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anilEhilated posted:. Gothic 1 had the best control scheme in history  it's the only 3d action RPG you can control entirely with one hand if you so wish.
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Jul 31, 2022 22:17
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| # ? Jun 10, 2024 12:50 |
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Bayonetta and Nier Automata can both be played entirely with one hand. To be clear I don't mean it only in the  sense, they can genuinely be played with one hand, which is handy if you only have one hand.
SIGSEGV fucked around with this message at 22:42 on Jul 31, 2022 |
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Jul 31, 2022 22:38
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Update 01: No Rest For The Wicked https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NsgIdB5IeGY This cutscene basically summarizes the very end of Gothic 1 and how it ties into Gothic 2. Our nameless hero stabs The Sleeper, the Sleeper brings its temple down on the nameless hero as it dies and the barrier around the Valley of Mines collapses. Then, some time later, Xardas, mighty wizardman, magics us up from our stony grave. Then the instant that ends, we're tossed into a conversation with Xardas. I'll be recording conversations that are either very long, have very good/bad voice acting or just for the hell of it. I will, of course, be providing summaries afterwards for anyone who doesn't feel like watching the video. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UmUE8n0cibQ Summary:  Good, you're back, we need to save the world again. I don't even get a break? I was planning a holiday, maybe tending to my hobbies... Like you even have any hobbies. Okay, fine, but... wait, why am I level one again? Where are all my legendary magic weapons? My cool armor? My stash of gems, stolen goods and swampweed joints? Do you have any idea how much magical power it takes to pull someone out from a collapsed unholy temple? Be glad you've still got hair and soft tissues. Well, what is it this time? When you killed the Sleeper, he commanded the dragons to COME- Pfft. -and also someone unlocked the expansion where golems are apparently punching wizards and you can claim an overpowered weapon to trivialize parts of the game. Now go visit the local paladins and demand their mightiest dragon-smiting artifact so you can save the world. I'm sure they'll hand it over with no fuss or bother. Do I at least get to loot your tower for anything not nailed down before I set out? Telling you no would just make you do it when I wasn't looking.  Welcome to Gothic 2, one of the few games where you start in the middle of a giant pentagram drawn by a necromancer and yet you're the good guy.   Having been around the block a few times, Xardas has put a giant inoperable gate between us and any particularly valuable poo poo he owns, so as a response we're going to yoink everything else while he's reading books, the big nerd.  Mind, we'll also want to read every book we come across. Some of them have useful info, like this potion recipe, others just contain lore, but more or less every book we haven't read before will provide a pittance of XP(at the current stage, 1/20th of a level. But those level-up costs will be rising.).   I'm gonna steal your mysterious artifact and your soft drinks, Xardas! I should have summoned the Avatar instead.  Most NPC's in the game have some sort of schedule which involves walking around, doing chores and sleeping. Just about anything they can interact with, we can interact with as well, for instance, we can sit in this comfy chair.   It serves no gameplay purpose, but I feel like it's a nice touch that it's not just an NPC-only interactible.  Stoves can be used to cook raw food into more effective healing items, and we're also going to yoink a log of Xardas' firewood as our first weapon.      Heading upwards first gets us more of Xardas' magic soda(healing potions, really) and a painting that appears to be of orcs lurking in ambush outside a city. I think this is actually a piece of concept art.    I think Xardas' tower is actually one of the highest locations in the game, if we fall off the railingless ledges here, we're dead and flat.   Hmmm... looks like someone has a camp in the deep valley besides the tower. Probably worth keeping in mind.  This ominous statue is a Shrine of BELIAR. Beliar is one of the three deities of this world, being the bad boy. Adanos is the neutral peacekeeper/knowledgeman, and Innos is the fiery defender of justice who has Paladins doing his grunt work. I don't believe there are any Adanos shrines in Gothic 2, but there are a few Beliar Shrines and plentiful Innos shrines. Praying at a Beliar shrine allows us to sacrifice some of our PERMANENT max HP for an immediate gold reward. By the time the max HP loss is trivial, though, so is the gold reward, so I see no reason to worship Satan as he doesn't really provide a decent pay-off.   Next to the evil shrine is Xardas' library. We're going to read all this for XP. I don't even notice the words, I just watch number go up. I even read Ready Player One for the XP.     The key on the table is for a small chest in the corner containing some lockpicks we don't know how to use yet, a dagger that the heavy branch is better than and a small amount of gold. Now that we've got some XP, though, let's review our character sheet.  Levelling up has two effects, firstly it increases our hit points, secondly it increases our Learning Points. All other boosts, outside of a few rare boosts from items and consumables, are acquired by finding the right trainer and spending Learning Points. Stats define what we can wield, since most weapons have a Strength or Dexterity requirement. Additionally, Dexterity is automatically added to the damage of all ranged weapons, and Strength to the critical hits of all melee weapons. Melee strikes are "critical" a percentage of the time equal to your skill with them(At 30% and 60% breakpoints your attacks also become faster and more fluid). Ranged weapons skill, on the other hand, literally affect the range you can hit things at, something that the game is honestly relatively poor at communicating. Most of the other stats and skills are relatively self-explanatory.    Meanwhile, it's time to pick through Xardas' last couple of rooms before we're free to go rob other people.    If you think the game looks dark and interactibles are hard to make out, you're not wrong. However, when you look in their general direction they light up and the game is generally quite good about "latching on" to them in a generous way, so you're rarely left hunting for one fiddly little pixel to let you interact with stuff. Interactible items are also normally in sensible locations: on tables and shelves, scattered around ancient skeletons, next to gravestones, etc. or they're relatively large, like chests, and thus spottable.     Yeah, that's a skeleton in the hanging cage.  Interestingly enough, despite the prevalence of barrels and crates in Gothic 2, I don't think any of them ever actually contain anything and they're practically never interactible. You're thankfully never required to go around smashing them for randomly generated loot, since most meaningful loot in the game is hand-placed in any case. Considering that Xardas' basement largely contains just a bunch of alchemy reagents that we don't know how to use yet, it might be tempting to skip over, but Night of the Raven added a new type of equipment: Belts. This innocuous-sounding item is actually a Belt of Force that provides a +5 to Strength, and considering that I think the highest Strength requirement for any weapon in the game is 100 and we start at 10, that's actually a pretty big deal, percentage-wise.     Oh thank God, I thought this entire quest was going to be brown. I'll equip the Heavy Branch now we're outside and things might try to kill us. It's a nice touch that equipped weapons are visible on our model, as well as any enemy's model. We can actually tell what they're going to whip out and try to murder us with.   I'm not getting down into the valley just going over the edge but... that looks like a ramp.    As I jog the hero over to get a look at this nice pond and waterfall, a small green horrible creature starts yapping at me and threatening me with a stick. Meet the goblin. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XPAgo0aAm3M Gothic 2 combat is a bit of an unusual beast, and functions differently depending on whether you're fighting "humanoid" enemies(i.e. weapon-wielding) or animals. Weapons can be blocked, fangs and claws can't, so against animals your only choice is to dodge, while against humanoid enemies you can also block. Humanoid enemies also tend more towards "linking," i.e. when you aggro one, it also pisses off its buddies and they come join in the fight even if they're out of their own personal aggro ranges.   In addition to various random potential pieces of junk, gold, gems, snacks, etc. enemies always drop the weapon they're wielding which you can loot off them. The game never "cheats" by having their weapons vanish or break or otherwise be moved out of reach on death.  At first glance, this pond has nothing except a nice view, but the developers are sneaky fellas, so if we walk around clockwise into the trees...     There's a skeleton surrounded by a few low-tier scrolls, a bottom-tier bow and some arrows.  It's possible to have a ranged and a melee weapon ready for drawing at once. At first glance, with 15 damage compared to the heavy branch's 10, and consuming ammo, the bow seems like a bit of a poor deal. But, if you account for the permanent dexterity bonus to ranged damage, it actually deals 25 points of damage and is great for whapping enemies, even at short range, before they get close and can get stabby.     Coming back from the trees, a little half-sunken path leads to a cave dug into the shore of the pond, and it's emblematic of Gothic 2's caves which are insanely nerve-wracking to explore. A combination of the FoV, the third-person camera, the narrow caves, the roots and spiderwebs obscuring your view and the unnerving underground ambience, including a grinding of rock that keeps making you wonder if there are secret doors or other things popping open all the time, combine to make you extremely paranoid. You're always worried about blind angles where something can come out at you, and "natural" predators don't tend to wear bright colours, they tend to wear muted, natural colours that blend into the grey, brown and green of nature. Don't mind me, just putting an arrow into this goblin's head while you write an essay about pits.The bow actually one-shots the goblins, the main challenge is that the game doesn't tell you when you're "in range" and thus it's easy to waste arrows and time firing off your ammo too early.    Gothic only has one big non-human race considered to be equal to humans in terms of intellectual complexity, the orcs(and possibly, I suppose, demons). Goblins are kind of like angry primates who've learned how to make fire and like to hit people with sticks until they die.     These two were camped out in what looked like an old mine hanging out next to some chests full of food and money.    I wonder if it's really this smart to be going into an old mine wearing rags and armed with a stick. At least it's just been goblins so far. Say, what's that sound?      By Innos, bugs were not meant to be that big.Field Raiders are relatively unscary as far as animal enemies go. They have no tricks other than rushing at you and trying to eat you, but as they're animals they'll do a minimum of dodging and can't block, so often the superior response is to rush in and just crack them with the stick before they get a chance to swing at you.     Huh, I guess this leads down to the valley below. I hope whoever owns that campfire's friendly...    Much like caves, Gothic 2's off-the-road forests tend to be dense and, for a lack of better term, primeval. Low-hanging branches, bushes and underbrush tend to mean that something could easily be lurking to jump out at you.  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ef-R6Vca6FE Lester! You're alive? Barely. After the Sleeper died, all us cultists went insane for a while. Only for a while, right? Well, I thought so, until I saw a dragon incinerating people and a tower suddenly appearing on the cliff up above. Now I think I may still be crazy. Nope, absolutely real. Dragons are here to kill us and Xardas conjured up that tower. Well, gently caress. You going to do something about that? Seems like I have to. You should go hang out with Xardas until the plot has a demand for you. I've got to go to Khorinis and piss off some paladins. They're not going to let you in without a good excuse, you should pretend you've been out gathering herbs for an alchemist. Just grab ten similar plants and the idiots at the gate will probably let you in. Anyone with half a functioning eye probably noticed a pair of wolves rushing past during the convo. Gothic 2's animals have a predator/prey hierarchy where wolves, for instance, will chase giant rats to kill and eat them. However, humans tend to be pretty intolerant of predator animals and will generally run off to smash them like how Lester just charged in and flattened the two of them with his hammer.  Looting Xardas' tower comprehensively and picking every plant so far has already put us at 8 out of the 10 of a single plant we'll need to get entry to Khorinis, and we can find everything else we need down here.   As well as wolves. Animals are interesting in that most of them will "posture" before attacking, clearly trying to warn you off. Approaching closer or staying in their warn-off radius for too long will cause them to charge to the attack. It's a small detail, but enough to make animals actually feel like animals rather than just killer NPC's. The lone exceptions are some very high-tier predators who clearly consider humans food.    Near the end of the valley lurks the Bloodfly, a big insect that tends to turn up in small packs and is functionally identical to wolves except better camouflaged between plants.    And if you go all the way down and circle around a boulder, is a small hidden cave.    It contains a few rats, and one of the game's odder loot items, "leather satchels." They're worth X amount of gold and, when interacted with, pop that much into your inventory. A few of them are quest items, and opening them for their loot can screw up the quest, but that's about it.     The big "treasure" is the rusty sword at the end. It's technically an upgrade, being a 30-damage one-handed weapon over our 10-damage branch, but also requires 30 strength, so we couldn't wield it yet if we wanted it to. Either way, that's the valley tapped out of content, time to head back up and continue towards Khorinis.     Returning from the cave also gives us a nice view of Xardas' tower from below. The spiky battlements really does make it look like the ominous lair of a dark necromancer.     Past another wolf, we come upon a small rocky overhang with a lone fella standing over two dead goblins. If we booked it here quicker, we could've helped him take them out, though he's perfectly capable of doing so on his own.    (annoyed) drat. I don't know where they're all hiding. You kill one, and shortly afterwards they're all back again. (slyly) Wait a moment. I know you. You're the fellow who was constantly begging arrows from me in the Valley of Mines. Your name is Cavalorn, right? Ah. I see you haven't forgotten me after all we went through in the cursed colony. Where are you heading?The paranthesized stage directions are, by the way, in the original dialogue text. Here we can tell him we're headed to Khorinis, to the Valley of Mines or nowhere in particular. I decide to be honest with him. To the city. (laughs) Well, well. To the city, eh. You may run into problems with the guards.They aren't letting just anyone in any more, since the area here is swarming with bandits. In the past few days, one of those former psionics from the Valley of Mines came by here. He said he constantly goes in and out of Khorinis. He went into the valley below the big tower. There must be a way in there somewhere near the waterfall. Maybe you should talk to the fellow.Psionics is an interesting description of Lester's former cult, which were basically Satan-worshipping weed-smokers. What are you doing here? I'm sitting tight. If it hadn't been for these damned bandits, I wouldn't be here. What was that about bandits? Have you slept through the last few weeks? Eh... I'm talking about all the riff-raff from the penal colony that are making themselves at home here in the area. Plundering and murdering for all they're worth. (sighs) I guess I'm lucky they didn't kill me. I let down my guard for one moment, and they clubbed me from behind. No idea how I'll get all my stuff back now. You were robbed by the bandits? (furious) Yes. They beat me down and tossed me to the goblins for lunch. It was damned important stuff. A letter and all my money. I absolutely have to get it back. But without someone to watch my back, I'm not going back there. That cowardly rabble... Can I help you with the bandits?Killing the bandits is something you want to do in any case, and having Cavalorn along makes it notably easier. (slyly) Maybe. But as scrawny as you look, you surely haven't held a proper sword in your hands for weeks. Well. I don't have any choice but to take your offer. My time is running out. So, pay attention. Down this path here, you'll find one of those filthy holes in the ground that bandits like to hide in. The fellows there are the same ones who stole my stuff. Let me know when you're ready and we'll nab the rabble. I need better equipment. Those swine haven't left me much. I can give you a wolf knife. Will that do for now? You call that a knife?The Wolf Knife is actually a nice upgrade, it does 15 damage compared to the 10 from the Heavy Branch and still only requires 10 Strength to wield. It's also possible to squeeze him for a couple of healing potions. We can also get a bit more exposition from Cavalorn before we run off to fight. Interesting armor you're wearing. Don't you belong to the Shadows any more? Shadows? They haven't existed since the fall of the Barrier. The moment we could finally leave the Valley of Mines there was no reason for me to stick with them. Now I work for the Water Mages. I belong to the 'Ring of Water'. Tell me more about the 'Ring of Water'! I'm not really allowed to talk about it. All I can do is send you to Vatras. He is the representative of the Water Mages in Khorinis. The best thing would be to talk to him. Tell him you come from me. Maybe he'll take you on as one of us. We urgently need more good people... Weren't you and your people enemies of the Water Mages back then? Now that the penal colony no longer exists, everyone is on his own. Most of us former prisoners are still being hunted. The Water Mages were able to get my sentence commuted and now I can move around freely. Let's mix it up with those bandits. Sure thing. Just keep my back clear, ok? Now they're in for a nasty surprise.  Cavalorn hoofs it at top speed and I barely keep up with him as he reaches the first bandit, I draw the Wolf Knife, preparing to fight, and...  Cavalorn oneshots him. Why'd he need my help again?  I stop to loot the corpse and Cavalorn rushes on past me. I'm sure he'll be alright.    I reach the entrance of the cave in time to hear swearing and swording from inside.     I'll loving say. What a badass. Then I can finally fulfill my mission. I've lost too much time already. What sort of mission... ? (to himself) Ah. Yeah. First I have to get into the city and then later... (sighs) I don't know how I'm going to get all that done in time. (drily) What about me? (appraisingly) Mmh. Why not. You could take the letter into the city. Then I'll have a bit more time to take care of my equipment. One of the bandits must have the letter in his pocket. Take it to Vatras, the Water Mage in the city. You'll find him in the Tempel of Adanos. He preaches there all day. Tell him that I wasn't able to get it done. And if he asks where I am, just tell him I'm already on my way to the meeting point, ok? Oh, yeah, one more thing. First buy some decent clothes from the farmers. Otherwise you may be taken for a bandit. Here's a couple of coins.If we went here without Cavalorn, the bandit at the entrance would pretend to want to help us, and invite us inside for our own safety, at which point the three bandits in the cave would attempt to kick our rear end. This is a much better outcome.   Cavalorn is also a teacher, and I take the chance to have him teach me Sneak, because you better believe some people are going to get robbed before this LP is over. I never found sneaking to be useful for combat purposes, but it's very useful for burglarizing purposes.  The +3% one-handed skill is a bonus from the Wolf Knife, apparently, which doesn't seem to be listed when inspecting it in your inventory.    Corpses get looted and then I paw over some of the notes we found on the bandits.   What the hell? Only 30 pieces of gold for killing me? I'm going to have words with this "D."    Passing through a narrow crevice, the land opens up ahead of us and we reach our first Shrine of Innos. Shrines of Innos take gold, rather than life, donations, and provide semi-random stat boosts for it. Right now I can't afford to make maximum use of them, so I leave it be...  After looting all the offerings around it. Interestingly this has no consequences at all, so load up on free food and wine that some peasants left for Fighty Jesus.    Running into the wooded area past the statue brings us to a large farmstead where some fella is patiently watching over a bunch of sheep. Seems like a nice calm job, that.   I saw how you came out of the mountains. You can be glad you didn't come by here three weeks ago. We would have taken you for an escaped convict. And we made short work of those! You look completely done in. (distrustful) What do you want here? I was attacked by bandits in the mountains.I mean, yeah, that's definitely one way to put it, Mr. Hero Man. Not COMPLETELY unrelated to the truth. Those filthy rabble! They were probably the same bastards who took one of our sheep last night! You had terrific luck. Most people DON'T get away alive. Those bandits won't trouble you any more ... Why? Are they dead? They picked a fight with the wrong guy... Thank Innos! Here - it isn't much, but I want you to have it! I'll tell the others about this!In this case the wrong guy was named "Cavalorn." Also Maleth here gives us some bottles of wine, which are conveniently enough the items we'll need to resolve another minor quest here on the farm. I'm on my way to town. The way you look, you'll have to bribe the guards to get in. And you have to know what they want to hear. And that would be? Well, for example, that you're from Lobart's farm and want to go to the smith in the city. But that won't do you any good. You don't look like a farmer. I need better equipment! I can imagine. But I'll tell you right now: we don't have anything to give away! If you can pay for what you want, Lobart will sell you something. Otherwise, go to him and ask him if he has work for you. Where can I find Lobart? Well, on the farm, of course! The farm belongs to him! And don't try messing with him! He's thrashed a lot of tramps and thrown them off his farm.There are four ways to get into Khorinis: Bribery Plants as per Lester Getting some decent clothes at the farm And a fourth way we've yet to find out about. I already complete the requirements for the first two, but I find the farm quest somewhat interesting as a little starter intro area.   Also after the conversation Maleth promptly runs off to hack up a wolf with his sickle. He's serious about shepherding.    Note that it's getting dark. Most NPC's have a day/night cycle, but it seems to be acting a bit off this first time I arrive at the farm.  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=w1iQkcYzP4A It's interesting to note that the King/Peasants question from Lobart has no "right" answer. If you say you support the Peasants, Lobart complains that Onar is about to drag them all into a civil war, if you say you support the King, Lobart complains that the city guards confiscated a bunch of his property in the name of the King. Greetings, farmer! Give me a quest! Pick up turnips, receive shirt. Then I shall pick up your turnips as if the world itself was at stake!We can actually afford the work clothes right away, but each chore we do around the farm(killing the bandits counts as one) lessens the price by 10 gold, so we may as well do that. We could also just sneak into the farm and steal the clothes, they're present all the time, but that'll make us persona non grata on Onar's farm. Unlike a lot of videogame NPC's he's smart enough to recognize that we're wearing his stolen pants. It's not a desperately important location we'll be revisiting a lot, but it's still a consequence.    Picking up the turnips is effortless. The next task is to walk into Lobart's house and ask his wife for chores.   It's an interesting fact, but I believe practically all windows in Gothic 2 are "false." I.e. they exist on the outside of the building, but not the inside, presumably for loading reasons. Cave mouths and doorways tend to be blocks of solid darkness until you get close enough, which is likely related to not overloading PC's of the era.    I've got a few turnips here for you ... Great! (laughs) That should be enough to fatten those guys up! Since you're here anyway - I saw a traveling trader pass by here a few minutes ago. I think he stopped on his way to town. Go to him and see whether he's got a decent frying pan for me. Give me the gold, and I'll go see the merchant for you... Are you saying I can trust you? Just don't spend the money on booze, do you hear?!Note that we can absolutely just walk off with the 25 gold she gives us and never talk to her again.     I have no idea why VINO here has his name in all caps, unlike literally everyone else in the game, but he guards the last chore to make the clothes from Lobart cheaper.   The same as always. A lot to do, not enough money, and with a bit of bad luck the orcs will come tomorrow and burn down our farm. The king's paladins have occupied the whole city. But I can hardly believe they'll move their butts out here when the orcs attack us. Can I help you? I'm looking for work. Do you know anything about working in the fields? What is there to know? Ah! In that case ... I think we're fine here, thank you. If you want to work for Lobart as a day laborer, I can only warn you. He pays people like you really miserably! He offered to sell me some clean clothes cheap if I help out on the farm. Hmm. I don't have anything for you to do, but you can bring me and the boys something to drink. Fetch me a bottle of wine and I'll tell Lobart that you were a real help to us (laughs mockingly). Here's your wine. I'd better not ask where you got it from, eh? (laughs) Who cares? Lobart will hear only the best about you.Easiest discount on a pair of pants I ever got. At this point it's like, midnight, though, and I decide to go take a nap before heading over to that merchant Lobart's wife mentioned.     Normally sleeping in an "owned" bed gets people upset, but since the NPC cycle seems a bit odd here, no one gets upset, even if Hilda's location resets as though she just woke up from the bed I'm sleeping in.      https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=A2Xt7BvaLe8  Hmmm, you look new. I'd like to buy a frying pan, please. How about an extremely suspicious solution for the low, low price of one unspecified favour? And also a frying pan? And also a frying pan. Deal!Canthar's offer is about the most obvious trap imaginable, but it's also CONTENT and thus will be shown off.    It turns out Hilda gets pretty pissed with you if you're slow to bring back her frying pan, but she still tells Lobart you helped her. Sorry, it took me a while. Here's your frying pan! Arrh, give the thing here, then. The very nerve - unbelievable!Now let's get back to Lobart and collect our new duds which we will surely wear for a long time.   Well, we'll see... You've worked the field for me. You helped my wife. Vino says you were a real help to him. And that's saying something - he doesn't usually hold with day laborers. Maleth says you chased the bandits off. The bastards have caused us a lot of trouble. Thanks to you we're rid of them!Each task takes 10 gold off the original 70 gold price of the clothes. Give me the work clothes, then. There is a chest in my house where you will find clean things. But don't even think about taking anything else without asking!   Every new set of armor is a full set of body armor, Gothic 2 doesn't bother with separate armor pieces, helmets or the like, and upgrades are reasonably rare.   It's a small upgrade, but the hero looks notably less ragged now.    The standing stones at the top of the hill are home to a few more Field Raiders, which get arrowed because I want to poke around behind them.     There's another one of these expansion-spawned Stone Tablets which are currently useless, also the rooftops visible over on the left of some of these screenshots are the aforementioned Khorinis. Lobart's farm is just on the outskirts.    ...is that guy dressed like a pirate?https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=J9UD70QFvNE Fess up, are you a pirate? No, I got lost on the way to a costume party and now the guards won't let me in. That seems incredibly unlikely. I'll pay you fifty gold for your clothes. Oh man, a twenty-gold profit! What a deal!Greg is another expansion NPC, like Cavalorn. I don't believe you're required to sell him your newly acquired clothes(and their armor value), but I'm sure we can manage just fine without it. What are the odds someone's going to stab us?   It's also worth noting that NPC's rarely just teleport to locations, they actually physically travel there and get into fights along the way. Most of them are pretty tough and able to handle themselves, but some can get in trouble.    What is it? YOU aren't getting in here, my boy! Why not? As ragged as you look, you're sure to cause nothing but trouble here! We've got enough rabble in the city. We have no use for people without money. I'm bringing some herbs for Constantino the alchemist. (slyly) Really? Then you won't mind showing me what you've brought. (approving) Mmh. Looks good. All right. In you go. But don't cause any trouble, understood?Crass bribery, Canthar's pass or wearing the farm clothes also works. Interestingly, the militiamen have special dialogue if you're a member of a group we can't join just yet. Getting there without qualifying for any of the other conditions would require some tough navigation and fighting(if it's possible at all), or just sprinting through the city with the guards in hot pursuit until we reach the other side. I know that going to the right of the walls brings you into a dead end with some nasty enemies, and I believe going around to the left also leads to a dead end, but it bears investigating later.   Here comes another guy with too much to say.https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cG-kHmkqCHk  What do we have here? A new face? A new face here to warn you about dragons, demons and the end of the world. Maybe you should try getting a job first. Oh, and I also want your order's most sacred of artifacts. Scram before I send you to the Valley of Mines like the last guy who tried starting trouble. What'll it take to make you take me seriously? Get a job, join the military, now get out of my sight and don't cause any problems. And Lothar means it, too. We're not getting any closer to the Eye of Innos until we're a respectable citizen or have some other form of leverage. Now we COULD get a job and then join the militia, but there are two other ways to get access to the Eye and we should probably learn about those before making our choice. VOTE Where to next? A) Explore Khorinis B) Ignore Khorinis for now, see what's outside C) Jump into the sea and start swimming, this island sucks.
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Jul 31, 2022 23:55
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Man, I expected to be writing out a lot more dialogue, but just this little jaunt from Xardas' tower to the gate of the main town, barely an hour and fifteen minutes of gameplay, forced me to insert way more conversations as video to avoid going over the 50k character limit for the post. Gothic 2 is wordy, especially considering that all dialogue is voiced, and the voice acting is rarely bad(except for a few slip-ups like Lothar's voice actor when he was suddenly talking about expansion content clearly recorded some time after the original game. ), even if it's not always super high quality either. I'd rate it as Deus Ex out of 10, having a unique character of its own without being polished.
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Jul 31, 2022 23:58
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Clearly the most natural progression of events is to jump into the sea and swim with C. Maybe we'll meet an actual pirate!
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Aug 1, 2022 00:05
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Right, so we meet a couple of returning characters from Gothic 1 already: Cavalorn was basically just a shopkeeper and trainer for all things archery-related, but Lester played a bigger role than that. For one, he was the hero's way into one of the factions: should the player desire to join the cultists at the Swamp Camp, Lester is perfectly happy to con his own people into accepting the protagonist by means of faking having visions. What's a bit more important, though, is that Lester was part of a small gang of prisoners who were willing to work together despite the factions' differences and later proved key to undoing the Barrier. All in all, he was a dependable ally, the whole demon-worshipping thing aside. e: I'll also say we need to see the sea with C.
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Aug 1, 2022 01:49
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Bugs are easy and fun to kill for profit, and boy does this island have some big bugs
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Aug 1, 2022 02:43
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Any chance that you can bump up the gamma, Purple? Edit: I also just found out that there is a Gothic 1 remake in the works. Brilliant JustJeff88 fucked around with this message at 02:56 on Aug 1, 2022 |
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Aug 1, 2022 02:53
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I vote for A, let's just look around here before running off elsewhere. We don't have to do any quests, but just get a feel for the place. I think I tried Gothic back in the day, but never got anywhere. For one thing, I think I couldn't find any cheats for it. For another, while I love the idea of a "go-anywhere-do-anything" game, I always struggle with them because I like having structure... and having an optimum way of playing them so that I can get OP quickly and steamroll the bad guys.
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Aug 1, 2022 05:58
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You're putting the vote up to us? Clearly we must explore the C.
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Aug 1, 2022 05:59
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A, seems like a good idea. Maybe we can see something exciting. Unless the expansion changed it the path to the right can be used to travel around the city. "His last order was: COME! And they came. All of them. Even the dragons." 
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Aug 1, 2022 07:40
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JustJeff88 posted:Any chance that you can bump up the gamma, Purple? I did, actually, and the brightness as well, but it didn't seem to make anything but a very minor difference. Poil posted:Unless the expansion changed it the path to the right can be used to travel around the city. From my memory the path to the right ends in a low valley, with a cave, filled with Wargs and even a pair of Shadowbeasts and some Black Goblins. If I get a B vote, though, I'll go duck my head in there and y'all can see how it comes of as a result. Also I knew that line about the dragons would catch people's attention. It's funny if you're internet-poisoned.
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Aug 1, 2022 08:47
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I like the VA in this game, at least the MC. He's just tired of all this bullshit.Shei-kun posted:You're putting the vote up to us? Not a bad idea at all.
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Aug 1, 2022 08:59
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I'm going to suggest A but exploring the deeper corners of it where someone who's not exactly an upstanding citizen would have to go to, rather than all the official businesses. What's the spoiler policy around secrets/stashes that aren't explored initially (that you may or may not come back for)? That's one of the things I liked about Gothic the most; both that there are small things throughout the world to find, but also that a lot of them have explanations that more or less make sense. e: Also I don't remember, but I think it's technically possible to basically join a faction without actually talking to the guards/Lothar, which then triggers other special dialogue as well?
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Aug 1, 2022 09:24
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Red Mike posted:What's the spoiler policy around secrets/stashes that aren't explored initially (that you may or may not come back for)? That's one of the things I liked about Gothic the most; both that there are small things throughout the world to find, but also that a lot of them have explanations that more or less make sense. If it's something I haven't reached yet, or something I might potentially loop back for later(i.e. a cave that's currently very likely to get our nameless hero eaten in one gulp), please don't bring it up. But if it's something I've very clearly walked right past like a great big moron doofus idiot person, feel free to share.
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Aug 1, 2022 09:59
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PurpleXVI posted:If it's something I haven't reached yet, or something I might potentially loop back for later(i.e. a cave that's currently very likely to get our nameless hero eaten in one gulp), please don't bring it up. But if it's something I've very clearly walked right past like a great big moron doofus idiot person, feel free to share. That's the problem, not sure if it's you not remembering/knowing about them, or something you're planning for later! Neither of the two I'm aware of so far have any major gameplay implications (enemies or overpowered weapons/items), so I guess I'll raise them up spoilered just in case: "Xardas has put a giant inoperable gate between us and any particularly valuable poo poo he owns" is actually not strictly true and there is a way to open that gate from within the tower itself; in fact it's one of the first instances where you find out there are things that don't get highlighted but might still be interactable. If I remember right, there isn't anything particularly good inside anyway, or at least nothing you can use immediately. And I don't think you're ever told about this in the course of the game normally? At the back of Xardas' tower, which you can reach by climbing or by dropping from the top in specific places, there's a few small items along with a set piece that roughly describes how the tower "appeared overnight".
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Aug 1, 2022 10:28
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Huh, interesting on that latter part. I never tried dropping down because I have a pretty healthy respect for heights in Gothic 2, especially since falling turns you into a physics object that can jump and skip on impact. It's not unusual to have a survivable drop down to one ledge, from which you then skip/slide over the side and go flying into the sunset where you really don't survive the landing.
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Aug 1, 2022 10:30
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You can climb up to it instead from the right spot near the door, even though it looks like it's not low enough (in fact as you grab the ledge it'll actually lift you upwards in an odd way). I think the ledge you're supposed to drop to instead is slightly blocked by the shrine now so it's not super obvious that you even can drop down. e: Also, you need to have a good respect for heights in this game, because weird physics means you will sometimes fall the equivalent of 2 feet and still somehow take terminal velocity levels of fall damage (the number of times I've died walking off of small wooden stalls in a particular marketplace). If I remember right, the fall damage at least pre-NOTR was also partially affected by FPS/simulation speed, so if your old PC was too slow to run the game properly then a lot of falls might be less survivable.
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Aug 1, 2022 10:32
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Oh man, Gothic! I had Gothic 1 and Gothic 2 when I was little, but I think 1 must have been pirated or something because it had German keybindings and no voice acting. I was really disappointed in 2 when it turned out a returning character I was quite fond of had a silly voice. Balls to the main plotline, go wander around in the woods for a bit.
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Aug 1, 2022 10:46
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I know that we haven't seen this combat in the game just yet but something is bugging me and I'm pretty sure that it's this game. I have some very vivid memories of a certain type of encounter with an enemy with specific weaponry: Please correct me if I'm wrong. I remember that the AI involving archery is really weird, every time that I encountered someone with a bow they would just circle around me at their maximum distance and keep firing away. I also remember that trying to take them out with a melee weapon was near impossible as every step towards them meant that they'd just back away and keep their distance. I vote for B so we can explore the surrounding area before we make a decision to go one way or another.
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Aug 1, 2022 12:15
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PurpleXVI posted:From my memory the path to the right ends in a low valley, with a cave, filled with Wargs and even a pair of Shadowbeasts and some Black Goblins. If I get a B vote, though, I'll go duck my head in there and y'all can see how it comes of as a result. I've got the dragon line forever burned into my memory since I was a teenager.
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Aug 1, 2022 12:23
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Rocket Baby Dolls posted:I know that we haven't seen this combat in the game just yet but something is bugging me and I'm pretty sure that it's this game. I have some very vivid memories of a certain type of encounter with an enemy with specific weaponry: I don't recall the enemy archery AI being that bad. Mostly I remember that using your own archery generally gets troublesome since the AI is good at playing keep-away and runs in zig-zag patterns until the very last bit of their approach. The problem with that being that Gothic 2 has no manual aiming, all you can do is to lock on to enemies and fire away, which never takes the AI's movement into account. It's generally good against animals, who move in less complicated patterns most of the time, and at this stage of the game tend to get dropped by one or two arrows. But as enemies get beefier and start involving intelligent humans and humanoids, archery, in my experience, became less and less viable. In any case, as soon as we get an enemy that isn't a wolf, a goblin or a large cockroach which I stomp in ten seconds(or human enemies that an allied NPC stomps in seconds. ) I'll record some COMBAT FOOTAGE.
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Aug 1, 2022 12:43
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I think the point about enemy combat is valid in general, not just for archery. A lot of it is tuned such that generally you want to be 'over-levelled' before you actually deal with any combat, otherwise any mistake you make (failed to dodge/block, accidentally back up against a wall that isn't obvious, missed the pattern of attacks) takes off a good chunk of your health. And specifically for intelligent enemies they'll do things like circle around you at a distance, in a way that makes it impossible to just steamroll them even once you're stronger. This is part of why I mentioned before that the combat really is designed to almost act like an MMO/RPG where you're expected to be kiting enemies/luring them away from the pack, and sometimes abusing terrain/pathfinding quirks in order to be able to win. There are at least two encounters in the early game that you're basically expected to do this for (or to cheese it in other ways), or to avoid the quest/solve it in a different way. I never really struggled with the combat itself because the mechanics are pretty simple, but I got really frustrated with some of the quirks/bugs around it. The number of times I died to bloodflies even past the early game...all because if you're on a slope and using certain weapon types your swing literally cannot reach them. e: I don't know if I'm misremembering, but I believe at least in the original Gothic 2 the initial path ended up being an introduction to combat, of sorts. You'd pass a sheep (that you could attack if you wanted to), then a goblin (with a weapon so you could parry/block), then a pack of wolves (which you couldn't block, and there being multiple was harsh; but any time you ran away far enough they'd stop chasing). Cavalorn wasn't at the fire there but instead there was a group of goblins (teaching you that humanoids with weapons can still be a problem in groups; blocking doesn't solve everything). And then the bandit camp introduced you to actual intelligent combat (one of the enemies would try to flank, one would always use a ranged weapon; I think one even had a scroll that you could loot if you killed him quickly enough). Red Mike fucked around with this message at 13:05 on Aug 1, 2022 |
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Aug 1, 2022 13:00
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PurpleXVI posted:I don't recall the enemy archery AI being that bad. Mostly I remember that using your own archery generally gets troublesome since the AI is good at playing keep-away and runs in zig-zag patterns until the very last bit of their approach. The problem with that being that Gothic 2 has no manual aiming, all you can do is to lock on to enemies and fire away, which never takes the AI's movement into account. I must have had a glitched encounter which is probably why it sticks out in my memory so much. The archer was constantly walking around me sideways in a perfect circle no matter where I moved, plinking away until he hit an object or edge of the scenery and just forced his way through or over it.
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Aug 1, 2022 13:13
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Aren't some enemies very resistant to arrows or flat out immune?
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Aug 1, 2022 17:41
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Red Mike posted:e: I don't know if I'm misremembering, but I believe at least in the original Gothic 2 the initial path ended up being an introduction to combat, of sorts. You'd pass a sheep (that you could attack if you wanted to), then a goblin (with a weapon so you could parry/block), then a pack of wolves (which you couldn't block, and there being multiple was harsh; but any time you ran away far enough they'd stop chasing). Cavalorn wasn't at the fire there but instead there was a group of goblins (teaching you that humanoids with weapons can still be a problem in groups; blocking doesn't solve everything). And then the bandit camp introduced you to actual intelligent combat (one of the enemies would try to flank, one would always use a ranged weapon; I think one even had a scroll that you could loot if you killed him quickly enough). There's no multiple wolves, but otherwise that's correct. Cavalorn's presence actually completely ruins the "combat tutorial." Poil posted:Aren't some enemies very resistant to arrows or flat out immune? I believe some enemies are specifically resistant to non-blunt weapons, more accurately.
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Aug 1, 2022 19:47
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Mastering combat is against the Piranha Bytes spirit. The way of the hero is to hoover up all the easy experience in a region until he's able to brute force his way through the next major obstacle.
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Aug 1, 2022 20:02
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And as soon as you need to fight a stronger human character, find the right spot to stand in to glitch their pathfinding so that you can just hit them but they can't hit you. That's pretty much been my experience of Gothic combat. It's probably no wonder that I naturally gravitated to ranged weapons and other forms of attack.
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Aug 1, 2022 22:11
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Also looks like a vote for C so far. I'm sure our brave protagonist will enjoy a nice swim after having been trapped under a mountain for three weeks. Probably needs the wash, anyway.
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Aug 1, 2022 23:15
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I'll throw in a vote for C as well.
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Aug 2, 2022 02:33
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Oh yeah I almost forgot: sneak is technically a waste of learning points. Only walking and running makes noise, jumping doesn't (unless they patched it in the gold edition). Not that it matters.
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Aug 2, 2022 08:39
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PurpleXVI posted:If we went here without Cavalorn, the bandit at the entrance would pretend to want to help us, and invite us inside for our own safety, at which point the three bandits in the cave would attempt to kick our rear end. This is a much better outcome. PurpleXVI posted:There are four ways to get into Khorinis PurpleXVI posted:persona non grata on Onar's farm PurpleXVI posted:Animals are interesting in that most of them will "posture" before attacking, clearly trying to warn you off. Approaching closer or staying in their warn-off radius for too long will cause them to charge to the attack. It's a small detail, but enough to make animals actually feel like animals rather than just killer NPC's. The lone exceptions are some very high-tier predators who clearly consider humans food. PurpleXVI posted:the Bloodfly, a big insect that tends to turn up in small packs and is functionally identical to wolves anilEhilated posted:Cavalorn was basically just a shopkeeper and trainer for all things archery-related
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Aug 2, 2022 20:38
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Den Store Frelser posted:
Yep, that was a typo on my part. Den Store Frelser posted:Almost identical! I think wolves will approach nearby corpses that are outside their normal movement range while Bloodflies don't. Bloodflies also have a very different pattern of movement when fighting, being more prone to circling and having including a "running" attack that often sends them flying far past you if you evade it. Also true, despite a lot of creatures being stat-wise just bigger or smaller numbers, without any special qualities, many of them attack in different ways, and attempting to use the same pattern of swinging and dodging on two different animals is likely to get you badly hurt.
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Aug 2, 2022 20:53
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PurpleXVI posted:
PurpleXVI posted:From my memory the path to the right ends in a low valley, with a cave, filled with Wargs and even a pair of Shadowbeasts and some Black Goblins. If I get a B vote, though, I'll go duck my head in there and y'all can see how it comes of as a result. I'm a really big fan of how the devs designed the city of Khorinis, so I'm going to vote A. Edit: since you talked about it when you went into the forested valley, Gothic 1's forest was also similarly oppressive in atmosphere. It's something the devs did really well in both games.
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Aug 2, 2022 21:40
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radintorov posted:Edit:
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Aug 2, 2022 23:00
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anilEhilated posted:To be fair that's mostly the knowledge that there's a non-zero chance that a shadowbeast is lurking behind the next tree. Many animals, like wargs, are also faster than the player character, so if they latch on to you, they WILL get in a few bites before you get out of there, which makes the potential of being ambushed in the forest even spookier.
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Aug 2, 2022 23:17
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Ah, so excited to see this LP! Gothic 2 is one of my favorite games and hits me right in the nostalgia. I replayed it about a year ago and it still holds up decently well, at least, in my very biased opinion. I'm glad you noted that the NPCs have schedules and that you can interact with all the stuff they can. Gothic 2, and especially Gothic 1 a year earlier, were some of the first 3d RPGs to make the world a lot more immersive. NPCs seemed like they had lives (or at least, routines), different factions and locations have distinct vibes (Gothic 1 Swamp camp for life). They even make some attempt to make the world/economy believable, like having that farm we just visited just outside of town, or the whole prison camp setup in Gothic 1. And edit to add: Gothic 2 came out nearly 20 years ago now in Nov. 2002 (4 years before Oblivion)! Guper fucked around with this message at 00:37 on Aug 3, 2022 |
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Aug 3, 2022 00:30
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Red Mike posted:
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Aug 3, 2022 07:04
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Guper posted:Ah, so excited to see this LP! Gothic 2 is one of my favorite games and hits me right in the nostalgia. I replayed it about a year ago and it still holds up decently well, at least, in my very biased opinion. Yeah, in a world where the closest alternative was Morrowind, I guess, everything felt outright cozy in Gothic compared to Morrowind's off-puttingly robotic stiffness
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Aug 3, 2022 08:00
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anilEhilated posted:To be fair that's mostly the knowledge that there's a non-zero chance that a shadowbeast is lurking behind the next tree. This coupled with some really nice music from Kai Rosenkranz really helps with making them feel oppressive to explore. steinrokkan posted:Yeah, in a world where the closest alternative was Morrowind, I guess, everything felt outright cozy in Gothic compared to Morrowind's off-puttingly robotic stiffness radintorov fucked around with this message at 08:19 on Aug 3, 2022 |
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Aug 3, 2022 08:17
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