern. I always had the feeling Mike was the dreamer, the one with great ideas, and Bjoern was the analitical one, who could get the work done instead of getting carried away. Before Bjoern joined PB they didn't even manage to finish the main story (6 months before realease they had to re-write it from scrap afaik).

Oh, and let's not forget Ralf: he and Mike were an amazing concept team.

Almost all the great creative people left: Mattias, Mike, Ralf, Kai, and creating a good game concept is just not a one-man job, no matter how good or well intented Bjoern is.

[foobar]

Adding sources:

Here is my translation of Mike’s original post after G3 was released and the shitstorm came.

One thing first: We did not jump on the “We-want-to-make-a-quick-buck-and-fool-all-the-fans” bandwagon.
That G3 was unfinished at release is shit. That people now complain about it is warranted. We knew that G3 would not be bug-free but we underestimated the amount of problems we would still have in the goldmaster version.
We believed we could make a complete game with a few bugs to the goldmaster date and surely fix those few bugs with patch 1.
Unfortunately, it only happened with patch 2 and even if that one should fix most of the known bugs so far, a lot of fans will still be disappointed.

We intentionally tried to open Gothic 3 to a wider demographic. That caused some changes in the design which many fans consider to be a worsening, even though those are “just” changes.
Some examples:
- no guild membership but more free playing
- large, free, non-linear world in which cities can be played in any order but one-time visits instead of returning and finding new quests all the time
- quests lie in the world and are not hung on NPCs
- new weapon configurations instead of new combat animations
More details to that in later posts
- Some AI reactions on city level instead of NPC level (e.g. reactions to theft, murder)

This kind of changes would probably have been accepted by the majority had it not been for the technical errors (which should be fixed for the most part by now).

1. Generally bad tuning (items, NPC values, combat)
2. Important characters are badly presented

The tuning has been improved with patch 2, also the crossbow shooting has been completely redesigned (that thing was basically unusable before) but we still need time to get a handle on the melee combat system.

The story is IMHO nothing more than:
“The dragons have come, find out who their leader is” (Gothic 2)
The problem in G3 is, as far as I’m concerned, the density. We intentionally let ourselves into a “thinner distribution”. But we also gave important characters too few dialogues to compensates for that. We indeed lacked the time to fix that in the end.

We will definitely not try to break our backs with such a large world in the future.

That’s all from me for now, I’ll now try to answer the questions.

Now that you have the complete post with all the context, I’m going to comment on a few excerpts:

Spoiler:(zum lesen bitte Text markieren)

We intentionally tried to open Gothic 3 to a wider demographic.

Translation: We wanted more mainstream.

even though those are “just” changes.

To turn Gothic into Tetris would also require nothing but “just” changes.

- no guild membership but more free playing

I wrote about the so-called freedom in G3 before many times, so let me be brief here: That is only passive freedom. Freedom from something. That, however, you can get cheaper by not buying the game at all. What people actually want is active freedom. Freedom to (do) something. Like joining a guild, if they so desire.

- large, free, non-linear world in which cities can be played in any order but one-time visits instead of returning and finding new quests all the time in return

What has one to do with the other? Had they kept the chapters and an intricate story, they could have had both. Cities in any order and returning to them later on. Back in the day, I even made a story draft for G3 to show that you could take the game almost completely as it is (without major changes in it’s fundamental design) and still have a good story. In that draft, it was also planned to return later even though you had the freedom to visit all cities in any order before.

So there’s no causal relationship here. It’s like saying: You don’t get oranges and in return the moon is round.

- quests lie in the world and are not hung on NPCs

With that he probably means that you can complete the quest to kill the 5 wolves for the shepherd without ever having actually talked to the Shepard. And still get a reward afterwards. The wolves are already there and are not spawned only when you talk to the shepherd. Can make sense in some cases, can be problematic in others. It’s not really what was fundamentally wrong with G3.

- new weapon configurations instead of new combat animations
More details to that in later posts

Who cares about that? More combat animations are nice if I can get them but did anyone actually complain that G3 did not have enough of them and that this was the big problem of the game?

Well, my problem was something different. Hint: It was located on the narrative layer.

BTW: I don’t think those promised details actually came. But I don’t want to search the entire forum archive to make sure. So let’s leave it at: I don’t recall hearing about that from PB again.

- Some AI reactions on city level instead of NPC level (e.g. reactions to theft, murder)

Huh? If I killed someone in Khorinis or stole from someone or beat someone up, almost the entire city wouldn’t talk to me anymore. So they had city-level reactions before. The only difference is: It made sense in G2. In G3, everyone knew you were the culprit even if no one saw you do it. Which practically made the career choice of thief impossible to play. What was that about freedom of play again?

And how does this explain the problems with the story?

This kind of changes would probably have been accepted by the majority had it not been for the technical errors (which should be fixed for the most part by now).

Some yes, others no. Losing chapters and guild membership and certain play types (thief) was a heavy blow. I only hoped that the rest of the game would make up for it. Which it didn’t.

1. Generally bad tuning (items, NPC values, combat)
2. Important characters are badly presented

The first point is kind of annoying but no mood killer for me.

The second goes in the right direction but completely misses the core of the issue. The characters were presented badly because the story was so thin and little more than a fig-leaf. I wrote that before: If you don’t tell a story, the characters automatically become pale. What else are they supposed to do on the stage that PB built them? If there is no play being performed, the actors have no choice but to stare holes in the air and pick their noses.

The story is IMHO nothing more than:
“The dragons have come, find out who their leader is” (Gothic 2)

Well, at least he didn’t try to compare it to the story of G1, which was definitely a more complex concept.

But: Lord of the Rings is also basically nothing but “throw this ring in that volcano”. And Hamlet is nothing but “avenge your daddy”. I can always reduce any story to a few key sentences and then show that once everything is cut off, not much remains. But that’s not really a big revelation.

There’s more than one way to flesh out a raw concept into an actual story. What was necessary for the completion of G2? Off the top of my head: Gain access to the city, gain access to the upper quarter, join a guild, go to the mine valley, find the missing prospectors, bring the report to Lord Hagen. Find the stolen eye, repair it (for which you need to uncover a murder plot and free Bennet), go back to the mine valley, kill the four dragons (each in his own little mini-climate zone). Solve the mystery about Irdorath, go into the cellar of the cloister. Gather a crew, get a ship, sail to the island. Fight through a riddle-dungeon and then deal with the endboss. And that doesn’t even count the content of the add-on.

And the whole time, you stumbled up to 4 times over your old friends, could talk to them, learn new things (e.g. Gorn: first meeting in the castle in the mine valley, then on Onar’s farm, then back in the mine valley and then back at the farm again. Plus he joined you on Irdorath.)

And what’s necessary to complete G3? Find Xardas, find the artifacts, liberate the forge, throw the artifacts in it, follow Xardas to a large boulder in the middle of nowhere.

Anyone spotting any differences?

What I learned from that post was that most of the really bad things about G3 were intentional. Note how he says that the second patch practically fixed the game (made it as they wanted it to be), except for a few combat tweaks, a few missing dialogue lines and maybe some yet undiscovered or minor bugs.

Here’s another quote that confirms that:

1 - Did Gothic III turn out like you imagined it?

In many aspects: Yes!

The main critique points which I have for myself (I’m repeating myself but that’s because of the questions)
1. Bad tuning
2. Main characters don’t talk enough
3. Unbelievable “ending” - which therefore must not be the end!

Again, he says that the first and foremost problem of G3 was the balancing. And only after that, he slightly touches the narrative layer by saying there should have been more dialogues. But quest design? Story complexity? Setting plausibility? Verisimilitude? Active freedom? Immersion? Nothing wrong with G3 on these fronts!

Don’t get me wrong. I give Mike high credit for coming into the forum in the middle of a shitstorm, taking a stance and explaining himself. That was very commendable and even if I wasn’t really satisfied with his answers, I still think seeking communication with the fans was the right move and the first step to mending the damaged relationship between fans and developer.

But I also think that many of his arguments are non-sequiturs and most of it is the kind of information customers deserve to get before purchase.


The quote about beating up some orcs was taken from this interview which was conducted after the release.

Was wir versucht haben, ist natürlich, mit dem Spiel in die Richtung zu gehen, dass wir es einer größeren Zielgruppe zugänglich machen. Sprich auch Leute, die mit dem ganzen Gothic-Scheiß nichts zu tun hatten, sollten einfach mal das Spiel starten können, ein paar Orks verkloppen können und daran Spaß haben.

Which translates to:

What we tried was, of course, to go in a direction that would open it [the game] to a wider demographic. Meaning even people who didn’t have anything to do with the whole Gothic crap should be able to just start the game, beat up some orcs and have fun with it.

I’m not sure I share the sentiment of calling Gothic “crap” but it’s what he said. But it’s possible he was just paraphrasing, so let’s not lynch him for that, shall we?


The bottom line is that on several occasions, PB confirmed that G3 was more or less the way it was supposed to be. And given more time, we might have gotten a better balancing, maybe a few more dialogue lines and perhaps a cutscene ending instead of billboards or something like that.



As for Björn: I don’t really know the guy. I talked to him only a few times and I doubt he would even remember me. He may be more pragmatic but I doubt he doesn’t have any visions or passion. You don’t choose a career as game developer if your heart isn’t into it. There are easier ways to make money. So I think everyone who works in game development does so because it’s about more than money for them and they want to express themselves artistically. That means visions and passions. Björn may just have an easier time to reign in his passion. But I can’t say for sure because I don’t know either of them well enough for a comparison.

What I disagree with is the notion of some parts of the community that Mike is this creative genius who is personally responsible for everything that PB did right and that Björn is the passionless bully who is responsible for everything that PB did wrong. G2, for instance, is also in large parts Björn’s accomplishment. You rarely do people justice by labelling them.

[Maladiq]

1. Why I say Mike has a great vision (can't talk for the others): the quality discrpancy between Risen 1 and 2. Of course Bjoern has the passion, since he still wears that necklace, but I just don't think he can create a coherent universe (not that Gothic was one, but at least it had feeling. I would compare PB with Pink Floyd: the spark was set by the first guys who ended up having nothing to do with the game (like Syd), Mike was the Roger Waters of the team, coming up with ideas, but Bjoern was the David Gilmour of the team, a more technical person who kept things done isntead of going full-conceptual. I think they did great work together, but once the split appeared, the work was just not on genius level.

2. Indeed, kudos to Mike for having the balls to come into the forum after the fiasco. I didn't know he said those things, but one thing is for certain, he nailed Risen 1 and learned from his mistakes. The only problem with it was that it was too cautious and it didn't reach its full potential. It could have with the sequels, but it never did.

3. Now you made me really curious about your story outline for G3

4. As for the passion, I do think it is gone for most part. Indeed, it's easier to create something when you don't worry about children and family, and as I recall, during the development for G1 all they did was eat crap and talk about the game for 18 hours a day.


5. I really hope that even if DS is the publisher, they are working on a new IP. I really am curious about what Bjoern would do if he had to create a universe from 0, maybe even something non-medieval. But as long as they intentionally make game design choices such as invisible walls, provisions and that crappy combat system, I really don't have a lot of hope. At least Mike admitted he was wrong and went back to the roots.

[foobar]

3. Now you made me really curious about your story outline for G3

Oh boy. That old thing? Let me dust it off. *cough* Can you still see me?

Keep in mind that this is something I came up with on October 20th, 2006, in the time it took me to bake and eat a pizza, so it’s just a concept. A story outline. And the basic idea was to keep as much of the game as it was (landmasses, NPCs, etc.) and just try to find a way to put a nice story onto that.

So, we’ll take the same basic setting we have in G3: The war is lost, the orcs control Myrtana, Rhobar is trapped behind a magic barrier and so on. It might help if you threw out a few cities and made the rest of them bigger, but it’s not necessary.

So we arrive in Myrtana and don’t get the story served on a silver platter. We need to investigate and find out what’s actually going on (explore the setting premise, see above). After a while, we know the lay of the land and decide to help the humans against the orcs (optional alternative: see below). Why should you? Well, the orcs could be after you for what you did on Irdorath and you’ll only ever be safe if you remove them from Myrtana (or suck up to them in the alternate scenario).

Now, Gothic was always a bit grittier than other games and you’re not a paladin in shining armour. You’re a convict. An escaped criminal with dry humour and not a lot of respect for the establishment. So you don’t go to Vengard to crawl up Rhobar’s ass. Besides, he was defeated and is trapped in a besieged city. Not much he can do anyway.

So who else can help? Well, there’s Lee. He’s an experienced general and has proven he can get shit done. He knows about war and leading armies and all that. So if anyone has the skill to kick the orcs in their collective butts, it’s him. Also, he still wants revenge for what Rhobar did to him. And the king is not going to stick his head out while the orcs are still around. So Lee has two good reasons to take up the fight: Defending his home and revenge for being thrown into the colony.

But what’s a general without an army? Lee will need one. Where to find one without stealing it? How about Nordmar? The barbarians there are tough, resilient, know how to kill orcs and and are not yet subjugated. And they would probably like to free their homeland and get some payback from the orcs.

But if the people of Nordmar could do it, why haven’t they done it already? Well, maybe because the clans are disunited and quarrelling among each other. So they never came together to form a force that could actually threaten the orcs. Someone like Lee or the NH might have a chance of changing that because no one can accuse them of taking sides - they’re outsiders. This provides the task for the first chapter: Unite the clans! Now you have a motivation to do all the little jobs and quests in Nordmar. You need to gain their trust if you want them to follow you into war. You should also liberate the big forge because ore swords might come in handy during the war.

So now you got the clans to join forces. But they can’t free Myrtana while they have the orcs on their own doorsteps. So the next chapter is: Free Nordmar. With all the jobs that this kind work entails.

Now we’re ready for Myrtana. But the orcs hold the cities and one man on the wall is worth as much as ten before it. So what can we do to avoid casualties we can’t afford? Well, we could use the rebels. Maybe they’re not only sitting in the forest but also hiding in the cities under the noses of the orcs. Kind of like a resistance. They disguise themselves as citizens or hide in the sewers (like the Thieves Guild in Khorinis) where the orcs don’t go because they’re too big, and honourable warriors who don’t wade through morrer-shit. And we need the help of this resistance. They will have to support our assault through acts of sabotage and assassination.

And you need to gain their trust, so again, we have a motivation to actually do all the quests that are more or less in place already. And perhaps you can also help the rebels with other things. Maybe here you need to steal the key for the city gate so they can open it in the night and let the Nordmar army in. Maybe there you need to organise the schedule of the guards so that the slaves who bring them their food can poison the correct shift. That kind of thing. But to do all that, you need to be able to move freely among the orcs. Which explains why you have to gain their trust and do their quests.

This concludes the third chapter and it also gives Lee time to prepare his army. Forge swords, train troops, organise supplies, a lot of things that he might occasionally need your help with as well. So there’s quest potential in that, too.

Now we could theoretically launch the offensive. But what if the battle is well underway and then the orcs get help from somewhere? Like the assassins of Varant. Why would they help the orcs? Well, they both pray to the same god. And they’re into slavery. Both of which Lee and/or Rhobar will probably not like once they have control of the continent. Then the shrines to Beliar will burn and the lucrative slave trade will be crippled. So it is in the assassin’s best interest to lend the orcs a hand.

This is a risk that Lee cannot afford to take and hence, you have to go to Varant and help the Nomads defeat the assassins. Same as before, motivation for their quests. And another chapter.

And now we can finally take back Myrtana. With a lot of potential stuff to do. Cut off enemy supply lines and fortify your own, assassinate orc leaders, interrogate prisoners, spread false information, evacuate civilians, do recon behind enemy lines, etc. etc. Lots of really cool quests could be made from that, which would also reflect the pace picking up as we near the end of the game.

Theoretically, that can be all there is. Once you have freed Myrtana, you have practically done enough to justify a nice ending right then and there. But we could also go and add another confrontation, maybe with Zuben and/or a Beliar avatar or something like that. Add this whole idea of “the decider” and banishing the gods after that or don’t. It isn’t really necessary, the story should work either way.


And the whole story can be reversed if you want to support the orcs instead. Then Lee already has his Nordmar army and the only hope for the orcs is help from Varant. So you are sent there to defeat the Nomads, then wipe the rebels from Myrtana and finally conquer Nordmar and crush the human opposition for good.



Well, that was basically the idea. An intricate story with somewhat clear character motivation, 6-7 possible chapters and a plot that encompasses the entire available game world. That would have been a Gothic 3 I would have loved to play. Fuck balancing!

[Maladiq]

[Bild: 13924742111596534766_zps5pdkjdfk.gif]

Congratulations, you just won yourself a groupie

Now, if I may ask, why the hell are you losing your time here instead of partaking in the CSP?

[foobar]

Now, if I may ask, why the hell are you losing your time here instead of partaking in the CSP?

Are they even still around? I seem to remember that there was such a project and then it was disbanded or something. But people kept mentioning it occasionally, so I didn’t know if I hadn’t gotten the memo or them. Basically, while I still had an active interest in G3, there was no CSP. And then I moved on. They didn’t contact me and I didn’t actively pursue it.

Besides, while it may be nice to imagine them crawling to me, begging me to join them and letting them bask in my brilliance, I think they probably have their own ideas and concepts of how to add a story to G3. I highly doubt they just want to be the coding monkeys who implement what someone else thought up.

[Maladiq]

Besides, while it may be nice to imagine them crawling to me, begging me to join them and letting them bask in my brilliance, I think they probably have their own ideas and concepts of how to add a story to G3. I highly doubt they just want to be the coding monkeys who implement what someone else thought up.

Now that is a straw-man if I ever saw one.

Yes, the CSP is still alive and working hard, they published some new materials on their website. Also, looks like Herr liked your idea.

I believe I read his idea back then in 2006 in German or maybe something very similar with more utopian points ( from a G3 Editing possibility point of view ) like more cities. Back then it was one of the reasons I get excited
when Impidimpi wanted to found the CSP, so it was one of the reasons I joined this project.

Well, no matter when this mod comes out, I will play the hell out of it. The wait is worth it.

[TrueCore]

Yes we're still around and not dead. It proofs again that no one and yes I really mean no one looks at signatures in a board. There are so many great ideas out there for Gothic 3, if we want to implement all of them the project's release date will be the 5th December 3245. So sorry we have to focus on some ideas and the main story line is finalized (not completly implemented) for a few years now. We're giving our best to release the CSP in this century.

[Maladiq]

Indeed, you worked too hard now to just redisign the mod. But trust me, I can't wait for it to come out and play it. Thanks for all the hard work

[foobar]

It proofs again that no one and yes I really mean no one looks at signatures in a board.

I’ve disabled them completely. Because a lot of people use big images, bright colours and even animations in them. If there was a way to say: “Show signatures: Text only”, I’d go for that. I really don’t like large images in sigs. They distract me from the flow of the discussion, which – for me – is often hard enough to follow.

There are so many great ideas out there for Gothic 3, if we want to implement all of them the project's release date will be the 5th December 3245.

At least you’d be following the tradition of the original.