I love that the heavily drugged up cult actually does manage to communicate with a god, but then it turns out that any gods you can only reach via acid trip aren't really the kind you want around.
@@grfrjiglstan technically in the lore the gods do tend to have soft interaction power when prayed to, and the brotherhood did also kinda dDos the sleeper with getting the weed powered up with giant mine ant juice and then get a huge party where everyone is invited to smoke as much as they want.
This game is very special for a lot of people in Eastern Europe. The memories, the lines of dialogue, the music, the characters, the memes. For anyone interested, I've read a lot about the development process of the game from dev interviews and have some fun trivia: 1. The developers are originally from a German town called Bochum. which is located in a valley by the river Ruhr. The most important historic enterprise of the region was coal mining, so the area where Bochum is located has been called "Minenthal" or "Valley of the MInes" for many centuries. There were so many mines in the XIX century, that there were whole miner colonies in the valley, most of the miners were Polish people as well as other Eastern Europeans, whom the locals regarded as cheap labour and often looked down upon. 2. The developers (Piranha Bytes) were making basically warehouse-sim games and small projects before creating Gothic. They used the "Finster" ("Dark") engine, created by a trio of CS students called the "Mad Scientists", who were very inspired by Ultima. Since pretty much everyone involved was either an amateur or never created a game of such scale before, the game had a lot of bugs and weird quirks (and came out years after the deadline they first made for themselves). The pace of video game innovation in the 90s was very quick, so for example the Finster engine was made with Ultima: The Stygian Abyss as a main source of inspiration, which was a 2,5D dungeon crawler with first person-camera and no complex movement involved, it came out in 1992. Then Tomb Raider came out in 1996, and they had to rewrite the engine to create a full 3D, third-person action-adventure-RPG game instead. 3. Most people who play Gothic now complain about the weird control scheme with heavy use of Ctrl+arrow keys. As one of the devs explained, there wes no "default" control scheme for such games when they were developing it, so they just came out with something you can play with both hands without using your mouse on their own, and yes now it feels clunky and dumb, but at the time there were no strict guidelines regarding how the game should be controlled. They added mouselook two weeks before the game released. 4. Kai Rosenkranz, the legendary Gothic composer, came to Piranha Bytes after seeing a recruitment ad in a gaming magazine. Not only did he write the complete soundtrack with a dozen of atmosphere-rich tracks, he did all the sound effects like steps, ambient noises, armor and weapon sounds etc., (using several free stock sound libraries), as well as all the animated special effects like magic, fire and smoke, wrote a whole ass software application for keying animations and binding it to a corresponding sound effect, helped writing both German and English dialogue, drew all the 2D elements of the interface, and after the game came out single-handedly created the website for the game, which he then maintained for several years. When he answered the ad and came to Piranha in 1997, he was 17 years old. His dad had to sign the contract for him. His Gothic 3 tracks were in rotation on the German Classics-Radio, alongside Bach, Beethoven, Hans Zimmer and John Williams. 5. The three guys who wrote the engine never worked on any of the sequels, and all except for one of them never even worked on videogames after that. There are many more fun tidbits about the development process like the planned multiplayer and psionic class, so feel free to ask if you have any questions. Most of my sources are from World Of Gothic German website, if you are a fan and want to spend a fun evening, check out their "Interviews" tab (with Google translate if you can't read German), these were conducted by the fans and the stories are very cool. There is also a lengthy interview with Mike Hoge (lead game designer and writer) on gothicarchive.org by the Nemesis mod devs.
Ultima inspiring a lot of developers back then Other notable developers were Larian - you can see some similarities with Divinity Original Sin 1-2, the way you interact with items (can pick up and put them elsewhere, some even interact with others) or bake bread in nice, almost organic way " Ultima: The Stygian Abyss [...] no complex movement involved" dunno, still have flashbacks from platforming/jumping sections as for controls - they were close to Tomb Raider games. You had less anxiety or confusion in swimming sections if you've played TR before
36:36 - IIRC, the reason some guards intervene and some don't is because the Old Camp is simulating a full-on protection racket, which means there's a whole web of locals who paid off Guard A but not Guard B. So if you try beating them up while in Guard A's turf, they'll turn you into a pincushion for trying to fleece their paycheck; but if you wander into Guard B's turf, they'll just smile and whistle while you beat your mark into a bloody pulp. They really put an insane amount of thought into how a totally isolated prison colony would function, little details like that go so far in making Gothic such a special experience.
Yep. And since most people won't stand for murder (unless they really like you or really hate the victim, which is the case for pretty much all bandits) you actually have to actively decide to finish enemies off in most instances. If you don't, many NPCs won't bat an eye, but if you do, be ready to be ran out of town or killed in most situations.
I think if you also have paid off "Guard A" he won't do anything either. and yeah these little things make the game really stand the test of time, it makes me wish the huge open world thing didnt take off in the way it did and more RPG games where these "small" focused type games
The moment the game blew me away all these years back was when you went to train how to swordfight and the trainer just goes "hey dumbass, stop holding it with two hands", to which the replay was "oh yeah" and you actually start fighting with one hand. Edit: looks like Ross never found the sword trainer. Whoops.
Im shocked how Ross of all people is the one that didn't even mentioned training of sword technique, its like playing the game on a hardcore mode. It unlocks stun locks, combos, new attacks and just generally makes you more faster and deadly. Its literally fixes a lot of problems he had with groups of enemies, which would probably made him realize how pointless garbage bows and crossbows are in this game (until Gothic 2, where they become viable)
@@LazyBuddyBan It's surprising (and honestly worrying) how many people on UA-cam I've seen completely miss the various skill teachers. Many of them hate the combat in the game and get turned off from it, not realizing that at least part of the jankiness is intentional due to your character being untrained. Your character swings the sword like it's a big stick because he doesn't know any better. Get proper training, and you get much better and have totally different moves and combos for one handed (taught by Scatty and Gor Na Toth) and two handed weapons (taught by Lee and Thorus). It's hilarious how Ross had so many issues with enemies and how hard they seemed to be because he accidentally made things so, so much harder for himself. This is one of those cases where he was just too stubborn for his own good :P
Ross, I strongly believe that you just made this Christmas very, VERY special for hundreds if not thousands of Polish and German millennials. There are games considered a cult classics, and there's Gothic. What a treat!
You can cancel fall damage in Fallout: New Vegas by just saving right before you hit the ground, when you reload your velocity is reset. I like to think of it as simply warping reality
I don't know how it translates to the English version, but in Germany many love Gothic so much because of the harsh, raw and direct language of the characters. It has a very special charm that fits really well with the setting and vibe of the series. It's because they were written by folks from a region in Germany which was the steel and coal factory of the entire country for a long time, so the game is drenched in the rough charm of people from a working class town/region.
If you’re curious, the Polish localization retains this (at least for the first two games, third one, a lot less) Pretty much every character speaks exactly like that, and some of those lines are/were considered legendary around here. It got to the point where some were saying that this game is only liked because of how good the localization is
a lot of the voice cast in english speaks with something of a southern or appalachian accent, which is essentially the american equivalent of like a rougher working type
If memory serves correctly, you can also get into the boarded-up old camp by getting a scroll that transforms you into a beetle and just walk underneath the gate
Meatbug and that's how you got the second most powerful sword in a useable timeframe(Gomez has it). Ross also didn't mention how you could talk to the blacksmith in the castle to upgrade your Magic Ore Armor while exterminating the guards.
Ross's indignation with the Old Camp is absolute peak Game Dungeon. I friggin' love how Ross can effortlessly get into the heads of player characters like this. Cult Tycoon and The Black Mirror were standout episodes for that.
@@azmodanpc Ooh, the Phantasmagoria 2 video was awesome for the same reason! "Dammit Bob, that is IT! You delete Curtis's hard drive and that costs the _company_ money! Do you understand that? We're a small company in the 90s, we don't have backups of those files! You're not being a team player!!!"
It's hilarious how he didn't learn one-handed skills from Scatty, owner of the arena in the old camp due to his hatred of the old camp and thus made his whole playthough so much harder on himself (and didn't find the best part which was unlocking new moves and combos). Classic Ross xD
p.s. Gothic did the NPC schedule (they wake up, go to work, go hang out with others and drink in the evening, sleep, repeat), 1 year before Morrowind... which didn't have it at all, it would take Oblivion, 5 year later, to add that bit in.
The elder scrolls is basically stolen valor for the ultima games, most of the innovations people imply came from Bethesda came from Origin. The first elder scrolls game ripped off the interface for ultima underworld.
The main goal is so worthwhile. Get stronger to save the princess, mehh, get stronger to defeat the generic villain, mehhhh, get stronger to destroy all the people who messed with you while you were still a novice, that's a goal worth fighting for.
@bmetalfish3928 hahaha.. nahh they are tricking you in those to get more money. Here your goal is something you want but can't spend money to achieve. I just love the way Ross has this goal and we all feel that. And when he can teleport inside the town in the end he can run around with his God sword slaughtering every extortion freak there is. It's like despite pennywise being the big bad monster the main goal is getting revenge.
If you're looking for more Gothic, I highly recommend Chronicles of Myrtana: Archolos. It's a fan-made mod, that's on par with the original games. More like an expansion pack from the old days. Its huge, polished, and captivating. A lot of modern improvements, completely new world. Story-wise it takes place before the events of Gothic 1. One of the downsides might be that despite having full, professional level voice acting (they worked with the OG VA-s) its all in Polish.
Wow can't believe Ross completely missed out on the character who can actually upgrade your combat animations so that your attacks are much better, not just stat-wise. It makes the combat much better as well. I think each camp has one or he might be in only one of the camps can't remember. Great GD as always
Gotta say, I never watch Ross’ videos to emulate his gameplay choices hah more to enjoy the ride of watching him be himself through the game. Cause yeah, a lot of the stuff he gripes about in games he’s played I could care less about or there is a fix to, not always.
it's actually pretty nice since you get access to the best armor and sword in the game, and can even upgrade it when you go on the old camp rampage by freeing the smith from jail
In Morrowind you can go to Red Mountain early and talk to Dagoth Ur, and he'll tell you that you're too weak to fight him and will send you away. I don't know if can attack him, but I imagine that he wipes the floor with you since you're underleveled to fight him at that point.
@@georgeoldsterd8994 Its impossible to beat Dagoth Ur without the magic hammer and magic dagger, according to the other characters in the game. So I would think that you couldn't beat him at the beginning.
I feel like Ross would like Arx Fatalis, another fantasy RPG with a cult following. Very unique, too with lots of amazing details and a great atmosphere. Just a small example is how you can mix water, flour, and yeast to make bread dough, then lay it next to a fire and bake bread in real time. Or how different types of armor effect your character's sound effects when moving, running, etc. Or the incredible ambiance of the underground setting. Seriously, even if Ross never plays it, anyone who reads this and likes first person RPGs, emergent gameplay, fantasy, or just wants to experience something new should try Arx Fatalis. Too bad it never got a sequel.
If you want an Arx Fatalis sequel, I highly recommend you take a look at Monomyth. It's a low-budget indie project, but made by somebody who clearly adores Arx Fatalis. You can even make pies the same way!
@@ThomasShatter I bought Morrowind on day one. Felt the world was too static and open without anything in direction to go for. Got sidetracked a bit by Duke Nukem Manhattan Project after about a week then played the demo of Arx Fatalis and bought it, played and enjoyed it quite a lot more. Where Morrowind was static (pick a flower, and you could still see the flower in the world) Arx had items removed from the world when you picked them up, and placeable. Where Morrowind felt like flailing your arms at an enemy hoping to hit, mostly Arx felt like animation and gameplay matched. Morrowind felt like it was built of blocks plopped down, Arx felt mostly sculpted (though a lot smaller) Arx gave you purpose and direction where you needed to go. Morrowind literally got me to Balmora and went "Why don't you just go faff about a bit?" And though horribly HORRIBLY janky, I loved the magic system of you having to draw runes, which carried a bit of the same magic system of Ultima Underworld, where you could sort of learn and experient with it. Only reason I never finished Arx was, that I got to the boss door. Found out I needed those special stones. And I was missing one. I believe I might've dropped it on a floor tile to trigger a trap somewhere in the one area of the game which is not possible to return to.
Arx Fatalis has been on my bucket list for almost 10 years now for exactly the reasons you stated. Also I remember reading that to cast spells you have to remember the gestures and draw them with your mouse. Which is peak immersion and perhaps the main draw that made me take a look at Arx immediately after reading about it in a PC Gamer article. PC Gamer sucks but this was a good thing.
Today was the day when Stay Forever, one of the biggest German retro gaming podcasts, ended a long-running joke by finally releasing an episode about Gothic after over ten years and 150 episodes. Not even 24 hours later Ross follows with this. WHAT IS GOING ON?!
58:00 - on fast travel, I always liked Morrowind's compromise where there are very limited options with in-universe explanations. Paying for transit on a silt strider to a few available destinations, and teleporting between mages guilds. It was more like stops on a train or bus route. This allowed you to cut tedium out of completing certain objectives, but not in a way that allowed you to just stick a pin in the map and check out of the in-game world & still required you to engage with your surroundings.
Morrowind allowed for some great organic journeys. One of my favourite quests is the Temple pilgrimage where you just have to travel across the map to the northernmost island of Vvardenfell, but you can't talk to any NPCs without breaking your vow of silence, so silt striders and teleporters are useless.
I did a no-fast-travel run of Skyrim once, but I still allowed myself to pay for carriage rides from city to city, and I agree - it was still nice to not have to ride across Skyrim again, but there was a cost and I still had to get back to a town first. Made the world feel more alive.
And the boats! Of course, you can still somewhat cheese it by simply leaving a Mark on the Balmora strider platform, then recalling there. From there, you can either use the strider network, or hop over to the ship network by taking the strider to Vivec and walking to the nearby boat.
About colors in the remake - have you heard about ACES? It's cinema format for preserving colors on film. It is very heavy towards green, because human eyes are more perceptive of that color in real world, so it clamps red and blue, resulting in somewhat grayish image. Then you can apply color grading filters to fix that grayness. And we have gigabrains in Unreal, Blender and Unity, who thought that this all should be applied to games by default, because grayness = realism. But we already have access to all colors in the engine, because it's artificial, so it makes zero sense to artificially clamp red and blue values to then expand them also artificially resulting in bland image. And unless you go into shader settings and fix this idiotic mistake - you will get the same problem that everyone have - bland colorless world.
The game also used to have a bug where you could multiply your smithing supplies while smithing. Made it so much faster. It's my usual way of getting money early on.
@@bjorntantau194blacksmiths Regen their stockpile when starting blacksmithing animation. You can beat up old camp blacksmith unlimited amount of times to make as many swords as you want
"I don't expect a colony full of convicts to harmoniously work all the zoning out and switch to farming smoothly." That's exactly how Rome started lol.
I thought they started by killing or annexing everyone. Nuclear Gandhi in Civilization 5 makes sense - once you have nuked everyone else, you can have peace. :D
This game played a huge part in my teen years. We were answering teacher with lines from the game. School election were for two years in a row win by Pock the Farmer. Unfortunately, the third year "That bastard Lefty" won for whiff.
In the Old Camp, you can fight in Arena, challenge the best fighter, lose and get a voice from one of the Shadows for your bravery. And that’s the whole game -a lot of paths, unorthodox thinking can get you further. Good luck, prisoners.
For me Gothic is all about the atmosphere. Gothic I and Gothic II did a lot of things damn well gameplaywise. But for me it's all about exploring a believeable world that is immersive beyond comprehension. Every NPC has it's place and role in this world. There is no filler content. Even monsters have their rank in a creature hirarchy. And then there is this rough medieval tone. Gothic for me is sitting around a campfire with some thugs drinking beer and smoking some swamp weed. No other RPG ever achieved such a dense atmosphere
Paying the protection money really does make life easy, diego gives you a list of dudes to talk to and all of them give you stuff that's manageable for a new character. Then you hit the rpg character infinite wealth bit eventually anyway. I don't think i've ever played a thief in game actually but yeah being able to do stuff like this is part of why gothic is so unusual even today There's a great bit early in gothic 2 where you can rob a farm at night if you feel like it. But then if you show up the next day to talk to the farmer he immediately goes "oh right, and you just HAPPEN to show up today huh? Give it back you little shit"
also worth noting that the old camps system is so bad that the guards are not immune to it the guards will only step in if someone bought there protection and won't if no or both parties did guards are not treated as special by other guards they are treated as having paid protection money meaning you can just pay protection money and then mug every guard
AFAIK your damage (+ flat the stat the weapon scales with) is subtracted from the enemies armor first before touching HP. Simple example: 10 Dex, bow does 10 Damage, enemy has 25 armor -> 25-20=5 -> you do no damage. The spikes in the enemy HP bar you saw were crits since these passed that armor threshhold.
Plus, in Gothic 1 lurkers are having much less *Arrow Protection* than their *Weapon* Protection. Some monsters do have much greater Arrow Protection than their Weapon Protection, like Trolls and Zombies, but that's mostly the few exceptions than the rule. You can't kill that lurker with your melee weapon until much later in the game, I even remember how I needed to complete almost all other quests in the first chapter and grind a lot to actually kill that dam lurker.
12:47 If Vivec has taught me something when I played Morrowind is that CHIM is a power to be used for the greater good. In games like Gothic ``save scumming´´ is a game mechanic with a different name, and that's called precognition.
Thank you Ross for an episode on Christmas each year. Some people don't have a huge amount going on this time of year so thank you for helping out. Merry Christmas.
One of the best Gothic retrospectives I've seen. You really understood why Gothic is so beloved until this day. I've watched videos about Gothic where I questioned myself if these people really understood what it's all about
@@bbuggediffy How you progress in this world with the factions and combat and how the map opens more and more the stronger you get. Best Open-World design ever
36:44 - I believe the "pattern" for guards allowing fights is entirely dependant on protection money. There are three seperate areas governed by different guards in the Old Camp, and if you and the opponent paid the protection money (or neither of you did), they will not intervene. If the victim didn't pay - no intervention either. If you didn't pay and the victim did - the guards will join in. Note, that these guards work seperately - if you pay just one and your victim paid all of them, you still run the risk of guards you didn't pay off intervening. Also, a note about protection money: if I recall correctly, only Bloodwyn asks you on a daily basis, because he's a greedy piece of sh*t. The other guards handling protection don't.
As a gothic-veteran I give you much credit for the editing of the video: 45 min for the first chapter - not even 30 min for the rest.. Very well chosen!
One of the benefits of the inventory system is being able to stash your ore in an unattended container. Since other characters check only your on-person inventory when they try to rob you, that helps complete the old camp trainers and other content before you inevitably have to range out further.
I actually got gothic (2) for xmas as a kid, along with half life 2 and vampire bloodlines. gothic 2 was a game I knew nothing about but I ended up playing it non-stop for weeks while neglecting all my other gifts. still one of my all time favorites until this day.
I still remember the first time i saw my blrother play Gothic 2. It didn't look mind blowing, like HL2, but after I started playing myself I became obsessed with this game. I even draw a map, armor, swords, etc. and played it in school with imagination. Gothic 2 became a standard for me in what the RPG must be for years and it still is in many ways. It have such a good complexity in its world building and quests. For example, i still remember how i played one of the starting quests: -You must go to the upper city. -But guards don't let me go, because i am not a citizen. -To become a citizen you must become a tutor for one of a masters. -And what should i do? -You must complete a joining quest of one of the masters and get permission from the others. I started to get permissions from masters, and one of them said: -Niece of one of the masters owe me money and don't want to pay it. Bring the money and i will get you permission. -Ok. Going to that nice, she starts mumbling: -I don't have the money, I am a widow, blah blah. -Ok. Bring out the sword and kill her. Take the money from the body and bring it to the master. -DID I TOLD YOU TO KILL HER? TAKE YOUR BLOODY MONEY AND LEAVE. And the uncle master wasn't happy too:))) At least i got a 100 gold, which, of course, I payed as a fine. Hard days and PTSD of ex convict.
Considering all gothic 2 got was a shout out (i think its so much better than 1) i won't get my hopes up for that episode. But maybe the incredible gothic 2 mod Chronicles of Myrtana Archolos deserves a spin. Its basically gothic 2.5 and has so many improvements on the core mechanics and incredibly tight map design like youre used to.
Christmas came early (slightly) this year and it’s everything I could have ever wanted and more. Thank you Ross! And to everyone else watching it with me. Wherever you are, whenever you’re reading this, I hope you’re having a wonderful day.
Thanks man. It's been rough times for me, but neither good nor bad luck lasts forever. I'll get through this. I hope your holidays are peaceful and relaxing.
Great! A Ross video on a game from my childhood that I love dearly, given to me on Christmas Eve, when I'm at my loneliest and saddest! I can still the aching in my heart for a short reprieve via this wonderful indulgence! Merry Christmas!!!
Speaking of pull-ups in 3D games, Dark-engine Thief (and System Shock 2, IIRC) has similar mantling. Though I don't know if Ross loves Thief quite like Mandy does, even if Ross is roleplaying as the Speedrunner Mario of burglars. He's four parallel universes ahead of every inmate in the Old Camp.
I remember writing Ross an email about Gothic 1 what feels like year ago and now its here as christmas present. Thank you so much! This is one of my all time favorite games!
The rune based fast travel is absolutely the single best fast travel option in the history of RPG. Because it is physical in-game object with lore attached to it. It just works so well.
I much prefer this to some of the more recent game dungeons where he's discussing some absolute slog of a game with only brown as a color palette for an hour and I can't even finish the video.
thank you ross for this lovely Christmas gift! This year has been hard but your videos (new and old) help a lot. I know you can't post more videos since you're fighting the good fight, but I really appreciate this video. thank you again!
You shouldnt have killed Lefty. If you let him live, you can say "Hm..The farmers look thirsty..." and force him to deliver water forever. There exists dialogue for basically every douchebag enemy in the game once you defeat them. In the swamp camp some guy refuses to stomp weed and attacks you. After you defeat him he ask exasperated why do you even care. "I just want to watch you stomp"
Re: being impressed by the geography, I remember feeling exactly the same way about Gothic II when I played it because the landscape just felt so natural unlike pretty much any other game at the time. Also I swear I remember reading the first Gothic described as something like 'like Morrowind but set in a valley' once.
I'm surprised he didn't mention the jank ladders, unless I missed it. Gothic ladders will have you dismounting in an akward way, or prematurely, or you'll just jank off it in some other way, having you fall to your death. This happened at least a few time in the mines. And people complain about Half-Life ladders (and HL2 ladders for that matter, there's a little something called THE USE BUTTON)
I've watched several videos about this game and this is the first one that really communicated what this game has to offer. Very thoughtful commentary too.
The sidestepping to avoid fatal fall damage bug is also present in the original dead island game, however that game didn't have as much verticality to its maps. It seems to be an oversight for several devs.
Everybody complementing the game selected but im in deep grief because a past 'ross talks' video promissed mizzurna falls for christmas game dungeon (lost media JP, twin peaks marvelous ps1 clone). yes ross i was one of the crazy viewers that mailed you about it. Merry christmas anyway!
@@PointyHairedJedi Grimbeard is amazing, shame the youtube algorithm hates him so much. I only heard about him thanks to people shilling him on other youtubers, lol.
1:05:00 I feel like Ross just forgets that old games were just as temperamental as new games on their original hardware, and that when they were it took ten times long and more effort on the part of the consumer to fix it
Could we, possibly, maybe, essentially, get a Gothic 2 video as well? I KNOW you covered it for 1 minute and 30 seconds in this video, but there's so much more about Gothic 2 people should know about!!!
The reason guards are sometimes fine with you fighting other prisoners is based on an internal system that tracks who has paid their protection ore. Some people have, some people have not. So if you attack someone that has paid, the guards will intervene, unless you have paid as well. Paying 10 ore at the start lets you just mug a big part of the old camp.
Glad to see your nice and unique overview. Keep doing this masterpiece's. This is maybe sound strange. I can't read and translate by ear fast,that's why I watch most videos on 0.85 speed. And interesting thing about author is fact that his voice on slow speed is still sounds pretty good. Love you Ross❤
@@theuninspired3723 in Sacred 2 there's a quest-chain that's a glorified easter egg. You need to find the in-universe version of Blind Guardian and help them play a concert.
Brings me back to checking the Morrowind boards on gamefaqs and occasionally seeing people making topics about how Gothic was so much better and most people looking at them like a crazy toothless beggar. lol
And here is the latest review of Gothic by the famous Mr. Ross Scott. I then immediately remembered Durmin Paradox's review, searched for it, and re-watched & laughed at that one particular scene which was one of my all-time favorites. Good old days. 🙂
Had to comment on Ross’ comparison to Morrowind. I disagree about Morrowind’s story and music being worse, but I can’t argue with it because that’s just subjective. But I can argue about the enemy spawning and leveling. Morrowind didn’t have that, that didn’t start until Oblivion. In Morrowind enemies don’t level up, they’re always the same strength. And once you kill any enemy or NPC, they stay dead for the rest of the game. You can even kill story related NPCs and the game tells you that you’ve altered history for doing so.
Yeah, Morrowind's music is amazing, and so is the story and especially the lore. But there is level scaling, which I think is what he meant, and although it doesn't completely break the game like in Oblivion, it is there.
Both of you are correct. Basically every humanoid is a static, non-respawning enemy but a large amount of wildlife can respawn and various types of wildlife and daedra spawn based on level brackets. You can tell whether an enemy spawn's level scaled in the creation kit by whether it appears as a ninja monkey. (No, really.)
Yeah, as much as I overall prefer Gothic to Elder Scrolls, one thing I can say for certain that ES does better is music. Especially Skyrim. Even though Kai Rosenkratz's osts are really good.
As far as the bow combat, I looked all the stats up a few years ago when I was playing Gothic 2. If I remember correctly, dexterity increases the damage you do with a bow, while your bow skill determines how far you can shoot accurately. That's why you can't hit anything too far away early on. BUT, arrows can't be parried or blocked, so sometimes, even at point blank range, it's a better option than melee weapons. With melee weapons, your sword skill determines your critical hit chance. You'll notice you'll sometimes randomly do way more damage. Eventually, you can get you sword skill up to where you pretty much always crit. And strength increases your base damage. Also, enemies have a damage threshold. In Gothic 1, if you can't do enough damage to break that threshold, you do no damage at all. In Gothic 2, if you can't break the threshold, you do some small amount of damage. Like 20% or something. So in Gothic 2, you can eventually chip away the health of some enemies that are more powerful than you if you get good enough at blocking and save scum. Someone will come along and tell me I'm wrong, but I think that's pretty close :D
One of my favorite games, ever. I'm only just starting to watch but just wanted to thank you. I've been wondering if this series would ever show up on Game Dungeon, and I'm really eager to see what you think of it.
My Polish housemate in university introduced me to Gothic 18 years ago and I loved the ambience of it ever since. And then I saw this video and it all came back to me. I love these uploads.
Every time you got stuck is because you haven't properly explored the region or the dialogue options. There's no softlock in the new camp by becoming a water carrier, the quest progresses with you rebelling and beating up your oppressors.
How about that: But the light was a torment for Beliar. And all that Innos created was destroyed by Beliar. But Adanos saw that, this way, nothing could exist at all. No light, and no darkness. And so he set himself between his brothers in order to reconcile their dispute. And he did not succeed. But there, where Adanos stood, was a place in which Innos and Beliar had no power. And in this place Order and Chaos were equal. And so the sea was created. And the sea released the land. And there arose all creatures. Trees as well as animals. Wolves as well as sheep. And last of all arose the human. And Adanos was pleased with what was arisen. And he delighted in all the beings equally. But so great was the wrath of Beliar that he came across the land and chose the beast. And Beliar spoke to it. And the beast became his subject. And Beliar gave unto it a portion of his divine power, so that it might destroy the land. But Innos beheld what Beliar had done. And he also bestrode the land, and chose the human. And Innos spoke to him. And the human became his subject. And Innos gave unto him a portion of his divine power, so that he might undo the work of Beliar. And Beliar spoke to another creature. But Adanos brought forth the tide, and the creature was washed from the face of the earth. But with it, the trees and animals were also washed away. And a deep sadness overcame Adanos. And thus spake Adanos to his brothers: Never again shall you walk upon my land. For it is sacred. And so shall it be. But the human and the beast waged war upon the land of Adanos. And the wrath of the gods was with them. And the human slew the beast and it entered in to Beliar's realm. But Adanos saw that Order and Chaos were now unequal and he bade Innos to take his divine power from the human. And Innos, in his wisdom, did so. But Adanos feared for the day in which the beast would return to the land. And so he bade Innos to leave a part of his power in his realm, so that he might restore it to the human if the beast should return. And Innos, in his wisdom, did so.
Ross continues to rule! Definitely the BEST gaming related content as well as humor on YT :) The only show I watch these days. Hope you never stop making game dungeon!
47:35 I mean, in Gothic 2, even though barrier has fallen, they have also mostly ran out of ore and the Mining Colony indeed looks like post-apocalypse setting then
I always thought Gothic would be perfect for Game Dungeon and I am not disappointed. What a nice Christmas gift. Here are some of my thoughts while I was watching (I'll keep the list short): 1. I praise you for including the long cut of you walking from New Camp to Old Camp at 57:10. It perfectly illustrates your point (which I agree with by the way). 2. The gate to the Old Mine should be closed when the cave in happens. You encountered another bug. 3. You are right. Down with the Old Camp. I'm more of a Sect guy. I'm glad you didn't pursue diggers though, most of those guys are alright.
Hey Ross, almost no enemies auto-level in Morrowind. There are levelled lists where, as you level up, different, tougher enemies can appear in some areas (imps might get replaced by atronarchs, that sort of thing), and dremora and Golden Saints will have better weapons. Additionally, enemies are locked to specific areas and some areas never get particularly challenging enemies. For example, you are never going to encounter a dremora lord next to Seyda Neen. Even more important, no NPCs (that I'm aware) of level up. If you have a quest from, say, the Fighter's Guild, to kill some bandits, those bandits will have the exact gear and stats should you approach them at level 1... or level 50. Oh, and the vast majority of humanoid enemies/NPCs do not respawn. The Solstheim Expansion pack is where a number of these do respawn. The major, very notable exception to this, are the werewolves. These things level up and seem to get exponentially stronger by the time you face them if you've been levelling up a lot.
I figured that this game would show up on here eventually; thus, here are some musings. I happen to be German, and Gothic 2 was a huge part of my life back in the days. Bought it when the expansion was already out - a magazine got me curious, believe it or not. And indeed, it felt very clunky at first. However, little did I know that I would soon be playing one of the best RPGs ever made. Now, those familiar with the story of Gothic will know that each game pretty much went through development hell for various reasons, and that the first two, especially the latter, had to be rushed out the door - hence some of the flaws such as an underwhelming story in the sequel. Still, these games brought so much to the table. Outside of the amazing leveling experience, they also felt so immersive. People sort of acting like you would expect them to act, having daily routines, etc. Multiple ways to solve quests, etc. Those days simply felt magical. I did get curious and tried out the original at some point - which was even clunkier and buggier. Playing with just the keyboard felt so weird. But that game, like the second, also had a charm to it and pulled me into its world, much like this video showcases. Unfortunately, the games kept getting worse after that, and Gothic 3 has the wildest stories of development hell of them all. Thankfully, the first two spawned a strong modding community, and one such mod for Gothic 2, Archolos, is about as perfect as it gets. Better than the game that spawned it and full of quality, definitely worth recommending. As for the upcoming remake, I am looking forward to it, if only because it feels lovely to see Gothic return after so many years. I am sure it will miss the mark in certain ways, but things also cannot possibly get any worse than Gothic 4 or Risen 3 (which were just bad). Indeed, I am ready to be "welcomed" to the colony once more.
Another one of these massively underrated German games. Just a few years after Gothic the never flourishing but always underrated-game-producing German games industry finally took its last breaths. Only Anno is left now.
@@517342 It wasn't the taxes. One explanation I read was that the German market was too small. Before Steam and international distribution existed, German games didn't make the neccessary sales numbers to break even before they'd come out internationally. These days they'd probably fare better but there isn't much left.
Honestly, my only real gripe with the graphics is the relentlessly brown color scheme. I mean, I actually had this moment of almost physical pain relief, a very real tension suddenly vanishing from my neck and shoulders, when Ross joined the New Camp and the character got a beautiful _blue scarf_ to rest my eyes on!
As someone who played Gothic many times and got other people into it, I think Ross's review of it is quite accurate, and I agree with most of the critique, but man, he is harping a lot on the "it's not obvious for new players" thing while completely skipping the first thing any new player would do because it's pretty much the only thing the game explicitly tells you to do in the beginning. Namely, talking to Diego and Thorus about joining the old camp. The game does expect you to be a weak nobody in the start, and to get out of this situation, you either poke at manageable enemies while avoiding the tougher ones, or talk to everyone you can to get exp/money for the quests, and I guess Ross was too fed up with the old camp to do the latter. Also, I'm stunned he got only one hard crash and so many dialogue softlocks. My vanilla experience was exactly the opposite.
You take Martian Gothic, you remove The Martian, you've got Gothic. Let's go.
Yeah, this video is objectively half-assed. It contains literaly only half the game compared to the Martian Gothic video.
best comment
@@rezaka116 im still blown away they literally cut the ending out of the console release of that lol.
So you're saying Martian Gothic is what you get when you combine this game with the Matt Damon movie?
This Requital rip off is shameless.
I love that the heavily drugged up cult actually does manage to communicate with a god, but then it turns out that any gods you can only reach via acid trip aren't really the kind you want around.
Who knew smoking the swamp kush would summon an eldrich being
@@grfrjiglstan technically in the lore the gods do tend to have soft interaction power when prayed to, and the brotherhood did also kinda dDos the sleeper with getting the weed powered up with giant mine ant juice and then get a huge party where everyone is invited to smoke as much as they want.
I would have thought that is how you contact the god of hippies.
I think the goverment figured that one out too.
This is basically how Chaos operates in Warhammer.
This game is very special for a lot of people in Eastern Europe. The memories, the lines of dialogue, the music, the characters, the memes. For anyone interested, I've read a lot about the development process of the game from dev interviews and have some fun trivia:
1. The developers are originally from a German town called Bochum. which is located in a valley by the river Ruhr. The most important historic enterprise of the region was coal mining, so the area where Bochum is located has been called "Minenthal" or "Valley of the MInes" for many centuries. There were so many mines in the XIX century, that there were whole miner colonies in the valley, most of the miners were Polish people as well as other Eastern Europeans, whom the locals regarded as cheap labour and often looked down upon.
2. The developers (Piranha Bytes) were making basically warehouse-sim games and small projects before creating Gothic. They used the "Finster" ("Dark") engine, created by a trio of CS students called the "Mad Scientists", who were very inspired by Ultima. Since pretty much everyone involved was either an amateur or never created a game of such scale before, the game had a lot of bugs and weird quirks (and came out years after the deadline they first made for themselves). The pace of video game innovation in the 90s was very quick, so for example the Finster engine was made with Ultima: The Stygian Abyss as a main source of inspiration, which was a 2,5D dungeon crawler with first person-camera and no complex movement involved, it came out in 1992. Then Tomb Raider came out in 1996, and they had to rewrite the engine to create a full 3D, third-person action-adventure-RPG game instead.
3. Most people who play Gothic now complain about the weird control scheme with heavy use of Ctrl+arrow keys. As one of the devs explained, there wes no "default" control scheme for such games when they were developing it, so they just came out with something you can play with both hands without using your mouse on their own, and yes now it feels clunky and dumb, but at the time there were no strict guidelines regarding how the game should be controlled. They added mouselook two weeks before the game released.
4. Kai Rosenkranz, the legendary Gothic composer, came to Piranha Bytes after seeing a recruitment ad in a gaming magazine. Not only did he write the complete soundtrack with a dozen of atmosphere-rich tracks, he did all the sound effects like steps, ambient noises, armor and weapon sounds etc., (using several free stock sound libraries), as well as all the animated special effects like magic, fire and smoke, wrote a whole ass software application for keying animations and binding it to a corresponding sound effect, helped writing both German and English dialogue, drew all the 2D elements of the interface, and after the game came out single-handedly created the website for the game, which he then maintained for several years. When he answered the ad and came to Piranha in 1997, he was 17 years old. His dad had to sign the contract for him. His Gothic 3 tracks were in rotation on the German Classics-Radio, alongside Bach, Beethoven, Hans Zimmer and John Williams.
5. The three guys who wrote the engine never worked on any of the sequels, and all except for one of them never even worked on videogames after that.
There are many more fun tidbits about the development process like the planned multiplayer and psionic class, so feel free to ask if you have any questions. Most of my sources are from World Of Gothic German website, if you are a fan and want to spend a fun evening, check out their "Interviews" tab (with Google translate if you can't read German), these were conducted by the fans and the stories are very cool. There is also a lengthy interview with Mike Hoge (lead game designer and writer) on gothicarchive.org by the Nemesis mod devs.
Another fun fact: Ross mentions "Escape from New York", this is confirmed to be the main inspiration for the story and theme of the game.
fun trivia indeed! thanks for posting :)
Underrated comment. Thanks for sharing
Ultima inspiring a lot of developers back then
Other notable developers were Larian - you can see some similarities with Divinity Original Sin 1-2, the way you interact with items (can pick up and put them elsewhere, some even interact with others) or bake bread in nice, almost organic way
" Ultima: The Stygian Abyss [...] no complex movement involved" dunno, still have flashbacks from platforming/jumping sections
as for controls - they were close to Tomb Raider games. You had less anxiety or confusion in swimming sections if you've played TR before
Thank you very much for this interesting history lesson!!
36:36 - IIRC, the reason some guards intervene and some don't is because the Old Camp is simulating a full-on protection racket, which means there's a whole web of locals who paid off Guard A but not Guard B. So if you try beating them up while in Guard A's turf, they'll turn you into a pincushion for trying to fleece their paycheck; but if you wander into Guard B's turf, they'll just smile and whistle while you beat your mark into a bloody pulp.
They really put an insane amount of thought into how a totally isolated prison colony would function, little details like that go so far in making Gothic such a special experience.
Yep. And since most people won't stand for murder (unless they really like you or really hate the victim, which is the case for pretty much all bandits) you actually have to actively decide to finish enemies off in most instances. If you don't, many NPCs won't bat an eye, but if you do, be ready to be ran out of town or killed in most situations.
I think if you also have paid off "Guard A" he won't do anything either. and yeah these little things make the game really stand the test of time, it makes me wish the huge open world thing didnt take off in the way it did and more RPG games where these "small" focused type games
The moment the game blew me away all these years back was when you went to train how to swordfight and the trainer just goes "hey dumbass, stop holding it with two hands", to which the replay was "oh yeah" and you actually start fighting with one hand.
Edit: looks like Ross never found the sword trainer. Whoops.
yeah i believe it also added more moves like a spinning forward attack and stuff now that you mention it
i did kinda wonder whether Ross found any of them there, considering he was robbing people while jogging :D
Im shocked how Ross of all people is the one that didn't even mentioned training of sword technique, its like playing the game on a hardcore mode.
It unlocks stun locks, combos, new attacks and just generally makes you more faster and deadly.
Its literally fixes a lot of problems he had with groups of enemies, which would probably made him realize how pointless garbage bows and crossbows are in this game (until Gothic 2, where they become viable)
Ross was too stubborn to join the old camp.
@@LazyBuddyBan It's surprising (and honestly worrying) how many people on UA-cam I've seen completely miss the various skill teachers. Many of them hate the combat in the game and get turned off from it, not realizing that at least part of the jankiness is intentional due to your character being untrained. Your character swings the sword like it's a big stick because he doesn't know any better. Get proper training, and you get much better and have totally different moves and combos for one handed (taught by Scatty and Gor Na Toth) and two handed weapons (taught by Lee and Thorus). It's hilarious how Ross had so many issues with enemies and how hard they seemed to be because he accidentally made things so, so much harder for himself. This is one of those cases where he was just too stubborn for his own good :P
i come to the game dungeon to watch ross go on tangents about the logistical, civil and legal implications of things that don't exist
This such an underliked comment, omg. Come to think of it i'm here for the same reason :D
His breakdown of the plot's politics corresponding to real politics hurt in way too real of a way
i keep coming back exactly for this
Same.
You put it into words
Ross, I strongly believe that you just made this Christmas very, VERY special for hundreds if not thousands of Polish and German millennials. There are games considered a cult classics, and there's Gothic. What a treat!
russian and czech as well.
@@sebastiangorka200 I hear you and I rise my glass to you mate! Cheers!
don't forget Ukrainians
Italians too. Gothic was pretty popular here too. Sold like gangbusters. I was in uni at the time and most of my friends were playing it.
At the start it sounds like he didnt done his research
The fall damage avoidance exploit sounds like some otherworldly daoism. "As the ground approaches, simply shift your perspective and side-step it".
Ironically that would be canon in Morrowind
i honestly imagined it as a more grounded "do a cool roll as you land so you don't die"
Just try to miss the ground.
You can cancel fall damage in Fallout: New Vegas by just saving right before you hit the ground, when you reload your velocity is reset. I like to think of it as simply warping reality
Reminds me of how easy it is to fly in the Hitchhikers's guide to the Galaxy: just throw yourself in the ground and miss.
I don't know how it translates to the English version, but in Germany many love Gothic so much because of the harsh, raw and direct language of the characters. It has a very special charm that fits really well with the setting and vibe of the series.
It's because they were written by folks from a region in Germany which was the steel and coal factory of the entire country for a long time, so the game is drenched in the rough charm of people from a working class town/region.
If you’re curious, the Polish localization retains this (at least for the first two games, third one, a lot less) Pretty much every character speaks exactly like that, and some of those lines are/were considered legendary around here. It got to the point where some were saying that this game is only liked because of how good the localization is
Der letzte Scheiß
@@marcst3199 aber behalt's für dich, muss nicht gleich jeder wissen
a lot of the voice cast in english speaks with something of a southern or appalachian accent, which is essentially the american equivalent of like a rougher working type
@@quinnmarchese6313Ah, the Appalachian Plateau, the coal mining central of America.
If memory serves correctly, you can also get into the boarded-up old camp by getting a scroll that transforms you into a beetle and just walk underneath the gate
Gothic is the Chuunin Exam of early 00's gaming
Meatbug and that's how you got the second most powerful sword in a useable timeframe(Gomez has it). Ross also didn't mention how you could talk to the blacksmith in the castle to upgrade your Magic Ore Armor while exterminating the guards.
Ross's indignation with the Old Camp is absolute peak Game Dungeon.
I friggin' love how Ross can effortlessly get into the heads of player characters like this. Cult Tycoon and The Black Mirror were standout episodes for that.
Amazing how fast his logic takes him to "well *obviously* I have to kill them all."
He knows what’s like being a GORDON, that’s for sure. Black Mirror and Quadralien my fave episodes. Shame YT censored the Phantasmagoria 2 video.
@@azmodanpc Ooh, the Phantasmagoria 2 video was awesome for the same reason!
"Dammit Bob, that is IT! You delete Curtis's hard drive and that costs the _company_ money! Do you understand that? We're a small company in the 90s, we don't have backups of those files! You're not being a team player!!!"
It's hilarious how he didn't learn one-handed skills from Scatty, owner of the arena in the old camp due to his hatred of the old camp and thus made his whole playthough so much harder on himself (and didn't find the best part which was unlocking new moves and combos). Classic Ross xD
Classic eastern Europe. You either pay the local mobster up front, or you'll find your fancy car's tires missing. And again. And again. And again.
p.s. Gothic did the NPC schedule (they wake up, go to work, go hang out with others and drink in the evening, sleep, repeat), 1 year before Morrowind... which didn't have it at all, it would take Oblivion, 5 year later, to add that bit in.
Let that sink in 🗣️🔥🔥🔥🚰
that's because Gothic is heavily inspired by Ultima, which was doing that since 1988
Ultima 7 did it, too, before Gothic 1.
The elder scrolls is basically stolen valor for the ultima games, most of the innovations people imply came from Bethesda came from Origin. The first elder scrolls game ripped off the interface for ultima underworld.
@@Skullkan6 Don't water down stolen valor by using that phrase so freely.
The main goal is so worthwhile. Get stronger to save the princess, mehh, get stronger to defeat the generic villain, mehhhh, get stronger to destroy all the people who messed with you while you were still a novice, that's a goal worth fighting for.
This is why people get a lot of joy out of killing Benny in Fallout: New Vegas
It's like in real life.
@@poppers7317 ...You feeling okay man?
So, it's a moble game ad?
@bmetalfish3928 hahaha.. nahh they are tricking you in those to get more money. Here your goal is something you want but can't spend money to achieve. I just love the way Ross has this goal and we all feel that. And when he can teleport inside the town in the end he can run around with his God sword slaughtering every extortion freak there is. It's like despite pennywise being the big bad monster the main goal is getting revenge.
If you're looking for more Gothic, I highly recommend Chronicles of Myrtana: Archolos.
It's a fan-made mod, that's on par with the original games. More like an expansion pack from the old days. Its huge, polished, and captivating.
A lot of modern improvements, completely new world. Story-wise it takes place before the events of Gothic 1.
One of the downsides might be that despite having full, professional level voice acting (they worked with the OG VA-s) its all in Polish.
Been a fan of Ross for 10 years and a fan of Gothic for 15. Now THIS video is the one I've been waiting for.
Ah, another Christmas time game dungeon. Now things are starting to be jolly. Have a happy holidays, I must go be with my family.
Good to see you, admiral. You have a typo there, though! Better fix it once you return from your family. 🫡
EDIT: Well done fixing it!
Ah witj, now things are beginning to make sense, more later.
You deserve it, Admiral! You enjoy it! 🫡
Godspeed, Admiral 🫡
Thanks, Admiral!
Killing all the old camp guards at the end might not be in the spirit of Santa Claus, but it is in the spirit of Robot Santa.
They were very naughty.
Santa Claus is gunning...you down
the hannukah zombie and Qwanzabot are also in support
The Old Camp's Mistletoe is no match for my TOW Missile!
Ross is now certified Pole as he played the most beloved game by Polish people
i thought he lived in poland already?
@@the10ofdiamondscard Yeah well this makes him a citizen. Good thing too, means he can sign the EU citizens' initiative
also certified russian, german and czech.
@@sebastiangorka200 you must play stalker religiously in order to be a true gopnik or vatnik
@@RomanvonUngernSternbergnrmfvusI play Tarkov, do I have a chance?
That skeleton busting out a flying kick is amazing
Gothic skeletons sure know their kung fu. 😆😄
At 1:00:50 The delivery of "an orc shaman is hardly likely to be keen on talking to me" channels the Postal Dude to me for some reason.
Gothic?
I guess Ross is now 100% naturalized European.
A certified Polish guy.
@@misterkefir A proper German bloke
@@StreiterAdanos Ross lives in Poland and Gothic is comically popular in Poland.
One of us one of us
@@czarkowskipawelyt Russia too btw. It has this kinda East-Euro vibe (some people even call it 'Gopnika'). Great game!
Wow can't believe Ross completely missed out on the character who can actually upgrade your combat animations so that your attacks are much better, not just stat-wise. It makes the combat much better as well. I think each camp has one or he might be in only one of the camps can't remember.
Great GD as always
he did tho. he has two-hand level 2 in later footage, you need 1h for that.
@@sebastiangorka200 It is peculiar he didn't touch upon it anywhere in the video considering it is a core part of the gameplay.
Gotta say, I never watch Ross’ videos to emulate his gameplay choices hah more to enjoy the ride of watching him be himself through the game. Cause yeah, a lot of the stuff he gripes about in games he’s played I could care less about or there is a fix to, not always.
Looks like he's got the 1H upgrade when he kills the rice lord @ 36:57
Maybe he’ll bring it up in the next follow up episode
>Go into a dungeon
>Meet orc boss
>Be told boss is invincible
>Leave dungeon
That sounds like a recipe for video game blue balls.
it's actually pretty nice since you get access to the best armor and sword in the game, and can even upgrade it when you go on the old camp rampage by freeing the smith from jail
@@teph1256 But couldn't that have still been done if you got to fight and beat the orc boss?
@@Sewblon Makes it feel pretty good though to come back and beat his smug now-not-so-invincible ass later
In Morrowind you can go to Red Mountain early and talk to Dagoth Ur, and he'll tell you that you're too weak to fight him and will send you away. I don't know if can attack him, but I imagine that he wipes the floor with you since you're underleveled to fight him at that point.
@@georgeoldsterd8994 Its impossible to beat Dagoth Ur without the magic hammer and magic dagger, according to the other characters in the game. So I would think that you couldn't beat him at the beginning.
That opening punch in the face rocked him so hard he grew a ponytail
I feel like Ross would like Arx Fatalis, another fantasy RPG with a cult following. Very unique, too with lots of amazing details and a great atmosphere. Just a small example is how you can mix water, flour, and yeast to make bread dough, then lay it next to a fire and bake bread in real time. Or how different types of armor effect your character's sound effects when moving, running, etc. Or the incredible ambiance of the underground setting. Seriously, even if Ross never plays it, anyone who reads this and likes first person RPGs, emergent gameplay, fantasy, or just wants to experience something new should try Arx Fatalis. Too bad it never got a sequel.
I've showed Arx Fatalis to my friend a few weeks ago. He's amazed and said that it completely ruined Morrowind for him :D
If you want an Arx Fatalis sequel, I highly recommend you take a look at Monomyth.
It's a low-budget indie project, but made by somebody who clearly adores Arx Fatalis.
You can even make pies the same way!
@@ThomasShatter I bought Morrowind on day one. Felt the world was too static and open without anything in direction to go for.
Got sidetracked a bit by Duke Nukem Manhattan Project after about a week then played the demo of Arx Fatalis and bought it, played and enjoyed it quite a lot more.
Where Morrowind was static (pick a flower, and you could still see the flower in the world) Arx had items removed from the world when you picked them up, and placeable.
Where Morrowind felt like flailing your arms at an enemy hoping to hit, mostly Arx felt like animation and gameplay matched.
Morrowind felt like it was built of blocks plopped down, Arx felt mostly sculpted (though a lot smaller)
Arx gave you purpose and direction where you needed to go. Morrowind literally got me to Balmora and went "Why don't you just go faff about a bit?"
And though horribly HORRIBLY janky, I loved the magic system of you having to draw runes, which carried a bit of the same magic system of Ultima Underworld, where you could sort of learn and experient with it.
Only reason I never finished Arx was, that I got to the boss door. Found out I needed those special stones. And I was missing one. I believe I might've dropped it on a floor tile to trigger a trap somewhere in the one area of the game which is not possible to return to.
Arx Fatalis has been on my bucket list for almost 10 years now for exactly the reasons you stated. Also I remember reading that to cast spells you have to remember the gestures and draw them with your mouse. Which is peak immersion and perhaps the main draw that made me take a look at Arx immediately after reading about it in a PC Gamer article. PC Gamer sucks but this was a good thing.
Gothic, the classic sequel to the FMV vampire adventure game Gothos that Ross reviewed 2 years back
So THAT's why I thought he already did this one!
And don't forget the Sci-Fi spinoff they did later, Martian Gothic!
You would think they'd move from an integrated circuit to an operating system in the sequel, not the other way around.
@@stan-bi3hl *Terrible* joke. 👍Keep up the good work.
Today was the day when Stay Forever, one of the biggest German retro gaming podcasts, ended a long-running joke by finally releasing an episode about Gothic after over ten years and 150 episodes.
Not even 24 hours later Ross follows with this. WHAT IS GOING ON?!
Clearly, Stay Forever and Ross are the same person.
@@deathsyth8888 I mean, have you ever seen them in the same room together? I thought not.
So far only a coincidence. If someone else notable releases a video on Gothic, THEN it's time to get paranoid.
as far as we know, this could be the beginning of all future youtube content being centered around Gothic
@@slyseal2091 I for one welcome our new Gothic overlords
58:00 - on fast travel, I always liked Morrowind's compromise where there are very limited options with in-universe explanations. Paying for transit on a silt strider to a few available destinations, and teleporting between mages guilds. It was more like stops on a train or bus route.
This allowed you to cut tedium out of completing certain objectives, but not in a way that allowed you to just stick a pin in the map and check out of the in-game world & still required you to engage with your surroundings.
Morrowind allowed for some great organic journeys. One of my favourite quests is the Temple pilgrimage where you just have to travel across the map to the northernmost island of Vvardenfell, but you can't talk to any NPCs without breaking your vow of silence, so silt striders and teleporters are useless.
And, of course, being able to leap from Tel Branora to Solstheim in a single shot.
yeah, anyone remember those propylon indexes?
I did a no-fast-travel run of Skyrim once, but I still allowed myself to pay for carriage rides from city to city, and I agree - it was still nice to not have to ride across Skyrim again, but there was a cost and I still had to get back to a town first. Made the world feel more alive.
And the boats! Of course, you can still somewhat cheese it by simply leaving a Mark on the Balmora strider platform, then recalling there. From there, you can either use the strider network, or hop over to the ship network by taking the strider to Vivec and walking to the nearby boat.
About colors in the remake - have you heard about ACES? It's cinema format for preserving colors on film. It is very heavy towards green, because human eyes are more perceptive of that color in real world, so it clamps red and blue, resulting in somewhat grayish image. Then you can apply color grading filters to fix that grayness.
And we have gigabrains in Unreal, Blender and Unity, who thought that this all should be applied to games by default, because grayness = realism. But we already have access to all colors in the engine, because it's artificial, so it makes zero sense to artificially clamp red and blue values to then expand them also artificially resulting in bland image. And unless you go into shader settings and fix this idiotic mistake - you will get the same problem that everyone have - bland colorless world.
"grayness = realism" is the dumbest thing I've ever heard! (this is not an attack at you, but at whoever came up with it)
@georgeoldsterd8994 it's probably from the same guys who thought that brown is gritty and realistic, during 7th gen.
So this is where Freeman learned the mysterious lost art of pull ups.
A pretty easy way to make money is by making swords at the blacksmith shop. Robbing the castle early game is nice too.
The game also used to have a bug where you could multiply your smithing supplies while smithing. Made it so much faster. It's my usual way of getting money early on.
@@bjorntantau194blacksmiths Regen their stockpile when starting blacksmithing animation. You can beat up old camp blacksmith unlimited amount of times to make as many swords as you want
39:12 I love that the footage is sped up to the point that the animation actually looks like it's playing at the normal speed.
"I don't expect a colony full of convicts to harmoniously work all the zoning out and switch to farming smoothly." That's exactly how Rome started lol.
I thought they started by killing or annexing everyone.
Nuclear Gandhi in Civilization 5 makes sense - once you have nuked everyone else, you can have peace. :D
They stole the neighboors women and not even the 2 brothers leading them could get along and ended up with one of them killing the other..
Australia?
no it started with some wolf tits
Australians do things like Satellite Reign "despite the best efforts of their government".
This game played a huge part in my teen years. We were answering teacher with lines from the game. School election were for two years in a row win by Pock the Farmer. Unfortunately, the third year "That bastard Lefty" won for whiff.
In the Old Camp, you can fight in Arena, challenge the best fighter, lose and get a voice from one of the Shadows for your bravery. And that’s the whole game -a lot of paths, unorthodox thinking can get you further. Good luck, prisoners.
For me Gothic is all about the atmosphere. Gothic I and Gothic II did a lot of things damn well gameplaywise. But for me it's all about exploring a believeable world that is immersive beyond comprehension. Every NPC has it's place and role in this world. There is no filler content. Even monsters have their rank in a creature hirarchy. And then there is this rough medieval tone. Gothic for me is sitting around a campfire with some thugs drinking beer and smoking some swamp weed. No other RPG ever achieved such a dense atmosphere
Paying the protection money really does make life easy, diego gives you a list of dudes to talk to and all of them give you stuff that's manageable for a new character. Then you hit the rpg character infinite wealth bit eventually anyway. I don't think i've ever played a thief in game actually but yeah being able to do stuff like this is part of why gothic is so unusual even today
There's a great bit early in gothic 2 where you can rob a farm at night if you feel like it. But then if you show up the next day to talk to the farmer he immediately goes "oh right, and you just HAPPEN to show up today huh? Give it back you little shit"
also worth noting that the old camps system is so bad that the guards are not immune to it the guards will only step in if someone bought there protection and won't if no or both parties did guards are not treated as special by other guards they are treated as having paid protection money meaning you can just pay protection money and then mug every guard
This. Ross not paying protection results in him missing a lot.
Ross: " _played_ a thief???"
It's about the principle of the matter!
@@Descriptor413 agreed I like that ross didn't cave
AFAIK your damage (+ flat the stat the weapon scales with) is subtracted from the enemies armor first before touching HP. Simple example: 10 Dex, bow does 10 Damage, enemy has 25 armor -> 25-20=5 -> you do no damage. The spikes in the enemy HP bar you saw were crits since these passed that armor threshhold.
Correct.
Plus, in Gothic 1 lurkers are having much less *Arrow Protection* than their *Weapon* Protection. Some monsters do have much greater Arrow Protection than their Weapon Protection, like Trolls and Zombies, but that's mostly the few exceptions than the rule. You can't kill that lurker with your melee weapon until much later in the game, I even remember how I needed to complete almost all other quests in the first chapter and grind a lot to actually kill that dam lurker.
12:47 If Vivec has taught me something when I played Morrowind is that CHIM is a power to be used for the greater good. In games like Gothic ``save scumming´´ is a game mechanic with a different name, and that's called precognition.
I do like that save states are canon in the elder scrolls lore.
Was not expecting a Whitest Kids U Know reference in Game Dungeon, but I wholeheartedly approve.
Thank you Ross for an episode on Christmas each year. Some people don't have a huge amount going on this time of year so thank you for helping out. Merry Christmas.
One of the best Gothic retrospectives I've seen. You really understood why Gothic is so beloved until this day. I've watched videos about Gothic where I questioned myself if these people really understood what it's all about
What is it about then?
@@bbuggediffy How you progress in this world with the factions and combat and how the map opens more and more the stronger you get. Best Open-World design ever
36:44 - I believe the "pattern" for guards allowing fights is entirely dependant on protection money.
There are three seperate areas governed by different guards in the Old Camp, and if you and the opponent paid the protection money (or neither of you did), they will not intervene. If the victim didn't pay - no intervention either. If you didn't pay and the victim did - the guards will join in.
Note, that these guards work seperately - if you pay just one and your victim paid all of them, you still run the risk of guards you didn't pay off intervening.
Also, a note about protection money: if I recall correctly, only Bloodwyn asks you on a daily basis, because he's a greedy piece of sh*t. The other guards handling protection don't.
As a gothic-veteran I give you much credit for the editing of the video: 45 min for the first chapter - not even 30 min for the rest.. Very well chosen!
One of the benefits of the inventory system is being able to stash your ore in an unattended container. Since other characters check only your on-person inventory when they try to rob you, that helps complete the old camp trainers and other content before you inevitably have to range out further.
Ah yes now things are starting to make sense
You're not the Admiral!!
More on that later!
@@witchfynder_finder It's Christmas, he's with his family.
@@witchfynder_finderat least let him go to gis family as the world ends
I actually got gothic (2) for xmas as a kid, along with half life 2 and vampire bloodlines. gothic 2 was a game I knew nothing about but I ended up playing it non-stop for weeks while neglecting all my other gifts. still one of my all time favorites until this day.
three titanic games
great christmas haul. lucky you!
I personally liked Gothic 2 a lot more than the first game.
But I also liked Morrowind more than both, so Ross and I just have different taste, lol.
I still remember the first time i saw my blrother play Gothic 2. It didn't look mind blowing, like HL2, but after I started playing myself I became obsessed with this game. I even draw a map, armor, swords, etc. and played it in school with imagination. Gothic 2 became a standard for me in what the RPG must be for years and it still is in many ways. It have such a good complexity in its world building and quests.
For example, i still remember how i played one of the starting quests:
-You must go to the upper city.
-But guards don't let me go, because i am not a citizen.
-To become a citizen you must become a tutor for one of a masters.
-And what should i do?
-You must complete a joining quest of one of the masters and get permission from the others.
I started to get permissions from masters, and one of them said:
-Niece of one of the masters owe me money and don't want to pay it. Bring the money and i will get you permission.
-Ok.
Going to that nice, she starts mumbling:
-I don't have the money, I am a widow, blah blah.
-Ok.
Bring out the sword and kill her. Take the money from the body and bring it to the master.
-DID I TOLD YOU TO KILL HER? TAKE YOUR BLOODY MONEY AND LEAVE.
And the uncle master wasn't happy too:)))
At least i got a 100 gold, which, of course, I payed as a fine.
Hard days and PTSD of ex convict.
Bloodlines rules but I cannot envy you playing the release version
Every single time I'm in another marathon of this series, Ross uploads ANOTHER new one. How does this guy do it??
My secret is that it’s ALWAYS a Game Dungeon marathon, 24/7
Use your power for good!
HE IS IN UR WALLS
Considering all gothic 2 got was a shout out (i think its so much better than 1) i won't get my hopes up for that episode.
But maybe the incredible gothic 2 mod Chronicles of Myrtana Archolos deserves a spin. Its basically gothic 2.5 and has so many improvements on the core mechanics and incredibly tight map design like youre used to.
Lmfao bro you skipping all the Orc quests is hilarious to me. I love the authentic way you play games.
Christmas came early (slightly) this year and it’s everything I could have ever wanted and more. Thank you Ross! And to everyone else watching it with me. Wherever you are, whenever you’re reading this, I hope you’re having a wonderful day.
Thanks man. It's been rough times for me, but neither good nor bad luck lasts forever. I'll get through this. I hope your holidays are peaceful and relaxing.
Great! A Ross video on a game from my childhood that I love dearly, given to me on Christmas Eve, when I'm at my loneliest and saddest! I can still the aching in my heart for a short reprieve via this wonderful indulgence! Merry Christmas!!!
Speaking of pull-ups in 3D games, Dark-engine Thief (and System Shock 2, IIRC) has similar mantling. Though I don't know if Ross loves Thief quite like Mandy does, even if Ross is roleplaying as the Speedrunner Mario of burglars. He's four parallel universes ahead of every inmate in the Old Camp.
MGS2 has you doing pull ups to increase your grip meter as well.
I remember writing Ross an email about Gothic 1 what feels like year ago and now its here as christmas present.
Thank you so much! This is one of my all time favorite games!
The rune based fast travel is absolutely the single best fast travel option in the history of RPG. Because it is physical in-game object with lore attached to it. It just works so well.
Glad Ross doesn't shy away from the classics in case he thinks theyre already discussed plenty.
The Deus Ex GD is probably the one I've rewatched the most
I much prefer this to some of the more recent game dungeons where he's discussing some absolute slog of a game with only brown as a color palette for an hour and I can't even finish the video.
"AAAAHHH - strafe"
this is the best christmas present thank you ross!
thank you ross for this lovely Christmas gift! This year has been hard but your videos (new and old) help a lot. I know you can't post more videos since you're fighting the good fight, but I really appreciate this video. thank you again!
You shouldnt have killed Lefty. If you let him live, you can say "Hm..The farmers look thirsty..." and force him to deliver water forever.
There exists dialogue for basically every douchebag enemy in the game once you defeat them. In the swamp camp some guy refuses to stomp weed and attacks you. After you defeat him he ask exasperated why do you even care. "I just want to watch you stomp"
Re: being impressed by the geography, I remember feeling exactly the same way about Gothic II when I played it because the landscape just felt so natural unlike pretty much any other game at the time. Also I swear I remember reading the first Gothic described as something like 'like Morrowind but set in a valley' once.
I'm surprised he didn't mention the jank ladders, unless I missed it.
Gothic ladders will have you dismounting in an akward way, or prematurely, or you'll just jank off it in some other way, having you fall to your death. This happened at least a few time in the mines.
And people complain about Half-Life ladders (and HL2 ladders for that matter, there's a little something called THE USE BUTTON)
1:00 I care about the lore.
Merry Christmas dude, love your videos
I've watched several videos about this game and this is the first one that really communicated what this game has to offer. Very thoughtful commentary too.
The sidestepping to avoid fatal fall damage bug is also present in the original dead island game, however that game didn't have as much verticality to its maps. It seems to be an oversight for several devs.
Everybody complementing the game selected but im in deep grief because a past 'ross talks' video promissed mizzurna falls for christmas game dungeon (lost media JP, twin peaks marvelous ps1 clone). yes ross i was one of the crazy viewers that mailed you about it. Merry christmas anyway!
It would be great to see him cover it, but in the meantime Grimbeard's video on it is pretty good if you've not seen it already.
@@PointyHairedJedi Grimbeard is amazing, shame the youtube algorithm hates him so much.
I only heard about him thanks to people shilling him on other youtubers, lol.
@@planescaped Grimbeard = Goth's Game Dungeon. Never miss a video
Grims mizzurna falls video is fantastic you should watch it
This is revisionist history. I said in that chat a bunch of people recommended it, but I probably was not going to cover it.
The entire country of Poland salutes you for playing our most culturally significant game
Gothic is german tho, no?
@rezaka116 no, we have culturally appropriated it from the germans. Taken in British Museum style.
little dwarf did a really good LetsPlay in Polish.
@@rezaka116 Fake news
I am from the Czech Republic and everyone here knows Gothic saga is actually Poland´s national treasure.
1:05:00 I feel like Ross just forgets that old games were just as temperamental as new games on their original hardware, and that when they were it took ten times long and more effort on the part of the consumer to fix it
I hope you're ready to solve 7 different IRQ conflicts!
@XanthinZarda that was the stuttering and device manager thing, right? I think I had to solve one of those on a damn vitural machine once somehow...
@@RolandTheJabberwocky Not just that, but in some cases, it'd prevent you from using your sound card in DOS games. At best.
Could we, possibly, maybe, essentially, get a Gothic 2 video as well?
I KNOW you covered it for 1 minute and 30 seconds in this video, but there's so much more about Gothic 2 people should know about!!!
Maybe in 10 years. He's got to do a Gothos retrospective first.
Another episode to rewatch every month for the rest of my life.
Civvie doing Half Life 2 and Ross doing Gothic is an amazing one two punch of christmas gifts for me specifically
It truly is a magical Christmas for us this year!🤍🎄☃
not to mention Hbomberguys cameo in Civvies video
@@shadoeboi212 fuckin exactly. my jaw hit the floor when i first saw.
Not to mention Sseth and Warlockracy
You guys need a tad higher standards for presents.
I actually did get Gothic for Christmas as a kid, and Gothic 2 next year. Best gifts ever, my favourite childhood games!
The reason guards are sometimes fine with you fighting other prisoners is based on an internal system that tracks who has paid their protection ore. Some people have, some people have not. So if you attack someone that has paid, the guards will intervene, unless you have paid as well. Paying 10 ore at the start lets you just mug a big part of the old camp.
Glad to see your nice and unique overview. Keep doing this masterpiece's. This is maybe sound strange. I can't read and translate by ear fast,that's why I watch most videos on 0.85 speed. And interesting thing about author is fact that his voice on slow speed is still sounds pretty good. Love you Ross❤
The german version has an in game concert by the band In Extremo, very nostalgic, had some whiplash from the game not being in German haha
@@tofast4ya Petition to have more Games have InEx concerts in them
Is that only in the german version?
It can be reenabled with code editing in the US version
@@Skullkan6 Ross missed out!
@@theuninspired3723 in Sacred 2 there's a quest-chain that's a glorified easter egg. You need to find the in-universe version of Blind Guardian and help them play a concert.
ah yes, morrowind vs Gothic, the hottest holywar of the start of the second millennium
Except most Morrowind players didn't even knew there was a war.
that and old Fallout fans vs everyone else when Fallout IP was aquired by Bethesda and then made FO3
the flame wars were glorious...
@@Rychlewicz in your corner of the world, maybe. but not in mine.
just like Mafia 1 vs GTA 3
Brings me back to checking the Morrowind boards on gamefaqs and occasionally seeing people making topics about how Gothic was so much better and most people looking at them like a crazy toothless beggar. lol
And here is the latest review of Gothic by the famous Mr. Ross Scott. I then immediately remembered Durmin Paradox's review, searched for it, and re-watched & laughed at that one particular scene which was one of my all-time favorites. Good old days. 🙂
Durmin Paradox the potential GOAT
Nostalgia (for simpler times)
Now Josh will have to wait few years to make his Gothic video from Was it any good? series
@@sjoerddondersteen1337 Too bad the last video he made was nine years ago. Cripes. What happened to him?
Had to comment on Ross’ comparison to Morrowind. I disagree about Morrowind’s story and music being worse, but I can’t argue with it because that’s just subjective.
But I can argue about the enemy spawning and leveling. Morrowind didn’t have that, that didn’t start until Oblivion. In Morrowind enemies don’t level up, they’re always the same strength. And once you kill any enemy or NPC, they stay dead for the rest of the game. You can even kill story related NPCs and the game tells you that you’ve altered history for doing so.
Yeah, Morrowind's music is amazing, and so is the story and especially the lore. But there is level scaling, which I think is what he meant, and although it doesn't completely break the game like in Oblivion, it is there.
Both of you are correct. Basically every humanoid is a static, non-respawning enemy but a large amount of wildlife can respawn and various types of wildlife and daedra spawn based on level brackets. You can tell whether an enemy spawn's level scaled in the creation kit by whether it appears as a ninja monkey. (No, really.)
Yeah, as much as I overall prefer Gothic to Elder Scrolls, one thing I can say for certain that ES does better is music. Especially Skyrim. Even though Kai Rosenkratz's osts are really good.
Elder scrolls lore is literally best in the business if you ask me.
@@dopaminecloud or at least it was before they started retconning and dumbing it down to appeal to the casuals. >.>
As far as the bow combat, I looked all the stats up a few years ago when I was playing Gothic 2. If I remember correctly, dexterity increases the damage you do with a bow, while your bow skill determines how far you can shoot accurately. That's why you can't hit anything too far away early on. BUT, arrows can't be parried or blocked, so sometimes, even at point blank range, it's a better option than melee weapons.
With melee weapons, your sword skill determines your critical hit chance. You'll notice you'll sometimes randomly do way more damage. Eventually, you can get you sword skill up to where you pretty much always crit. And strength increases your base damage.
Also, enemies have a damage threshold. In Gothic 1, if you can't do enough damage to break that threshold, you do no damage at all. In Gothic 2, if you can't break the threshold, you do some small amount of damage. Like 20% or something. So in Gothic 2, you can eventually chip away the health of some enemies that are more powerful than you if you get good enough at blocking and save scum.
Someone will come along and tell me I'm wrong, but I think that's pretty close :D
One of my favorite games, ever. I'm only just starting to watch but just wanted to thank you. I've been wondering if this series would ever show up on Game Dungeon, and I'm really eager to see what you think of it.
We're eating good tonight, boys
Now 3 of my favorite UA-camrs have reviewed Gothic in their own way. What a great Christmas gift.
Ross, Mandalore, Seth?
I was gonna guess Warlockracy as I just assumed he has done a video on it, but turns out he hasn't, lol.
@@planescaped weird, I feel like he did one?
@@Palora01 Didn't Sseth only do one for Gothic 2?
@@Guymanbot97 yes afaik
My Polish housemate in university introduced me to Gothic 18 years ago and I loved the ambience of it ever since. And then I saw this video and it all came back to me. I love these uploads.
Every time you got stuck is because you haven't properly explored the region or the dialogue options. There's no softlock in the new camp by becoming a water carrier, the quest progresses with you rebelling and beating up your oppressors.
Never thought I'd see the day
Ross is truly European now
The falling strafe bug reminds me of that bit in asdfmovie 15
"AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAHHI'm bored"
Lester, Milton and Diego . I will never forget them.
What about Gorn? 😅
@@CalamityCain too black for OP i assume
@@CalamityCain guess I never was that into the new camp
How about that:
But the light was a torment for Beliar. And all that Innos created was destroyed by Beliar.
But Adanos saw that, this way, nothing could exist at all. No light, and no darkness.
And so he set himself between his brothers in order to reconcile their dispute. And he did not succeed.
But there, where Adanos stood, was a place in which Innos and Beliar had no power.
And in this place Order and Chaos were equal. And so the sea was created.
And the sea released the land. And there arose all creatures. Trees as well as animals. Wolves as well as sheep. And last of all arose the human.
And Adanos was pleased with what was arisen. And he delighted in all the beings equally.
But so great was the wrath of Beliar that he came across the land and chose the beast. And Beliar spoke to it. And the beast became his subject.
And Beliar gave unto it a portion of his divine power, so that it might destroy the land.
But Innos beheld what Beliar had done. And he also bestrode the land, and chose the human. And Innos spoke to him. And the human became his subject.
And Innos gave unto him a portion of his divine power, so that he might undo the work of Beliar.
And Beliar spoke to another creature. But Adanos brought forth the tide, and the creature was washed from the face of the earth.
But with it, the trees and animals were also washed away. And a deep sadness overcame Adanos.
And thus spake Adanos to his brothers: Never again shall you walk upon my land. For it is sacred. And so shall it be.
But the human and the beast waged war upon the land of Adanos. And the wrath of the gods was with them.
And the human slew the beast and it entered in to Beliar's realm.
But Adanos saw that Order and Chaos were now unequal and he bade Innos to take his divine power from the human.
And Innos, in his wisdom, did so.
But Adanos feared for the day in which the beast would return to the land.
And so he bade Innos to leave a part of his power in his realm, so that he might restore it to the human if the beast should return.
And Innos, in his wisdom, did so.
Ross continues to rule! Definitely the BEST gaming related content as well as humor on YT :) The only show I watch these days. Hope you never stop making game dungeon!
"Brilliant but permanently drunk artists" oh boy that straight up reminded me of brigand oaxaca, which kinda has similar graphics to gothic
47:35 I mean, in Gothic 2, even though barrier has fallen, they have also mostly ran out of ore and the Mining Colony indeed looks like post-apocalypse setting then
I always thought Gothic would be perfect for Game Dungeon and I am not disappointed. What a nice Christmas gift. Here are some of my thoughts while I was watching (I'll keep the list short):
1. I praise you for including the long cut of you walking from New Camp to Old Camp at 57:10. It perfectly illustrates your point (which I agree with by the way).
2. The gate to the Old Mine should be closed when the cave in happens. You encountered another bug.
3. You are right. Down with the Old Camp. I'm more of a Sect guy. I'm glad you didn't pursue diggers though, most of those guys are alright.
3:35 They're standing so close together it could be considered a Star Trek episode
Hey Ross, almost no enemies auto-level in Morrowind. There are levelled lists where, as you level up, different, tougher enemies can appear in some areas (imps might get replaced by atronarchs, that sort of thing), and dremora and Golden Saints will have better weapons. Additionally, enemies are locked to specific areas and some areas never get particularly challenging enemies. For example, you are never going to encounter a dremora lord next to Seyda Neen.
Even more important, no NPCs (that I'm aware) of level up. If you have a quest from, say, the Fighter's Guild, to kill some bandits, those bandits will have the exact gear and stats should you approach them at level 1... or level 50.
Oh, and the vast majority of humanoid enemies/NPCs do not respawn. The Solstheim Expansion pack is where a number of these do respawn.
The major, very notable exception to this, are the werewolves. These things level up and seem to get exponentially stronger by the time you face them if you've been levelling up a lot.
I figured that this game would show up on here eventually; thus, here are some musings. I happen to be German, and Gothic 2 was a huge part of my life back in the days. Bought it when the expansion was already out - a magazine got me curious, believe it or not. And indeed, it felt very clunky at first. However, little did I know that I would soon be playing one of the best RPGs ever made. Now, those familiar with the story of Gothic will know that each game pretty much went through development hell for various reasons, and that the first two, especially the latter, had to be rushed out the door - hence some of the flaws such as an underwhelming story in the sequel. Still, these games brought so much to the table. Outside of the amazing leveling experience, they also felt so immersive. People sort of acting like you would expect them to act, having daily routines, etc. Multiple ways to solve quests, etc. Those days simply felt magical.
I did get curious and tried out the original at some point - which was even clunkier and buggier. Playing with just the keyboard felt so weird. But that game, like the second, also had a charm to it and pulled me into its world, much like this video showcases. Unfortunately, the games kept getting worse after that, and Gothic 3 has the wildest stories of development hell of them all. Thankfully, the first two spawned a strong modding community, and one such mod for Gothic 2, Archolos, is about as perfect as it gets. Better than the game that spawned it and full of quality, definitely worth recommending. As for the upcoming remake, I am looking forward to it, if only because it feels lovely to see Gothic return after so many years. I am sure it will miss the mark in certain ways, but things also cannot possibly get any worse than Gothic 4 or Risen 3 (which were just bad). Indeed, I am ready to be "welcomed" to the colony once more.
Another one of these massively underrated German games. Just a few years after Gothic the never flourishing but always underrated-game-producing German games industry finally took its last breaths. Only Anno is left now.
The guy above you says it's Polish. ?
@@vincelang3779 The studio which made it was German, but the game became a cult classic in Poland even more so than in Germany.
It's not easy trying to make a game studio in Germany with all these taxes...
@@KanaiIle Same in ex-soviet countries, it has a cult following here.
@@517342 It wasn't the taxes. One explanation I read was that the German market was too small. Before Steam and international distribution existed, German games didn't make the neccessary sales numbers to break even before they'd come out internationally.
These days they'd probably fare better but there isn't much left.
oh my god I asked for this on a Fan Chat Livestream like 4-5 years ago, and he said it's coming.
He wasn't lying.
Honestly, my only real gripe with the graphics is the relentlessly brown color scheme. I mean, I actually had this moment of almost physical pain relief, a very real tension suddenly vanishing from my neck and shoulders, when Ross joined the New Camp and the character got a beautiful _blue scarf_ to rest my eyes on!
As someone who played Gothic many times and got other people into it, I think Ross's review of it is quite accurate, and I agree with most of the critique, but man, he is harping a lot on the "it's not obvious for new players" thing while completely skipping the first thing any new player would do because it's pretty much the only thing the game explicitly tells you to do in the beginning. Namely, talking to Diego and Thorus about joining the old camp.
The game does expect you to be a weak nobody in the start, and to get out of this situation, you either poke at manageable enemies while avoiding the tougher ones, or talk to everyone you can to get exp/money for the quests, and I guess Ross was too fed up with the old camp to do the latter.
Also, I'm stunned he got only one hard crash and so many dialogue softlocks. My vanilla experience was exactly the opposite.
Thank you for making these videos, Ross. I never knew that I needed to watch someone's ranting for hours. Love it.