Final thoughts on Gothic

Finished up Gothic today, with about 23 hours on the game clock (and at least a third again as much spent on retries). My initial impressions of it were pretty misleading, as right after the long and completely nonlinear first chapter, the game’s structure becomes completely linear. After that point the game is still strung together via NPC conversations, but 90% of the conversations from that point on are there purely to advance the game’s plot in a single direction. The player can still travel anywhere on the map (provided he’s strong enough to get past ‘gatekeeper’ monsters placed at specific points here and there) and discover hidden areas, but most of the time outside of towns in Chapter 2 and onward is spent either in dungeons or travelling between quest nodes.

The way you’re sent between mostly distinct areas and given generally one dungeon per chapter to munch on, the couple of “collect these five items” quests (yes, crystals even!), and the little detours you can take into neat hidden areas for goodies give the game a sort of Zelda-ish flavor that, along with the automatic lockon in the battle system, makes me think the Germans who made Gothic have spent as much time playing Japanese adventure games and RPGs as other PC RPGs. The way the design shifts so drastically between the two styles in the course of an early chapter transition makes me wonder how solid this game’s design document was.

In addition, there are a lot of little things about the game that mark the game pretty clearly to me as the developer’s first project (and indeed, it’s Piranha Bytes’ first release). The game as a whole lacks the sort of polish I’ve become used to seeing in similarly ambitious PC RPGs and adventure games. There are little glitches in animation and breaks in the context sensitivity that was plainly a big part of their design, both of which grate on my nerves little by little and toss me out of immersion just a bit when they happen. Level and world design both have some striking structures and vistas here and there, but a lot of space is taken up by what seems like rubber-stamp level design and wide areas of…nothing much. Still, the prison colony has a definite sense of place, and each camp and area on the island has a distinct feeling.

I’ve become mostly disenchanted with the game’s combo-based melee system, as it becomes pretty useless once you get into heated combat against several enemies simultaneously. I found it difficult to ever get off more than three or so hits in any of the possible chains while in combat, because taking a hit interrupts your chain, and if you’re fighting two or more enemies at once you’re going to be taking hits almost constantly. Also, even if you land every step of a chain, it’s very rare that each hit of the chain will actually land. Depressingly, the most effective melee tactic in the game is to simply swing your weapon left and right, back and forth, over and over again. This chains very easily, interrupts enemy attacks easily, and is difficult to be interrupted.

The combat has a target lock-on system that works just like the z-targeting that originated in Zelda 64, except it automatically selects an enemy based on which enemy the player has in the center of the screen. It’s not foolproof at all, and it’s sometimes difficult to make it sort out which enemy you really want. It stays locked onto whatever enemy you just killed after it dies, so it’s easy to accidentally keep whacking away at a corpse while you’re trying to attack the next enemy going after you. These kinds of problems, and the way the game makes them worse by sending packs of enemies at you in many spots, make the tactic of pulling one or two enemies away from a pack (whenever possible) absolutely essential.

The part of the game I like most is the writing. The setting and the plot’s events, despite their fantasy bent, are all very much grown-up and fairly realistic within the confines of the genre. People act like people: they try to solve problems in ways that make sense to them, they’re often afraid of what they don’t understand, some smoke pot to relax, some take advantage of situations for their own gain regardless of others, and some can’t accept that the solution to their problems that they’ve sought for years might be a sham. The first chapter provides an excellent introduction to the setting and the different factions and social factors at play. While your choice of faction doesn’t really have any impact on the game as a whole, it was nice to get around the island and see it for myself while I was making my decision, rather than having the game shoehorn all of that background into a completely linear plot. And while only a few of the voiced characters really seemed to have a defined personality in their dialogue and speech, the ones that were well-written made it all worth it (especially the main character, with his dry wit and backhanded comments here and there).

I’m glad I decided to go back and play the first game in this series, rather than starting on Gothic II and its expansion first. While supposedly the first game’s plot doesn’t have much bearing on the second, I think I’ll appreciate being familiar with the characters from the first game that show up in the second. Plus, it’ll be very nice to see what the team has done to improve on the first game flaws, and indeed which of the first game’s flaws do get fixed.