Gothic 3 Preview

Welcome to Gothic 3, the third game in what has become a highly acclaimed series of Oblivion-style expansive free-roaming RPGs, complete with its very own army of fans and hard-earned cult status in Europe. Expectations are predictably high for this latest instalment, and thanks to the lovely people over at JoWooD Productions we’ve been able to get our (level 17) grubby mitts on a preview copy to see how it’s shaping up.

To tell you the truth (which is probably what you’d want to hear anyway), this game’s a hard one to judge. During every play through, my mind is constantly shifting from being overwhelmingly impressed to being mind-numbingly bored. Gothic 3 is one of those games that could be amazing if the current bugs and problems are sorted out, but in its current state it threatens to provide little more than frustration in an offering that deserves so much more. As was the case with Morrowind for a lot of people, one of the main annoyances lies in the combat system, which rarely produces anything more interesting than some frantic mouse clicking, followed by the annoyance of being knocked unconscious by something as blatantly pansyish as a crazy flamingo. Now, it may just be me, but when an enemy is able to attack you over and over again without you having any chance of parrying and counterattacking, it just isn’t right, and unfortunately this wonderful occurrence has a habit of making an unwelcome appearance on more than a few occasions. Indeed, right at the start of the game you’re thrust into a fight between a group of villagers and a dozen or so rather grumpy Orcs, and without really having much idea what’s going on it’s easy to get slaughtered straight away. What’s more, every time you’re knocked unconscious, the sword or bow or whatever weapon currently equipped is dropped, and it can be a nightmare trying to get it back if there’s a rampant monster standing on top of it just waiting to rip through your tortured body when you get back up again.

Moving away from the combat for a while, another problem lies in the translated subtitles of conversations. At the moment, the entire game is primarily in German, something perfectly reasonable seeing as the developers share this nationality, but the English subtitles, and indeed all other subtitles, need to be well translated in order for the player to experience the true game as opposed to a humourless and monotonous reflection of it. At the moment they’re not disastrous by any means, but they lack any kind of personality and variation, creating a mental barrier which stops you becoming fully immersed in the game world.

Now, don’t get me wrong, it’s not all doom and gloom. There are a ton of reasons why this game could be something very special, and it’s this that makes me so burned up about it. So much time and effort has very obviously gone into trying to make it an experience to be remembered for a long time, and in so many places they’ve got it right, but the few bad points mentioned are enough to spoil the fun. Take the world for example, the actual physical world they’ve created. It’s beautiful - it really is - with trees swaying in the wind and the sun reflecting off the buildings in the towns and villages. Wildlife is abundant, both friendly and hostile, and everything interacts with everything else in an attempt to provide a believable environment. If a particularly hungry wolf comes across a herd of deer, for example, it’ll attempt to kill one and actually stay around and eat it afterwards, chasing you away if you try and come too near. NPCs act with a certain degree of variation and realism too, reacting to changing events around them. After attacking a group of Orcs, giving another example, and finding out I’d have little chance of killing them all, I ran off to a rebel hideout to escape them. It turned out they’d actually been tracking me, leaving me more than a little surprised when they attempted to storm the base camp and caused the rest of the rebels there to fight them off. It’s touches like this that make you feel like you’re a part of everything, that you fit into people’s lives and have a real effect on what they do.

Probably the most impressive aspect of the game is the freedom on offer, and by this I mean ‘true freedom’ rather than a cleverly disguised linearity. You can really do what you want, when you want, and join whichever side you feel like. No faction is wholly evil, as they all have motives for what they do, even the invading Orcs. Everyone is a member of one or more specific factions, and whenever you do something for someone your reputation with their factions will change accordingly. Killing an Orc patrol will improve your reputation with the rebels, but will obviously anger the rest of the Orcs. If you’d rather join the Orcs on the other hand, you could just kill whoever wanted you to kill the Orcs in the first place. There are three endings to the game, depending on what you do and which side you take, so not only does this provide masses of replayability, but also hammers home the fact that you really do have a choice in the overall outcome. I should probably mention that the music is all superbly orchestrated, providing beautiful melodies that really are a joy to listen to.

So then, it’s a hard one to judge. Like I said, this game is something of a schizophrenic. It seems to provide a frustrating and tedious experience at times, but then all of a sudden it all starts to click and you realise what a masterpiece it could be, then something happens that makes the doubts appear again, and so on. The game certainly isn’t inherently flawed; the combat can be fixed with some care and attention, and apparently there’s already been a lot of work done on a new complete translation which should be an improvement. If these two things are improved, then Gothic 3 could certainly live up to the high expectations placed upon it, but at the moment it’s a worrying time for such a distinguished series.