• 17Feb 07

  Gothic 3 and Elder Scrolls IV Oblivion dual review

  Oblivion:
  
  Day 1:
  
  Game is installed, I can't believe I'm finally going to play this game, after all the previews and reviews, screenshots and trailers, I'm finally here...Oh wait, the loading is finished, time for me to decide on my race and general look. To be honest I already decided this when I saw the preview video's of the game on the NAG cover DVD, I want a Human warrior just like thiers, same hair, face and general coolness. Okay after some fiddling I managed a ninety percent replica of what I saw, he's a good looking fellow, should be a hit with the ladies in Tamriel. Time to finish this off so I can go explore the damn place already.
  
  Right, chose a name, now time to start things off, **** this is exciting, I'm really here. Hey look, it's the Emperor! Wow, not the most dashing fellow are you, but it's cool, you are the king after all, plenty of money, you don't need looks I guess. I like the voice acting, Patric Stuart is doing a superb job, I'm really getting into this.
  
  I'm rather impressed by this tutorial, it's letting me try out all the different play mechanics, like magic and stealth. It all feels solid, no weak points that I can notice, not yet anyway. Tossing fireballs and swinging my sword like a raving lunatic is proving great fun, bow and arrow is great as well. It seems I'm nearing the end of this tutorial...Oh **** they killed the Emperor! You heathen! By my blade you'll all burn in the fires of Oblivion! Great, the Emperor is dead and I've been entrusted with a most important task. I feel a real sense of urgency, must hurry. First, time to choose my main skills, I'm pretty sure I want to be badass with a sword, and hurl fireballs into zombies faces, I think I'll add in a bit of stealth for good measure. Heavy armour and shield seem like obvious choices too.
  
  Looks like I'm finally going to leave this dark, dank prison sewer, what will it be like I wonder. Good lord! This is beautiful! I have all this to myself? The wind bristling through the trees, the deer prouncing right past me, I can almost smell the flowery fields, this is bliss. Where in the hell do I begin? I feel like exploring. Which way though? Let's make our way up this hill behind me. Ooh a wolf, **** he disapeard in the grass, oh wait there the bastard is, three good swipes from my sword dealt with the poblem. After lots of walking, fighting and site seeing, I decide it's time to advance the narritive. I bring up the map and a handy red icon displays to me where I need to be, that's nice. I click on Coral, the closest city to my destination and poof I'm there. Okay not quite poof, theres a loading screen, but it is convenient, I really didn't feel like hoofing it over there on foot.
  
  Day 3:
  
  I have been playing for three days and quite a few hours, I advanced rather nicely in the story, which is proving to be rather engrossing, Sean Bean has made one of the most likeable characters in any game I've ever played. Not only is the voice acting stellar, the quests are all interesting and unique in there own way, this really is a next-gen RPG. Besides the story side I have made reasonable progress with the games many side quests, I joined the fighters guild, got contacted by the Dark Brotherhood and even the Thieves guild. What's interesting is the way in which this happens. I accidentally stole someones horse, but wasn't aware of it, got arrested, went to jail and a few days later got invited to join the thieves. In the case of the Dark Brotherhood, I think I might have killed one of my compatriots in one of the story quests, there was a huge tussle and my blade might have found the back of one of thier skulls. The game counted this as a murder and not too long there after while sleeping I was awakend and asked to join them. I'm liking the way things are done here, it feels very natural and it seems this equates to the rest of the game as well. Very nice.
  
  Day 10:
  
  Now I've made alot of progress, I did a ton of side quests and I have yet to see any two resemble each other, at least not completely. The ammount of diversity is staggering, I never thought it possible to have so much to do and still keep it interesting, this is quite a feat.There was even a twist to the whole "rats in my attic" sidequest, there's really some thought put into all of these quests, each with it's own little story, a lot of which has some underlying humor. At one point I contracted vampirism, which I failed to remedy before the problem got out of hand, soon I could no longer go out in the daylight and had to feed on the living. This was a disaster, I had to get rid of it. I managed to find someone who could help me, only to request of me five grand soul gems. This proved to be impossible because a lot of them could only be found inside cities, but due to my distaste for tainting my hero by sucking innocent blood, I became feral and towns people would attack me on site. Time to reload one of my older saves, it's about three hours back, but atleast it's better than starting from the beginning. Lesson learned, go to the church the moment I contract porphyric heamophilia, lest I wan't to be a vampire again. The strange thing about all this is that the setback wasn't so bad, I learned a valuable lesson and saw another side to the game that could and would well be an option for alot of people, playing as a vampire, now this is what I call freedom.
  
  Day 30+:
  
  What a ride, I finished the story part of the game, visited Oblivion many a time and completed hundreds of quests. I am the leader of all the guilds, made myself some decent armor, found some great items, like shoes of waterwalking. I'm the arena champion, the champion of Cyrodil and even had a statue erected in my honor. I've explored so many dungeons, fought so many skeletons and leveled up more than fourty times, even killed and fought for gods. My game clock is over one hundred hours and I'm still finding new things to do, hidden quests, unique items and wonderful places. Is it even possible for a game to be as fun and enjoyable as this, for this long? It helps that this game is a beauty to look at, sure the NPC faces don't look that good, but they still express well enough to keep me happy, and the animations can come off looking a bit stiff. Environmental textureing is perfectly detailed and the atomsphere is fantasy personified, HDR lighting gives the world a wonderfully colourful look, and sunsets need to be seen to be believed. This RPG won't be beat in the graphics department for some time to come. All I can say is this is a real gem, and will always have a warm place in my heart, it's not perfect, but a few mods and tweaks later it sure well came close. Truly one of the best RPG's I ever played and I played many. I know I will play this again some day, It's call will haunt me, invite me to partake one more time in what is an instant classic.
  
  Gothic 3:
  
  Day 1:
  
  This has been a long time coming. Ever since playing Gothic 2, when I first heard about number three being made I was overwelmed with joy. My anticipation for the game was mounting. Every scrap of information I could find, was driving my need to play it even more. I judged it solely on what I had experienced with Gothic 2, I expected no less. The game wasn't too popular outside of Europe so it did not get the attention it deserved and it was likely due to this reason that the game was released in a buggy state. I read many, many reviews, some of which criticized and some of which praised. All of them made me realise that even through all the bugs I would enjoy what Pirranha Bytes has put together anyway.
  
  And so here I am, the game is finally on my hard drive where it belongs, but oh this travesty of a loading time. Never have I had to wait so long to get started in a game, only to be made more unbearable by the fact that it is THE game that I wanted to play all these years. Finally the game has loaded, what a nicely done FMV, I think the hero comes off a bit too cool, he was a kind of an anti-hero if memory recalls. Are you serious? After all the nay-saying about this games performance and graphics, I'm glad to see it looks this good, and runs at a decent clip on my PC. Textures are all nicely normal mapped, character detail is not too bad, lacking some detail, maybe a little out of proportion too, I notice there's no HDR lighting implemented, just regular bloom lighting, but it's still looks good.
  
  I'm not the one at the controls right now, that honor goes to my cousin, who thanks to me actually managed to find the game in a store. I'm her hero. She will praise me eternally and kiss the ground I walk on forever, but enough about my heroism. I like to watch a game being played, I see things I don't normally notice. Things like the details of the cobble stone streets, the animations of all the characters, the lighting and the craptastic stutter that seems to plague the game every ten seconds, I guess one gig of ram is not enough.The fighting system looks fun, not quite the way I remember it, but it could grow on me.
  
  After a few minutes I'm given the chance to try my hand at this game, it's the moment I've been waiting for, I start a new game. Great, time to enjoy the loading screen, at least the music is nice. Yay, I'm in, it's strange that they would place me right in the middle of a chaotic rebelion without the slightest thought of teaching me the game mechanics first, but I'm l33t so this proves no hassle, I dispatch of the filthy orcs without too much trouble. Die n00bs!!! Mwahaha!!!
  
  Once I liberated the town, I spoke to all my friends from the ship we just came on and from there we went our seperate ways. It seems I must find Xardas and after what he did to me in Gothic 2, revenge seemed a pretty sweet deal right now. But where the hell is he? I decide to explore the world a little, and what a world it is, it's so lovingly crafted, it feels real, tangible, it's fantastic. Large mountains in the distance staring down on the lands, a quaint lighthouse sitting near the edge of a cliff in the distance, crooked wooden fences around farms, forested areas with broken crates scattered around, delapedated houses, an abundance of flora and fuana and sprawling wild life, it all just feels right and you can feel and see the little details in everything. The music deserves special mention, it's great, actually managing to stir emotions within me, it has a distinctive Lord of the Rings flavor, perfectly suited to this game, well done on this front guys. The only thing keeping me from believing it completely is the low draw distance and the ridiculous stutter I get every three steps in any direction. I push through though, this game is fantastic, I'm getting thoroughly absorbed into this, not even the stutter can take that away from me.
  
  Day 3:
  
  I've been putting in the hours, I'm loving this game. I faced the infamous wild boars, which I must say are not as bad as I've been hearing. With carefull planning they are possible to dispose of, even at level one. Make no mistake, this game is HARD, even scavengers can pose problems if you are not carefull. I think it's due to the spam attacks these creatures can do, attacking three times or more in a row without being able to avoid it. In the end of the day just mash those buttons and you should be okay, just don't think you can take on a shadow beast at a low level with poor equipment. I did a few quests, it seems the best way to make money and get experience. They are proving to be decent, nothing ground breaking, I mean, "go kill the wild boar roaming outside Cape Dunne" is not a far ways off from "kill the rats in my attic", but fun none the less.
  
  One of the reasons games like this appeal to me so much is the exploration bit. I love to just run around and find interresting locations. So due to my adventurous nature I happend apon this cave that had two dragons inside and they seemed to be guarding some lovely treasures. Money being as scarce as it is at the moment, I thought it couldn't hurt to try. Naturally they fried my pathetic level six ass in on the spot, " for another day" I thought. Came back alright, the same day and killed their flaming asses by using a crossbow from a ledge. Simple as that, that's exactly part of the appeal that the Gothic series had for me, you can kill high level monsters if you can take advantage of the environment. Well that and the fact that the dragons seemingly can't shoot fireballs upwards.
  
  Day 10:
  
  I'm making my way into the desert, I'm feeling like a change of scenery from the forested greenland. I did make my way to Nordmar, the snowy region, but it seems that even at level 30, it's not the safest place to be wondering around. The desert setting is quite unique, I like this new song that's playing, suites the environment quite well. Did a few quests in the first town I visited, reckon it's time to explore this place a little now. I get a very Arabian feel from this place, maybe a little Persian, I think it's the local's accents and the way they speak, saying things like "thank you master of ingenuity" or "what do you seek here in the desert master of bravery?". I like the way they speak, what I'm not liking is how limited this desert is feeling, it's very empty, especially when compared to Myrtana. Dunes, dunes, dunes, I found some caves, but they are few and far between. I found this funny little town where everyone smokes weed, nice little joke, maybe I'll join them, " hey pass the green bud".
  
  Day 30+:
  
  I've now reached and exceeded level 50, I've liberated most of Myrtana, done an enormous ammount of quests and exploring, yet made seemingly little progress in the story. I have no clue how long I have been playing for, the game appears to not offer such a feature, quite an oversite if you ask me, I'm sure it's well over sixty hours. Why then after so many hours does something not quite feel right? I enjoyed it so much up to this point. What could it be? I sat down and actually thought about this and came to a few conclusions.
  
  1) Where are the factions? Why could I never join the miltia or the mercenaries? Part of the fun of Gothic 2 was joining one of the factions and working my way up in thier ranks, eventually becoming a paladin or what have you. This not only added fun, incentive and structure, but it gave me a real reason to play through the game more than once.
  
  2) What's up with the story? It's hardly there. Well it is there, but you have to go to the most dangerous province just to get it started and going there before level fourty is not advised. Why do they think this would be a more fun way of playing? The story is one of the things that gives the world a cohesiveness and gives you, the player a greater purpose. Keeping this greater purpose away from the player for the first fifty or so hours takes a huge chunk out of the games fun factor, making the experience feel alot more shallow. The chapter progression of Gothic 2 was a much more effective way at keeping me enthralled, engaged and generally interrested than this bizarre almost hidden story.
  
  3) This is my biggest gripe. Where in the hell are the uber items? I've explored so many nooks and cranny's not to find a single uber weapon, armor or item. Isn't that the point of having an explorable world? The fact that all my exploration has been fruitless only means to take away any point there is at doing so. In Gothic 2 I was rewarded for killing those snappers and trolls surrounding that temple, I got the really cool orc slayer sword. In a cave filled with skeletons was an 85 damage two hander, that was only bested by the games ultimate weapons. In Gothic 3 I cleared an enormous cave filled with zombies, skeletons, minecrawlers and gargoyles only to find some lame ass ring and some other useless items. This has proven really disappointing, and to add insult to injury, the ultimate weapon is only attainable by luck. Find out for yourself what I mean, suffice it to say it has to to with the randomly generated loot system.
  
  By this point I just decided to stop playing, the side quests just aren't varied or compelling enough, exploration has proven unrewarding and the combat system is inferior to Gothic 2's timing and skill based one. I eventually did manage to tweak the game to run with minimal stuttering, though the load times are still painfull. I certainly will get back to it, I haven't finished the story after all. Don't get me wrong, the game is good, it really is, but it's still a far cry from being a Gothic 2 or Oblivion. If only they didn't drop so many things that made Gothic 2 so wonderful. I guess the saying "size isn't everything" really rings true for this game, it may be five times larger, but it seems due to the increased size it's lost alot of its substance. Maybe Gothic 4 then.
  • Posted Feb 17, 2007 8:17 am PT
  • Category: Games
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