May 16, 2008 - It's been a while since the North American release of Gothic 3, and you still see threads pop up on message boards asking if it's playable yet. The fact that it was released in a messy state is no secret, yet there's still a strong community involved with the game, so much so that some have taken to patching it themselves. Gothic 3, like its predecessors, had some great ideas built in and offered a vast and beautiful world to explore. The third game also happened to have rampant stability problems and a flawed combat system, which certainly didn't help the franchise.
With the fourth title in the series, Piranha Bytes, the German developer responsible for the first three games, is not be handling things. Instead a part German, part French developer, Spellbound, has taken up the reigns. For advice on how to proceed forward, the developer has been in contact with the player community still working to improve Gothic 3 and, somewhat surprisingly, the folks over at Pirahna Bytes. Publishing duties will be handled by JoWood (which owns the Gothic intellectual property) in Europe and Dreamcatcher (a subsidiary of JoWood) in North America.
The game's full title is a little different from what fans might expect. It's called Arcania: A Gothic Tale, which, according to representatives from Dreamcatcher, reflects a greater focus on magic. We recently saw a very early build of the game running and had the opportunity to ask some questions about what we'll see in, erm, Arcania, but at this point, not everything is set in stone. The game's release is still about a year and a half out, scheduled for sometime around fall 2009. While the series has a hardcore, almost fanatical following on the PC platform, don't be surprised to see it wind up on the Xbox 360 and PlayStation 3, though nothing has been confirmed at this point. The demo that we saw was controlled part of the time with a wired Xbox 360 controller.
Since Gothic is a franchise far more popular in Europe than North America, it's probably worth explaining why the series has stretched to four titles since its 2001 debut. The game is set up as an open-ended role-playing game, and designed to give you little to no direction in your adventures. It's a single-character RPG set in a massive game world with tons of ways to interact with everything. You can craft items, fight woodland creatures, align with factions, quest for NPCs, find ways to dramatically affect the game world, or simply wander around and admire the scenery. It's this level of freedom and the game's traditionally gritty, realistic visuals that attract such devoted fans craving the ultimate in immersive experiences; their own fantasy playground to mold as they see fit. It was never meant to be much of a user-friendly game, something which may have kept it from gaining major traction in North American markets.
This isn't news to JoWood and Spellbound, and one of their primary goals with Arcania is to make it more palatable for those on the western side of the Atlantic. The title change can be seen as part of that effort, an attempt to presumably separate in consumers' minds the fourth Gothic game from the third. Then there's also the fact that the Nameless Hero from Gothic 1 through 3 is no longer the protagonist. He's a king, and he's invaded the island of the new protagonist in an attempt to unite his kingdom. This is another change for the series, as it moves back to an island setting like in the first two games and away from the mainland featured in the third.
Brian Gladman, Dreamcatcher's global product marketing manager, filled us on some of the challenges of making a game for two markets, as well as switching developers. "You could take a blank disc and put it in a paper bag and put Gothic 4 on the bag and you'd sell half a million units in Germany," he said. "The passion for the Gothic universe is at that level
With the fourth title in the series, Piranha Bytes, the German developer responsible for the first three games, is not be handling things. Instead a part German, part French developer, Spellbound, has taken up the reigns. For advice on how to proceed forward, the developer has been in contact with the player community still working to improve Gothic 3 and, somewhat surprisingly, the folks over at Pirahna Bytes. Publishing duties will be handled by JoWood (which owns the Gothic intellectual property) in Europe and Dreamcatcher (a subsidiary of JoWood) in North America.
The game's full title is a little different from what fans might expect. It's called Arcania: A Gothic Tale, which, according to representatives from Dreamcatcher, reflects a greater focus on magic. We recently saw a very early build of the game running and had the opportunity to ask some questions about what we'll see in, erm, Arcania, but at this point, not everything is set in stone. The game's release is still about a year and a half out, scheduled for sometime around fall 2009. While the series has a hardcore, almost fanatical following on the PC platform, don't be surprised to see it wind up on the Xbox 360 and PlayStation 3, though nothing has been confirmed at this point. The demo that we saw was controlled part of the time with a wired Xbox 360 controller.
Since Gothic is a franchise far more popular in Europe than North America, it's probably worth explaining why the series has stretched to four titles since its 2001 debut. The game is set up as an open-ended role-playing game, and designed to give you little to no direction in your adventures. It's a single-character RPG set in a massive game world with tons of ways to interact with everything. You can craft items, fight woodland creatures, align with factions, quest for NPCs, find ways to dramatically affect the game world, or simply wander around and admire the scenery. It's this level of freedom and the game's traditionally gritty, realistic visuals that attract such devoted fans craving the ultimate in immersive experiences; their own fantasy playground to mold as they see fit. It was never meant to be much of a user-friendly game, something which may have kept it from gaining major traction in North American markets.
This isn't news to JoWood and Spellbound, and one of their primary goals with Arcania is to make it more palatable for those on the western side of the Atlantic. The title change can be seen as part of that effort, an attempt to presumably separate in consumers' minds the fourth Gothic game from the third. Then there's also the fact that the Nameless Hero from Gothic 1 through 3 is no longer the protagonist. He's a king, and he's invaded the island of the new protagonist in an attempt to unite his kingdom. This is another change for the series, as it moves back to an island setting like in the first two games and away from the mainland featured in the third.
Brian Gladman, Dreamcatcher's global product marketing manager, filled us on some of the challenges of making a game for two markets, as well as switching developers. "You could take a blank disc and put it in a paper bag and put Gothic 4 on the bag and you'd sell half a million units in Germany," he said. "The passion for the Gothic universe is at that level
In this world to be a human it's dangerous, but to be an assassin it's awesome!