Everything Wrong With Gothic 1's Back Cover
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- Опубликовано: 7 сен 2024
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Mods used in this playthrough/review include the latest SystemPack, PlayerKit, and DX11 enhancements, which you can find by following these links below. I did not use the Riisis texture mod or L'Hiver, which are mentioned in these guides.
Gothic 1: steamcommunity...
Gothic 2: steamcommunity...
The scavenger finishes his scavenger job at 5 pm and goes home to his scavenger wife who makes his life a scavenger hell
then a noname guy comes along and kills both
Lay off the scavengers, they are good hardworking citizens. They pay taxes and get up early
The front cover is like this because G1 was originally supposed to be a coop-able class based rpg. That concept was only changed very late into production. (As the GameStar Preview still used an almost completed version mere months before release) The classes you could have choosen were Rogue, Warrior, Mage, Templar.
The Rogue would have used cunning stealth and bow ingame and is represented by Diego
The Warrior would have used brute force and superior armor and is represented by Gorn
The Mage would have used offensive and defensive Magic and is represented by Milten
The Templar would have used ordinary weaponry but with situational magic (i.e. sleep or transform spells) and is represented by Lester.
in that pre release version you would have played as either one of those ppl not as a nameless hero.
Many remnants of this og version can be found in the game like the one barrel you can hide in was supposed to be a Rogue skill were you could hide from ppl you failed to rob.
The 4 Coop phases with 1 of your friends at each focus is a remnant of the idea to make G1 completly coop playable, where there were supposed to be moments when you need to team up.
Many of the false claims on the ad-material even here in Germany can be backtracked to that fact. The advertisement was simply based on a rather different game
mvp comment
Too bad, that sounds like it would have been a really cool game.
Wrong, google "GOTHIC: DER COMIC". This is genesis of this artwork. It was comic book that was used to promote Gothic made by one of this game's creators.
@@Gosu9765 ehm the comic was released 2 months before the game release and yes the decision to radically Change the game was already made at that point. Idk what you are getting at.
I just realised there was "read more" button. Didn't get the whole picture of what was said. Sorry.
Gothic was actually going to be class based game, as it was said in some very early teasers.
This is why you have Diego, Milten, Lester and Gorn on the front cover - they were going to be main heroes and the classes.
And you can clearly see it by the name of the characters in the game code:
PC stands for Player Character
PC_Thief - Diego
PC_Mage - Milten
PC_Fighter - Gorn
PC_Psionic - Lester (The game had mechanics of psionic magic(Sleeper magic), with things like controlling enemies and willpower stats, but it ended up being a regular magic in the end)
PC_Hero - Nameless hero. He was created pretty late in the developement, so that's why you don't see him on any of the alpa/beta screenshots, and you see Diego, Milten, Gorn and Lester instead. In fact, his face was chosen nearly at the end of developement, they just randomly picked one face texture out of 200 others. There is even a pre-release press demo roaming around the internet, that has Nameless Hero with different face.
As for the rest of the screenshots, all of them are from the beta where nameless hero probably didn't exist yet. From these ones you showed I can only tell that the one with Guru and Templars depicted the Invocation of the Sleeper, where it initially took place(In the Templar training square where Cor Angar is in the final game, in the early stages this is where Y'Berion lived - in the giant tree in the middle of the camp(tree was removed), that's why this screenshot represents the start of Chapter 2 where preparations for Sleeper's Invocation take place)
Yeah these outdated screenshots are still present in the Steam and GOG front pages of the game. No one bothered to update them.
That's some piece of explanation and trivia for you.
Cool facts. Makes you wonder if the game would've had the same charm and overall enjoyment if they'd stayed the course of the original design. Thanks for sharing!
Wow
Another interesting fact about Nameless' face was his face design and why it changed so radically in Gothic 3.
Apparently while working on G3 the PB team noticed Nameless looks similar to Mike Hoge (a member of the team) so they decided to make him look EXACTLY like him in G3.
It is probably the weirdest decision they ever made.
Imagine being Diego and waking up on the ship going towards the Continent and that nameless dude suddenly has short brown hair and that frowny face.
@@pooloom3821 kinda like they used sam lake face in first max payne and then changed it in next game, so in reverse comparing to gothic but it actually made sense. There was no reason to change gothic protagonist face so drastically. Unless it was the cause of rushed release by jowood where not only nameless hero face was out of place but whole bunch of characteres from previous games didn't match and made lick of sense.
Have a german box and what's written on the back is pretty much on point. Think the only thing lied about is a screenshot of the hero wearing an orebaron armor with a woman on each side...
"There's a war going on in the human kingdom. From the north, flocks of orcs invade the land. In order to maintain the fighting power of the royal army, the smiths of the realm are constantly busy making new weapons. Those who break the law during this time are severely condemned to forced labor in the penal colony, where they extract from deep within the earth the ORE needed to make the weapons.
The whole area is surrounded by a magical barrier; a sphere of two thousand meters in diameter that surrounds the prison like a dome. The barrier can easily be passed from the outside; but no living creature can escape.
Innocent, you are thrown into this prison and must stand up to enemy creatures. From now on there is only one goal left for you: to survive, only to escape at some point.
Features:
& Action-oriented role-playing game
& 3 rd Person View
& Dense story with many different assignments and riddles
& Weapons, equipment and talents are immediately visible on the player character
& Intelligent monsters that cooperate with each other
& Huge indoor and outdoor worlds
& Simple control with just a few keys
& Richness of detail: changing music effects underline the different locations.
On Stage:
the german cult music band "In Extremo" performs in the old camp"
They lied with "simple control" gothic 1 was no simple but its really intuitive after 15 or 20 mins of gameplay and it is satisfying to click button for animation and after that for action, it seems like you are really doing task instead of just clicking one button and action goes automatic.
@@mpetkovic26 Controls are simple but rather uncommon. As you said you can get intuitive within few minutes so it isn't game problem.
Gothic was made in times when developers still didn't know how to make proper controls in 3D enviroment. Everyone was experimenting with their own solutions. For example almost every game from PlayStation had different control scheme and some of them were really horrific. As years passed and new technology arrived some control schemes started to spread and were adopted by other games to became standard to this day. Gothic was just unlucky and it control method wasn't popularized by other titles. I never understood why. It was natural evolution of "tank controls" but other developers completly ignored it.
1. Your Channel is underrated.
2. Your Videos are gold.
3. I like your Gothic-Videos the most.
About the front cover. In early development Gothic was supposed to be a multiplayer game, with four distinct classes. Those four class archetypes turned into Diego, Gorn, Lester and Milton.
Just discovered your channel and watching your Gothic videos.
Really well done, keep going!
As for the continent - In Gothic 1, Khorinis is supposed to be THE continent, and the city itself wasn't a harbor city, but it was changed while Gothic 2 was being made. There were more plot holes like this with each game.
The additions of Gothic 2 and Gothic 3 certainly add complications, but even just going with Gothic 1 itself, the intro video still gives (or gave) me the impression that Myrtana was supposed to be a larger region encompassing the entire kingdom, and that Khorinis was a smaller region within that. Specifically, Xardas says "The Kingdom of Myrtana, united by King Rhobar II," and later "Every man guilty of a crime [...] was forced to work the ore mines of Khorinis." It wasn't established yet that Khorinis was an island, or even a harbor city at this point, or that Myrtana referred to the mainland continent, but it still suggests to me that Khorinis is a subsidiary region of Myrtana -- a more specific location within the entire kingdom.
Well, the promotional gothic comic that has made before gothic 1 already shows Khorinis as an island with harbour city
Sure they mention varant in gothic 1 at the start which is in myrtana
Awesome video! Having never owned a physical copy of any of the Gothic games, this was quite interesting to watch. Love these in-depth Gothic videos - keep it up!
now I want to see a scavenger going to work. xD
Give him a break man! Scavenger lives matter!
Simmilar thing happened to me with the witcher game
Back than we had a store where you could order specific games they usual don't have, you would pay 10% of the value of the game and they would order it for you(this was only for regulars) and if you didn't come to get it or change your mind they would put it in a discount bin(usually people would order older games/non triple a or simulators or just weird stuff that didn't sell well)
Some one had done this with the witcher I looked at the box it had the cool wolfs head and on the back it was all in Polish the only reason I bought the game is because Geralt looks metal af and because there was a screen shot of him with two swords on his back
To my 15 ish mind two swords meant active fighting system non of that point and click bs
So I bought it...
One of the best decision in my life
found your channel a few days ago. had about 930 subs. growing by the minute you are. well done.
Interesting how even with all the changes implemented during late development, the game came out as good as it was
I almost feel proud to have been in possession of an actual CD copy of the game. So long ago.
11:30 That's exactly what I thought before I reached chapter 4. I thought some point in the game, I would be able to get a group of NPCs to follow me and when the old camp gate is shut, I thought I could gather the "famous 4" (Milten, Gorn, Diego, Lester) to follow me to take down the old camp.
I thought that tooo :(
Do they still sell that box somewhere? I want to buy it in store and then go back to return it after a couple of days complaining about the misleading box. I really just want to see the look on the face of the poor guy at the store.
Funny thing is as misleading as it is the box still did its job - you bought it, right? (Probably the only one in America, lol)
hey i bought it in america too, because of the box! still play it to this day from time to time^^;
@@Laura-qo9cc Good to know there are people in America who bought this magnificent game and gave it a try :)
Americans revievs on Metacritic are literally ''No tutorial, 3/10'' and ''Game is too hard, 4/10''. Im actually suprised there are any people in there talking about Gothic and even recognising no hand-holding as one of Gothic adventages :D
@@gabrielmatys5139 That's not indicative of Americans though. A lot of us love difficult, lack-of-handholding games. You have to remember the kind of person who would go online and complain is the kind of person who wants thing to be easy / catered to them. Most of us are too busy actually getting better at things instead of complaining about them.
I’m from the USA. I still remember when I was 7 years old roaming around in Toys R’ Us and I stumbled across gothic. The cover and the armor on the sets on the back looked so cool. I begged my dad to buy it for me. Which he did..I had no idea what I was in for..
Can't believe I'm watching a video about a game box. A game from 3 decades ago.
0:30
Holy shit, I had the same experience when I picked up Elex 1 over a year ago.
I found a copy of the xbox version in a local game store for 10 bucks and bought it on a whim.
Elex is now one of my favorite games and I hope to play the rest of Piranha Bytes's games in the future.
Came for the video.
Liked for the Scavenger in the hard hat...
On the German Version there are like 2 awards (CHIP Game of the Month, ComputerBild) and some ~90% reviews. The german backcover (at least mine) has the story so no direct translation
I’d love it if the blurb was just ‘It’s Escape from New York, but with swords’
One finishing of Gothic 1 takes me about 13-14 hours. Knowing all quests, locations etc., but still doing every possible thing in the game and killing basically every creature in Colony.
The game is pretty easy for me for a long time now, but every comeback to play and finish it is pure enjoy :) I just love the whole series, including Gothic 3.
EDIT: and yeah - 100 hours in Gothic 1 is easy target to beat with finish the game multiple times.
Gothic 2 with Night of the Raven (wich is much much bigger game than G1) takes me about 40 hours to beat (one time), still knowing all stuff, locations etc. So 100 hours of gameplay for new player fits better this part of the series.
about the cover and friends: diego, gorn, lester and milten are absolute bros. lee can also be considered i guess
Initially, the colony was meant to be situated in Myrtana, not on the island of Khorinis, and devs had completely different story in mind. Generally there seem to have been a lot of attempts at crafting the story they wanted. There is also the part about Gothic Sequel and all of that.
In my opinion the Gothic ended up being such a great game because there was an extraordinary amount of consideration put into it. The devs didn't just write everything on the handkerchief in the bar in few minutes, like with most games these days, but approached the game several times with different takes. You really can tell how much brainstorming it took them to arrive at the final product we can enjoy.
It's so weird to see a channel that loves gothic so much that isn't german or polish. It's my fav RPG ever, and yes, I am german.
I owned the physical copy. This stuff always mildly infuriated me lol
When i look at some packaging from Czech distribution company TopCD, this is ok. On their box from Wildlife park (zoo building game similar to first two rollercoaster tycoons), there were screenshots from Wildlife park 2 which used 3D engine instead of isometric. As a kid, I spent lot of time trying to figure out how to switch it to the 3d mode or find cutscenes with no luck...
I remember getting my mum to buy the game for me after playing it for years with a friend. I was like 10y/o and the German Version was rated for 16 y/o and featured the naked gomez girl on the back. Gosh that was hard. Still best game with Gothic 2.
BTW i dont recon that it won any "awards" in germany either.
PS: I can only recommend playing it in german language it's absolutly spot on. Its so harsh even for our "Ruhrpott" standards
well awards aren't defined. It did win the 2 mentioned Gamestar awards.
and a rather unimportant chip award too.
But the most important thing it achieved was to permanently bind the Gamestar as Piranha Bytes fanboys. Which they are to this very day.
RUclips reccomendtion brought me here o.0 Keep up the good work, i hope ill stay on your channel ;)
1:37 sounds right to me. i mean u blow up the barrier and set all the prisoners free which screws up the whole kings ore mining operations which can screw the whole war with the orcs
The guy responsible for that back cover should clearly lose his job.
I remember when me and my brother bought the game we thought the whole game was about a prison mine, probably going 50 levels deep into a mine hacking away at creatures, with no open world. But we still bought it anyway because the graphics and the gameplay looked intiguing, there werent many 3D RPGs out by this time
I didn't know that it was this genre, the dark fantasy, I was just made to play by a friend, who insisted
It's most likely the publisher. Here, I tanslated the back cover of my copy of the polish edition. It might not be relevant, but I think it's interesting to compare different releases. Here the polish publisher took a different approach, providing the potential buyer with a short description rather than buzzwords and blurbs. I'm sorry if the translation is not perfect, I hope I got the message across at the very least.
"At this point nobody remembers how long ago the war with the orcs started. The civilized world is endlessly swarmed by blood thirsty monsters. All men capable of holding a weapon were sent to fight. Only women, children and prisoners are left. Because there's a shortage of workers, even the smallest crimes can result in being forced to hard labor. You were struck by bad luck - you were sent to the worst place possible.
In the world of Gothic everything changes just like in real life. In this game you'll find a combination of beautiful graphics, a non-linear story and amazing mechanics making the gameplay really immersive. Cities, villages, flooded caves and forests are only a portion of this living, breathing world that you can explore freely. The characters you meet during your journey are not only mindless, computer-like bystanders - everybody has their own life, exchanges information with other people, does their work and certainly will remember and judge what you do. Be aware of the consequences of your actions, remember you're not the only one who can use a weapon..."
There are some of the same problems, like "non-linear story". "Cities, villages" also seems like a stretch considering only old camp has a portion of it that looks advanced (the castle area), but it's still too much to call it a city. But overall, I think this description is very competent actually.
In gothic 1 there is supposed to be a band in the old camp that starts playing, I believe, in chapter 2. You can re-insert the band by using cheats.
Gothic 1 and 2 are one of my fav games... i would put them with Mafia in the same boat. Old, BUT great games... never played G3, but i bought few days ago all 3 from steam... in the past i just dowloaded from torrent all games.... about 15 years ago if not even more. :D
The physical copy of the 2004's collectors edition of Gothic I and II lists 17 awards. I don't know them but they look like almost only German PC magazines. That Gothic was no hit in the US, is known, correct? GameStar is one of the biggest German PC magazine, f not the biggest in the country. At 10:32 again PC Action and GameStar are mentioned. They were from Germany. Don't know if Gamespot was international?
The complete marketing of Gothic I was weird. The GOG and Steam Stores list till this day outdated press material, which shows content which is not even in the final game. (mentioned in this video)
Nice video
Hi i really like your gothic videos and would really like you to make videos about chronicles of Myrtana and history of khorinis ;)
I sometimes look at the games on my shelf and laugh at the system requirements. What was once intimidating is now hilarious.
I guess technically you DO change the fate of an empire by cutting the King's supply of magic ore. ^^
Plus you open up barrier, and let Orcs conquer(that happens in last chapter of gothic 2 when they creep up to the city and after you left whole island fells) the Khorinis from mainland
Ha! You can be a mage without becoming a Fire or Water Magician, just join the Temple Guards in the swamp camp :D
to be fair: there are npcs that don´t follow a day-night cycle.... guards, thorus and the npcs that play herr mannelig after you come back from the mine after killing the minecrawler queen
Thorus DOES have a day night cycle. Only the guards protecting restricted areas tend to stay there all day.
@@garok2412 i´ve never do him anything else beside stand in front of the gate..... no matter if morning, mid day, evening or the middle of night
With Thorus that's actually intentional I believe, his name is a pun. German "Tor" = gate, "Thor" is pronounced the same way. All he ever does is guarding gateways in all 3 Gothic games. He doesn't sleep, he is a living gate.
Sounds like it was translated from the german cover and the translator hadn't\haven't played the game, therefore thought some things were off and decided to "fix it"(insurection followed by berrier make more sense, than the other way around if you don't really know anything about the game). Not saying that's what it is(I neither read German, nor have I seen the German cover), just seems that way to me.
"evil, neighbouring lands thing" - I don't really see the wrong with this, it's flavor text to give a slight backstory and hook the player into buying the game. The world of Gothic was already thought out with the first game(for world building purposes, which is part of what made the game so great). The player already lives outside the colony, and so have at least some basic knowledge of what's going on(currently at war with the orcs \ "evil forces", Magic ore is extremely important and can only be found in the valley of the mines, therefore the insurrection happening in the colony is an extremely bad thing).
The last part of that text however I agree is just weird and a bit misleading. If the sleeper isn't stopped, it's bye bye colony, and bye bye magic ore, which in turn is bye bye kingdom. However I agree it just seems hyperbolic.
--,
As for 100 hours of gameplay; I'd argue this was just normal to account for potentional replay value in these kinds of games. TES have boasted hundres of hours as a feature since morrowind, and Morrowind is not 100+ hours unless you account for multiple characters, mods and the expansions. Most of Morrowind's playtime lies in either poor directions, or at times completely false directions to places you need to go(so you spend a good chunk of time trying to find the places\dungeons to go to).
--
"Non linear story" - arguably choosing the factions could be considered making it a bit non linear as it changes some quests and how you play the game. Not drastic, but it's something.
It doesn't really match with the German Version (at least mine). Don't know if there are some other versions though.
choosing a faction doesn´t change the plot though.... the only difference is in playstyle and why you are allowed inside the castle to deliver the letter..... everything after is the same: you help swamp with their vision, go to orc graveyard, meet ur-shak for ulu mulu, old camp turns hostile, you go to the sleeper and banish him
@@alexanderzack3720 Hence the word 'arguably'. It's 'technically' correct, in that it does make minor alterations to the game(how you proceed to do a few things), and therefore it's 'non linear'.
Misleading by modern interpertation of the word, by 2001 interpertation, it's pretty on point(considering Daggerfall, Ultima 7, and Baldurs Gate were concidered 'non linear' as well).
@@SknCommonLisper i have to admit i have not palyed either daggerfall nor ultima nor baldurs gate.... so i only have the literal meaning of "non-linear".... i would agree to arguments saying that gothic 2 was non-linear since joining one faction actually alters the story somewhat in what happens to the world around you (mages learn more about those seekers and paladins deal with orc invasion and cleansing the shrines of innos)
@@alexanderzack3720 Didn't finish Daggerfall, but I know it has 3 endings. Outside of that the gameplay is the same and is as unlinear as Oblivion, or Morrowind is(meaning, it's completely linear in an open world. So you won't have a 'need' to join a mage guild, it's an option. But mage guild is the same irregardless).
Ultima is a linear story, but an open world. So again, same as with Elder Scrolls or Gothic. Only choice partains into what quests you do or don't do, what order. There's some alternative solutions etc, but I'd argue it's still linear(such as being a virgin or not, which affects the ability to meet a unicorn iirc).
Baldurs Gate is as linear as Gothic, with exception of creating your character, and choosing your party members.
Both in Gothic and BG you can solve quests in different ways, and\or have multiple 'endings' to certain quests, such as help a guy leave the camp, or kill him(minor, but 'counts'). Stories both go to the exact same path, with exact same choices(except for Throne of Bhaal, but it was an expansion to end the trilogy as they didn't get the green light for a third game).
Same goes for Arx Fatalis(2002), it's arguably a non-linear game, that is linear. It's semi open world, most(almost all) quests have multiple solutions to them, you can skip most of the mainquest and go directly in and finish the game(without glitching!), but it's still the same ending, and same story. So it does beg the question of what 'non linear' really is. Is Witcher 3 non-linear because you have different choices in cutscenes, that make new cutscenes and a new ending? Is Fallout(1-2) non-linear because you have a choice in what quests to do, and how to solve 'some' quests, and also have different endings? Is Arx Fatalis non-linear as (most) quests have different aproaches to them, often 2 or 3 different ways to complete?
It's a bit too open to interpertation I think, to which, multiple endings and multiple quest solutions having become the 'staple' definition in modern day, thereby Witcher 3 is non-linear. Compared to 2001 when these terms were still being thrown around. Sandbox today means games like Minecraft, in 2003 it was synonymous with Open World.
Having spent close to 5 years in marketing I can safely say the blurb will most certainly not have been written by a person who has ever seen the product first hand :)
I recently played gotgic 1 for the first time amd it rly took me 100h.. you could take off maybe 5h from leaving it on but thats about it
The first time finished this game in less then 30 hours with 95% + of the quests. Then finished it in less then 20 hours but if you know what to do and what quests to do fist then in less then 15 hours the game can be finished with all the quests done. So yes 100 hours is to big number for the time you have to spend to beat this game. However i like that the game is not that big enough and you can reach the end somewhat fast.
My first time playing Gothic 1, I took 55 hrs by slowly exploring the game and complete all quests This game certainly does not have enough content to stretch to 100 hrs.
But I have replayed it countless times though.
I had Gothic 1 box and still have GOthic 2 box (vanilla). Rulocal was alright.
To be honest, the cover was always something that kept me away from this game. It looked weird and I was scared it's a team based game. I'm thankful that I could rediscover this game through the internet tho :)
still have my CDs...yes it took 2 :D
gothic 2 took 4 plus one extra for night of the raven
you were wrong in one point....you mentioned that its written at the back :Quote:
Timeless adventure-brilliantly woven-of epic propotions .....and then you say.....all games doing this bla bla...ect..
wrong deeply false and wrong...Why ? Gothic is the Gamethat full fill its promises....and the most succses fiull games after were stealing the idears from Gothic...und mann, ich weis wovon ich hier Rede ;)
sudden german is sudden. but not at all unexpected in the comment section of a Gothic game.
The Hero is not nameless. His name is Bob.
B
BOB
B
i own 3 physical copys of the game and they all have different back covers (in german)
They always get it wrong...
i think someone once said that gothic 1 was made with a sequel in mind so i guess that could explain some of it
The original idea for the gothic sequel was to make a expansion called "Gothic Sequel" and was supposed to take place after the barrier fell,the king was supposed to come to the valley and there would be a demonic invasion of some sorts. Also you would be able to play as a woman and the Valley of the mines was supposed to be part of the continent. Unfortunately Jowood wanted a proper sequel so most of this expansion was made into Gothic 2, you can still find some remnants of it like the opening cutscene or the brothel scene.
oh well i saw some screens of it , looked interesting but gothic 2 was still great nevertheless
@@mcsmash4905 yeah it was, actually the modding team making the History of Khorinis mod for G2 made a great video about it.Its in Polish but its easily understandable with subtitles
Möge der Schläfer dich erleuchten!
Steam is even worse, showing pictures from the alpha. :D
im so sad u missed this in german
the soundtrack and voicelines are reallyover the top if u want to hear gow germands sound u can always go and play it this way :D
Absolutely nothing is wrong with the statement, that you "change the fate of an empire". The destruction of the barrier changes the fate of the whole empire of Myrtana, there is no doubt about that, so that sentence is just right. The game is restricted on the prison, but the prison is the stage on which you play the main role in a drama which totally effects the empire, which the prison is a part of (with greatest importance for the king and the war going on outside). No one is saying that you're saving the empire there. But you change it, for sure.
You are right concerning the wrong insurrection->barrier causality.
Concerning the next sentence, there is no reference to Gothic 2 or 3, which were not even planned in that form when the cover was created, but its just what is going on in the Lore of Gothic 1. The Orcs are about to win the war against Myrtana while you are trying to escape. So nothing wrong with that either. The neighbouring lands are the lands next to the one you are playing in.
Next sentence: You state that you do not save "all of Myrtana" in Gothic 1, which is wrong. Of course you are saving all of Myrtana by banishing the Sleeper, although you also bring great suffering to many people as a consequence of your actions, which gives the tragedy of the story just more depth.
Then your "spoiler alert". You state that you never "reunite the land" again. It does not make sense, that you relate this statement to the three camps inside the colony. The statement is obviously related to the kingdom, which is falling apart in course of the war. So what they mean is that you help to reunite Myrtana, which isn't true either, so you could have criticized that instead. It is also not true, what you state about the three camps, that the factions "were never truly united to begin with". It may be true, that there was never some sort of harmony between all the people in the prison, but your statement is misleading, because the factions you talk about were not existent, just the Old Camp. There were just the mages (united), the ore barons, the miners and guards, no new camp, no sect temple etc.
You are right with your critique of the multiple ending sentence, the linear story etc. The next critique though isn't fair again. It's true that you cannot learn every skill independent of the faction you are part of (which would be really non-immersive by the way), but that's not what they say. Fact is, you can become a powerful warrior, you can become a cunning wizard and you can also gain skills from any set, if you play as a templar or just learn some fighting/thief skills while being a wizard etc. They do not claim that you can do and learn everything in every faction, just that there are possibilities to learn skills from all kinds of classes, which is true. But as you say yourself, that it may be a semantic issue, no offence here.
But the next point, where you say you couldn't find awards and acclaims, is totally ridiculous. Gothic got douzens of awards from douzens of magazines and is well-known for its ground-breaking design and acclaims. Of course you might not find that stuff many years later where a lot of those magazines do not even exist anymore and it's obvious that the most awards and acclaims as the german game it is were given by the german press. Of course, it might make sense to actually list some of those awards on the cover to confirm their claim, but to be honest: Is there anyone wishing to see awards on a cover? That kind of stuff just ruins the design of any cover and players do not really care either. They already have heard about the game, maybe have seen some articles or, if they really see the game first time in the shop and seeing the cover, than the publisher did a good job to advertise it.
I do not want to defend the decisions of that publisher though. I've just wanted to point out how wrong many of the statements in that video are.
You may excuse my grammar and spelling, as I'm german and not that skilled in english. Greetings.
*"Absolutely nothing is wrong with the statement, that you "change the fate of an empire". The destruction of the barrier changes the fate of the whole empire of Myrtana, there is no doubt about that, so that sentence is just right."*
In a technical sense, yes, it is correct -- however, that is *not* the intention of the first game's story. It is a mere side-effect of trying to destroy the barrier and escape from the prison colony with your life. It's not what you set out to do as a player or character, and the effects of destroying the barrier are not shown/conveyed through the story until 1-2 games later, so it's completely irrelevant to this game's plot and would therefore not be *that* important to put as the main tagline on the back of the box. As with some other statements on the back of the box, you can spin them to be technically accurate, however you have to retrospectively extrapolate plot details from future games in the series to do so while often ignoring the context of the original game's release, or else apply them so broadly to concepts that extend well beyond the scope of the actual game. Altering the fate of Myrtana and saving the empire is simply *not* the point of Gothic 1's story, so making it about that on the back of the box is misleading.
*"The Orcs are about to win the war against Myrtana while you are trying to escape. So nothing wrong with that either. The neighbouring lands are the lands next to the one you are playing in."*
Again, none of this has anything to do with Gothic 1's actual story. What happens on the mainland doesn't directly relate to anything that happens in Gothic 1 except to establish background context for why the prison colony exists, which is fine to do on the back of the box, but not when it makes what's happening on the main land sound like the main point of emphasis in the game. Why reference armies of evil mounting in some completely distant land that you'll never get to see or interact with instead of referencing a dark, slumbering threat inside the barrier (aka, the Sleeper)? The orcs in Myrtana are *not* the main threat of the game and therefore are irrelevant to the plot of Gothic 1, and should *not* take priority over the actual threats that you're directly trying to conquer in the actual game.
*"You state that you do not save "all of Myrtana" in Gothic 1, which is wrong. Of course you are saving all of Myrtana by banishing the Sleeper,"*
How exactly are you saving all of Myrtana by killing the Sleeper? The Sleeper is trapped inside the barrier like everyone else (and in fact, it seems like it's his presence that caused the barrier to become like it is in the first place, as **something** caused it to expand beyond its original scope and then it magically collapses as soon as the Sleeper is banished into the dimensional portal), so it can't pose any direct threat itself. Even if it did have the ability to lower the barrier of its own volition (which we don't know for sure), how would it even leave the island to reach Myrtana? It doesn't look like it can fly or swim, so wouldn't it just be trapped on Khorinis? And who's to say the kingdom will lose the war without the ore from the colony? After all, in later games you acquire magic ore weaponry and they're really not any more effective against orcs than regular weapons, and in Gothic 3 you can save Myrtana and defeat the orcs all on your own without a single ore weapon. For that Matter, in Gothic 3 you can actually doom the entire kingdom by murdering all of humanity and ensuring the reign of the orcs, so.... nothing in Gothic 1 ultimately affects the fate of the empire as it's what you do in Gothic 3 that does. Say hypothetically you banish the Sleeper in G1 and then died trying to escape the collapsing temple at the end of G1, and then the events of Gothic 2 continued on as normal -- the kingdom would be completely screwed without you there to stop the dragons, so just banishing the Sleeper alone doesn't save the kingdom by itself. For that matter, even if we ignore the other games in the series, isn't it also possible that by banishing the sleeper and lowering the barrier, you actually disrupt the ore supply more? At least with the Sleeper alive and contained inside the barrier there was still ore mining and trading happening, but once you lower the barrier, suddenly the king's prison labor disappears, and thus goes the ore production. Point is, there is no way to conclusively *know* that banishing the sleeper saves Myrtana as there are so many other variables (real and theoretical) that happen along the way.
*"You state that you never "reunite the land" again. It does not make sense, that you relate this statement to the three camps inside the colony. The statement is obviously related to the kingdom, which is falling apart in course of the war."*
Why, why, **why** in the world would this statement on the back of the box be referring to a theoretical future event in possible later games in the series, as opposed to something you can actually do in the context of the actual game you're playing? This makes absolutely no sense to me. You're making huge stretches in logic and reasoning to make this connection.
*"It may be true, that there was never some sort of harmony between all the people in the prison, but your statement is misleading, because the factions you talk about were not existent, just the Old Camp. There were just the mages (united), the ore barons, the miners and guards, no new camp, no sect temple etc."*
So just because they didn't exist when the Colony was formed, means they suddenly don't exist when the game takes place and therefore don't count when it comes to supposedly reuniting the factions in the game? "Reuniting the land again" implies returning things to a prior state of being, which means you **have** to take into account the current political landscape and state of things.
*"But the next point, where you say you couldn't find awards and acclaims, is totally ridiculous. Gothic got douzens of awards from douzens of magazines and is well-known for its ground-breaking design and acclaims."*
Not in North America it isn't. The vast majority of people here haven't even **heard** of this game -- not when it came out, and not now ~20 years later. It's entirely possible that Gothic didn't win **any** major publicized awards in North America or other English-speaking communities because frankly no one was playing it. There was zero marketing push behind the game, it wasn't getting any major coverage from major publications except maybe a short review tucked into a wall of other shorter reviews in the back half of the magazine where it gets lost in a sea of other reviews.
*"Of course, it might make sense to actually list some of those awards on the cover to confirm their claim, but to be honest: Is there anyone wishing to see awards on a cover? That kind of stuff just ruins the design of any cover and players do not really care either. They already have heard about the game, maybe have seen some articles or, if they really see the game first time in the shop and seeing the cover, than the publisher did a good job to advertise it."*
The awards don't have to be obnoxiously plastered all over the front cover, if you want to maintain the artistic appeal of the front cover imagery, but they can absolutely be placed on the back cover in the border margins or at the bottom, which is already riddled with licensed logos from game company assets used in the game, ESRB/age rating disclaimers, spec requirements, copyright information, and other such gaudy stuff. To your point, in North America, most people **haven't** heard about the game, and their only chance (at the time) to learn anything about it is what was printed on the back cover, unless they happened to own the one, exact, specific issue of EGM or whatever that reviewed the game in their magazine. In which case, it would help to lend some validity to those claims to list actual important awards it won, otherwise it can totally come off looking like a phony marketing gimmick. After all, companies do that crap all the time (not just in video games) by making up fake awards and giving them to themselves, or just claiming that they're award-winning, or claiming to be a "premium" product when it obviously isn't. Fact is, Xicat did a practically non-existent job advertising Gothic in North America, otherwise, more people would have heard of Gothic and it wouldn't be this obscure cult game.
@@TheNocturnalRambler First, thank you for taking your time and writing that answer. I want to say, that it was not at all my intention to defend the publisher and their marketing strategy, it was mainly stuff you said about the lore, which was provoking my reply. I support your position on that and I'm sure you have a better perspective on this side of things and I thank you also for doing a good job in promoting the game to the american audience, thats nice in itself.
A few misunderstandings though: You do not have to "retrospectively extrapolate plot details from future games" to see, that what you do in the first game is effecting the fate of the whole kingdom. From the very beginning of the development of Gothic, the idea was to set this game into a small area as a part of a larger world. As I said, the colony is not big, but it has a major influence and impact on the kingdom because of the magic ore it delivers.
As a player your main goal is to survive and to escape, so you do not have altruistic intentions, but you feel all the time, that what you do will have an impact on the whole kingdom. And it has, independently of what is shown in future games. It is clear, that the fall of the barrier you strive for, will have an effect on the war against the orcs outside, which is a loosing battle already and by your actions in the course of the plot and the destruction of the old mine etc., it gets more and more obvious that your actions will 'cause some trouble. You do not only bring chaos into the valley and the order between the camps and inside the camps of the colony, but you also destroy the deal with the king, which is crucial for the fate of the kingdom (which is more or less obvious, depending on whether or not you take only the vanilla story into account or also the full story, which was actually planned and just not finished 'cause of lack of time). So I still disagree with you on that. But you're totally right, that altering the fate of Myrtana is not the point of Gothic 1. That is true, its not all and so it might not be wise to put that unto the cover. As I said, it was just because of statements related to the lore, why I decided to wrote this critique.
"Why reference armies of evil mounting in some completely distant land that you'll never get to see or interact with instead of referencing a dark, slumbering threat inside the barrier (aka, the Sleeper)? The orcs in Myrtana are not the main threat of the game and therefore are irrelevant to the plot of Gothic 1, and should not take priority over the actual threats that you're directly trying to conquer in the actual game."
The orcs are not the actual threat for you as a player itself, but they are the main threat in the universe this game and its story is set in, at least as far as the player and almost all the people inside this world can know. The war with the orcs is the actual background of the story, the (at least as it seems) reason for the creation of the barrier, the reason for the ongoing slavery, because the king is in need of the ore for his war; the barons only can have that deal with the king because they can offer what he urgently needs and so on. It is for a reason, that the Intro starts like this too; its to show the player that the story which is about to be told might play inside the colony, but has a war in a huge kingdom to its starting point. And it would have not make any sense to spoiler the Sleeper on the cover, since no one except Xardas and the Orcs actually know that the Sleeper really exists and that he is a demon with the power to control everyone. But of course, no one doubts that they could have written something on the cover with more relation to the actual game. I totally agree on that.
"Why, why, *why* in the world would this statement on the back of the box be referring to a theoretical future event in possible later games in the series, as opposed to something you can actually do in the context of the actual game you're playing? This makes absolutely no sense to me. You're making huge stretches in logic and reasoning to make this connection."
I did not say at all, that the statement on the back of the box is referring to a theoretical future event in possible later games. I just said that is obvious that they are speaking about Myrtana (they are wrong about that statement of course, but I just cannot see why they would relate it to the camps inside the valley (which would be also false, as you have stated correctly). Maybe whoever wrote that meant that by killing the sleeper you bring peace to the world, which of course, is not really true, peace is still far away. (If you would have not killed him, he certainly would be the main reason for peace inside the kingdom being impossible though, since he is a thread both for the humans and for the orcs, since the orcs are in total fear about his awakening 1000 years after his sleep begun. And you arrive just in time when the awakening begins and you save the kingdom while destroying the barrier from this demon and the biggest of all threats).
I also need to say, that you do the same failure you are claiming me to do. You ""retrospectively extrapolate plot details from future games", when you say, for example with statements like this: "Even if it did have the ability to lower the barrier of its own volition (which we don't know for sure), how would it even leave the island to reach Myrtana? It doesn't look like it can fly or swim, so wouldn't it just be trapped on Khorinis?" In the Gothic 1 lore, the valley is not set on an island. Khorinis is just a city and the principality that city and the colony is set in, is just one of many other principalities of the kingdom who are forming Myrtana. Also, according to the originally lore, there was no magic ore in other locations in Myrtana, just here. It is known that the developers did a lot of failures concerning the lore in later games, which was leading to many discrepancies between the different games of the series. Therefore I am referring to Gothic 1 lore only.
But that's it. I think that we basically agree and I do not doubt at all that Xicat could have done a better job. It was just a few lore related things you've seem to state, that I could not agree with and I wanted to point them out. Thanks for your time and take care.
was someone already pointing out that the game has TWO endings? ^^
>anarchic
>feudal
pick one
How about if I pick several more?
- The Old Camp is a totalitarian dictatorship (Gomez has complete power, and everyone works for his benefit and bows to his will)
- The Swamp Camp is a socialist theocracy (everyone works for the mutual good of the camp and receives an equal share of the goods produced, which is all done in the interest of serving their god)
- The New Camp is an aristocratic oligarchy (everyone follows the lead of the water mages, who in this instance are descended from a place of power and are effectively the upper-class, social elite of the colony),
- Anyone living outside the three camps is under true anarchy (no governing bodies to tell you what to do, and you have complete freedom to do whatever you want).
@@TheNocturnalRambler Yeah, that sounds way better. 'Cause 'anarchic' and 'feudal' just don't go together like that.
Also, there's nothing really feudal about anything in the Colony, except for maybe the way rice fields are tended to by what's functionally serfs in the New Camp.
Also, I'd argue the Old Camp is clearly an oligarchy as well - sure, Gomez may be a sort of princeps, i.e. first among equals, but the Camp is ruled and managed together by a small and closed group (the ore barons) of those profiting from the oppression of the majority, in this case one that's not as combat-capable, as the ore barons rule by virtue of their physical might. It's actually closer to tribalism than to feudalism, at least the way I see it.
11:12 This location is old Xardas' tower ;) The sunken one.
Good catch! I saw stairs and pillars and my first thought was the Sleeper's Temple, but I believe you are correct.
I can't leave this without any argument now :P I couldn't find proper image on google so I installed the game and went to the location myself to took some screenshots.
I hope this link will work and you will see both screenshots: imgur.com/a/Ea9KAUV
Nice!
The German original Cover ist nothing Like this... Strange. Must have eben a cheap way to sell it elsewhere. The original tells exactly the real game
11:21 its Y'berion with his guards
11:22 that's not the hero that's Cor Kalom
Dark armies ready to do blitzkrieg? Well yes since orcs are attacking Myrtana and King is loosing they really can take it by storm and hell that they are :D
If possible, this game must played on a crt monitor without graphical mods. I don’t like the way Gothic looks in this video, probably due to a mod
When you were talking about the pictures in the front cover and said it depics you bald and as a guru...dude, have you paid attention to the chapter progress, thet is the same picture as chapter two.
You'll have to excuse me if I forgot that that screenshot appeared for a grand total of three seconds as a still image to signify chapter progression. The point is, that gameplay element of being a guru wearing guru's robes with a shaved head and two templars accompanying you like party members does not appear in actual gameplay, and thus makes the appearance of that screenshot in the front cover flap misleading since it doesn't portray actual gameplay.
@@TheNocturnalRambler i always thought that screenshot was y´berion walking outside for that vision ritual
wwaaaaaahh my x wife threw out all my old boxes :(
3:20 Actually the barrier was there to protect against he orcs… have you not watched the intro video of the game?
That is incorrect, at least according to the intro video which you're citing as evidence. The intro specifically says "To make it impossible for [the prisoners] to escape, the king sent out the best magicians of the kingdom to create a magic barrier around the entire valley." It makes no mention whatsoever about the barrier being there to protect against the orcs. In fact, that notion doesn't even make logical sense, because the whole point of the barrier in Gothic 1 is that it allows living things to ENTER, but not EXIT, meaning it does absolutely nothing to protect what's inside the barrier from outside threats.
Ive watched your video and your review gothic 1 is inaccurate trying describe a game based back of the box is just plane stupid. The gothic 1 box description is based on the entire trilogy not just gothic 1 but its setting in motion gothic 2 and 3. To be honest your argument is petty and your not looking at bigger picture
There is simply no way that box for Gothic 1 was intended to be based on the entire series, when I bought that box before Gothic 2 and Gothic 3 even existed. That box was not selling you on an entire trilogy of games because it was just one, single game at that time. In this video, I'm therefore looking at the box in the context of 2001, before the other games were created, because those sequels had zero influence on Gothic 1's production and could not have been considered when the marketing on the box was being created. That box is *not* setting up plot details for future games in the series, but is simply setting the stage for Gothic 1 by giving you an impression of the type of world in which this game will take place, albeit in a very broad and obtuse sort of way.
Sure, we can look back now and loosely spin some of the claims on the box to be true with regards to the whole series (I've already done so when noting that the statement about the mounting armies of evil is more applicable to Gothic 2 or Gothic 3), but only in retrospect, and only by taking it out of its original context. But even then, some of these statements are still not accurate, as (1) they already have the logic for why the barrier was created backwards, and that logic doesn't apply to other games in the series, (2) Myrtana is later confirmed to be merely a Kingdom, not an empire, and (3) "saving Myrtana from total destruction" is but one option in Gothic 3, as you might choose to side with the armies of evil (or Beliar himself), end Rhobar's kingdom over Myrtana, and actually _cause_ the total destruction of Myrtana.
Also bear in mind, from what I understand, Piranha Bytes didn't have any sort of concrete plan for sequels when they set out to make the original Gothic, and that, even once they finished making Gothic 1 and started working on a sequel, the story and gameplay changed dramatically from what they originally envisioned to what it eventually became. According to the World of Gothic forums it sounds like they actually turned to the fans for ideas regarding what to do with the sequel, and we can actually see alpha footage of what Gothic 2 was originally supposed to be (which again was only put into development AFTER Gothic 1 was already released, and which is a completely different game from what Gothic 2 ended up being). See this video for more information on the original Gothic sequel: ruclips.net/video/3djEYZ7_pBc/видео.html.
Even if we ignore that alpha footage of the original "Gothic Sequel," consider that the start of Gothic 2 immediately retcons the ending of Gothic 1 to set up a completely different situation between games, while specific lore elements like the nature of the gods and their avatars (among other things) are not consistent between the three games, which really suggests they didn't have this entire series planned out from the very beginning when they were making Gothic 1, and when this box was being written. EDIT: It's not even certain that anyone at Piranha Bytes had any input on the back cover for the North American version, as this very well could have been written/translated by the publisher; if Piranha Bytes wasn't even sure what they were planning to do with potential sequels, then I'm sure Xicat Interactive had even less of an idea what those hypothetical sequels might entail.
@@TheNocturnalRambler your reading into that box to much gothic on story on back box is telling story about why hero got put into prison colony, how he rise up grows stronger while in prison camp, and its setting story up for next 2 games gothic 1 and 2. Gothic 1 and 2 had their bugs, crashes occward controls ok they were annoying as hell but if you can get past that the story campaign, gameplay and music were immersive. There was no hand holding mechanic you had go out into world and learn for you self how fight, look after yourself ie dont get beat up and forge alliance with other camps in the prison colony. Gothic is not just about completing a game its also about meeting some really good guy help you through story that leave lasting affect you find them in gothic 2 and you catch up and find out you all are in the same shit and need work together get out this mess.
@@1000mjf I don't think you understand -- this video is NOT a review of Gothic. You don't need to convince me of Gothic's merits, because as I say at the very beginning of this video, "Gothic and Gothic 2 are my favorite games of all time." It goes without saying that I've played them numerous times and understand what makes them such good games. This video is NOT a criticism against the game itself; it is a criticism (or rather, an amusing observation) of the marketing written on the back of the box which contains several factual errors, and which is not really representative of Gothic 1's story. The game and the box are two completely different things, and while the actual GAME may be setting up Gothic 2 in the sense that the events of Gothic 2 follow directly after Gothic 1 with many recurring characters, story elements, and locations, the back of the box has zero intentional relation to Gothic 2 whatsoever because Gothic 2 wasn't even planned out when this box was created.
@@TheNocturnalRambler to be honest when ive read box i believe it relates to the trilogy as a whole but everyone has their own views and opinions and i can respect that. I liked gothic series and i hop THQ manage to make the remake worth successor to gothic if they ill buy it
Stop being picky...
When you hear someone from US reviewing EU games. Disgusting.
Lolwut? Is that a problem?
WHO CARES ABOUT THAT BACK COVER!? I havent seen it, why wasting time on such nonesense?! get a dislike!
I hope you realize you're not obligated to watch a video on the internet if it doesn't interest you. You don't even have to click on it...
I found this very interesting as a German who played this game first in 2001. The German box has accurate descriptions and statements, Idk how on earth this actually happens, it's all hilariously wrong. It's like they got some old info from 2000 when the game was still in progress, but it was all very vague and in fragments. So they translated that and realized it was not enouch to fill a cover so they just came up with something like whatever. Srsly I am trying to picture how this happened, but I can't 😂😂
my G1 back cover told me that I don't know nothing