Risen 1 was the first PB game i've played and i was blown away by the beautifully crafted world,outstanding soundtrack and immersive gameplay. I still have the game box containing the manual and the disk. I also enjoyed Elex 1,and to some extent Gothic 3,especially the soundtrack,Kai Rosenkranz is truly a wizard. Thanks for the entertainment you provided me through the years PB...
Honestly really sad. I have only played gothic 1 and 2 so far, since i only discovered them recently, but it was always nice and kinda inspiring that such a legacy eurojank studio could stay in business for so long. Sad they never finished an elex 3.
I'm amazed they lasted this long, tbh. The company was basically riding off Gothic 2 this whole time. The closest they got to a 'decent' release since Gothic 2 was Risen, which was basically a loose remake of Gothic 2. They've tried, sure...maybe. But everything else they've ever released has just been swings and misses still rehashing the same tired format of Gothic, with mild alterations here or there. It's like PB were a one-trick pony, and they could never work out how to do that one trick properly again.
Totally agree. I have not played all of their games, but one thing I can say about the games I played - they had atmosphere. They were immersive. But its a shame they never improved on the janky side of things.
Rehashing the same tired format of Gothic? I WISH they were trying to do that after Risen 1. Thing is afterwards they started experimenting and with Elex they did the most insane thing: they made Gothic, but without most of the elements that made Gothic actually good. They added quest markers (WHAT?!), made the character progression far from immersive, made NPCs act nonsensically (Berserker offering you electronics right from the start, knowing full well he's gonna get kicked out if anyone finds out) and so on. And then Bjorn insisted on even more mindless experimenting with Elex 2 and here we are. Bjorn killed PB.
They no longer even understood the unique qualities of Gothic and Gothic 2 by the time of Risen 2. The "influence" it had on their subsequent projects were just references.
@@Morgannin Not for me. I tried Gothic 2 back in 2005, and couldn't even get past the first hour. A year later I tried Gothic 3, and it was a buggy mess at worst, and an average RPG at best. Many years later I tried Risen 1 and 2, and loved both games. Risem 3 and Elex 1 were OKish. Never tried Gothic 1 or Elex 2.
@@independentthought3390 Interesting. I wonder what put you off in the first hour of Gothic 2. I was utterly immersed the first time I played it, and the first time I played it was the German demo where I couldn't understand a word I was hearing or reading.
Thank you for your video. It's depressing that PB ended but yet their games still live and the memories when I play Gothic games as a child will never fade.
A big part of what gives their games such a great atmosphere are the music and especially the German voice acting. I could overlook a lot of the technical and gameplay flaws in their later games simply because of the audio. It‘s no wonder PB games are nowhere near as popular internationally if all you ever heard was the English voice acting, oh boy is it bad…
@@trisymphony Funny thing is, that's what made it stick with me. English VA in fantasy games tend to be so plain and uninspired. Gothic decided to hire a bunch of local yokels for the English VA and it made it so much more unique. The local pastor sounding like a televangelist made him unforgettable. The NH's sarcastic tone in Gothic 2 was brilliant. Not everyone knocked it out of the park (I'm glad I played 2 well before 1, I don't think I could have suffered through the NH's terrible voice in Gothic 1 if I wasn't already hooked on Gothic 2) but generally speaking, I can't think of a fantasy rpg where I enjoyed the voice acting more.
To be fair, all the other developers probably went to work for much better studios. I read somewhere that some of them even got hired at Alkimia to work on the Gothic remake, but I couldn't find that source again when making this video.
@@RockSooks Yeah but we found that out a while ago, and he left PB back around 2010. I was specifically referring to people who worked for the studio at the time of its closure. There was an article I read claiming that some of them were hired at Alkimia, but I couldn't find it again, and had no other source to verify it.
It's all very sad. But for me, the saddest part is that they (PB, of course) were never able to surpass the first Gothic. A game, a masterpiece, that predates Morrowind by a year, Oblivion with its radiant AI by five and that was a great source of inspiration for CD Projekt RED and its Witcher saga. Yes, I love Gothic II (but for too many reasons to detail here I find it “inferior” to its predecessor). Yes, I love Risen, which could have been better if in the second half had been more to do than exterminate lizardmen. And I also love Risen 2, which is a big departure in many ways from the formula, but the islands were beautiful and the voodoo a welcome addition in a videogame’s world where magic is mostly ice, fire and lightning. Nevertheless, the atmosphere of Gothic, its world building, the eccentric settlements and the general feeling of hostility conveyed by the valley of mines are all elements that have always remained unsurpassed, even if this venerable software house endured almost a quarter of a century of changes, in the industry and inside the staff. Woah, I’ve written too much. Sorry. :P
It's sad, but was inevitable I think. It's surprising they lasted so long, all things considered. The Gothic 3 mess destroyed any chance they may have had in breaking big in the US market, and so they rode the coattails of European loyalty ever since. Risen 2 may have been a comeback for them if they had kept Risen 1's design and just improved on it, but with Risen 2 they completely redesigned their formula from the ground up, and in doing so completely lost everything that made the first two Gothic games, and Risen 1, so damn good and beloved. They never really recovered from Risen 2, and mostly survived on that aforementioned European loyalty and cult classic status. Reminds me of certain cult heavy metal bands that release a great album or two in their early careers, and can just keep going for decades on the strength of those albums alone. But seeing as game development is far more expensive and riskier than making albums, it stands to reason that PB couldn't keep at it forever. I don't think they'll be missed much either. I really liked Elex 1, but understand why so many people didn't. So for most people, they were now on a four-game losing streak. Even of those such as myself who liked the first Elex, a lot of us were let down by - or even outright hated - the second game. How many people could have possibly been looking forward to Elex 3, really? Sad, but inevitable, and possibly overdue. Still, I can say they gave me three of my all-time favourite RPGs in G1, G2 and R1, another strong contender in E1, and as terrible an objective mess as it was, I will always cherish G3 out of nostalgic attachment. That's still a pretty strong legacy to me from a single, small and relatively poorly-funded studio.
To be honest, I don't think Gothic really made a splash in the US whatsoever. I never met anybody who had heard of it before I told them about it. Piranha Bytes didn't really have much of a reputation to lose when Gothic 3 came out. The problem was always that they were trying to punch well above their weight class, and nobody who tried it was that impressed. Add to that the fact that by the time of Gothic 3, the market in the US skewed heavily toward consoles, which is why even other euro jank rpgs like Two Worlds had more of a reputation here. But you're right. They couldn't stick to one thing. Constantly trying to reinvent themselves in the framework of an "open world" narrative rpg meant they never mastered certain fundamentals, but they always seemed blind to exactly what was so inadequate in their games. The inordinate worship they got from devout fanboys closer to home is all they seemed to pay attention to.
I don't know if I'm in the minority but I've called the downfall of PB at Risen 2. They lost my loyalty with it and I also felt kinda betrayed. It's unfathomable to grasp how bad R2 is from an objective standpoint. As an european, trying to explain the US market how pirate games are done right is one of most hubris attempts I know of in gaming. G1+2 was highly influenced by local german/also slavic idiosyncracies, that's what made it work. It was influenced by experience not creativity and they didn't seem to know that. It took The Witcher and KingdomCome to repeat that formular. I Understand the urge to do something new, but one has to stick to his strengths also.
to make my point: ever noticed the ruined industrial complexes and rusting pitheads in Elex1? Those impressions of long gone industrial and mining successes are deeply rooted in the collective psyche and history of the area (I live there) where PB operated. It's all around them in front of their door. There is nothing creative in it to put it in a game. If they'd stick to that theme in Elex1 they'd probably would've make it work, just by intuition.
@@theoleadventurer1199 I did. I disagree about it being great. But I streamed it on Twitch a while back, and saved the whole thing as a Collection if you want to watch it.
@@theoleadventurer1199 Twitch is hard to navigate because it's a terrible website but you can find it from my channel and just look in Collections. Here's the first stream, in any case. www.twitch.tv/morgannin/v/1560306015?sr=a&t=0s
No game has recaptured the magic of Gothic 1 and 2 for me. The last Piranha Bytes game I enjoyed was Risen 1. Kai Rosenkranz not being PB's composer really affected the atmosphere of all the games after Risen 1. Really good video. I'm glad I found your channel.
i played all their games and loved all but elex 2, that was the first game i could not finish due to bugs, and the devs were trolling on the forum, while solutions like patch rollbacks that would lead to loss of progress were known from other players, devs were saying stuff like try restarting and pics or didnt happen :)), when i received the news a few months ago, although disappointed my first thought was "makes sense", just to get my point across for me gothic 3 was a much better game than elex 2
@@andreigreceanu9287 From my perspective, the only reason I consider Elex 2 to be a "worse" game is that Gothic 3 should have been a lesson they never forget. Elex 2 had so many problems and such uninspired design, from the relatively empty and pointless world to the badly designed main quests where you literally mop up crowds of enemies standing in the middle of nowhere for most of it, on top of all the technical malfunctions of it, all of which make it seem like sheer hubris and arrogance to think that was good enough.
@@Morgannin all of that true, would have found an excuse for it tho, if i could finish the game properly, it took them 3 weeks to fix the bugs, would have only lost about 8 hours of game time if i rolled back the patch, but i thought/hoped that it would be a quick fix, problem is their representants replies on the forums pissed me off so much that by the time their patch fixed thing i totally lost all interest in the game
@@UberCola There's a lot that could change, a lot I'd argue needs to be changed, but it needs to be set up better from the beginning. It would need some minor retcons to the first two, and either set up the freedom of choice (good, evil or neutral) way better in the first two, or give up on that idea entirely. The way it fit into the series by then created a huge departure in the method of storytelling, and left us with a really lame narrative that didn't seem to acknowledge the first two games in a meaningful way. It really wanted to push the "freedom of choice" idea at all costs, which meant nothing you did really meant anything. I don't think they can make it work without more linearity than what Gothic 3 had, or else it will just feel like what it was: a mediocre Elder Scrolls wannabe.
@@Morgannin Yeah, you are right Gothic 3 is a true abomination. Changing the game formula and the Orcs makes it impossible to see these three titles as one.The End of Gothic 2 is the ship leaving Irdorath. My big dream is, that in THQ-Gothic 3 this very ship will sink and the nameless hero becomes a castaway on an island.
@@UberColaI don't see a strong narrative continuity there, either. Washing up on an island, alone? What would he do there? What would that contribute to the greater narrative and setting of the previous games? Them getting to Myrtana made plenty of sense. It's been the backdrop for the entire setting and lore. But getting there after the war was fully lost deflated the entire war concept they set up in the background, the presentation of the orcs was heavily altered from what they set us up to expect (just to allow them to present them as a faction you can join), and they tried to give you an Elder Scrolls level of freedom to engage with the story as much or as little as you chose, but that didn't work because the main story and central conflict is pretty much what everything was based around anyway. You couldn't truly avoid it because everything you did, even the most mundane side quests, were based on it or at least contributed reputation in the cities which put you closer to the leaders. The actual "freedom of choice" was ultimately the permission to do as little as possible and just speedrun the main story in a handful of steps, basically. In the pursuit of that misguided freedom of choice, they just made everything you *could* do boring and shallow.
@@Morgannin One option would be that the Island is a pimped up Version of Jharkendar. Excluding the Night of the Raven from THQ-Gothic-2 would make this game easier to produce. I get your point that the main land is the real deal. But the attempt to create a map with three different climate zones is likely to crash the IP a second time. So if a THQ-Gothic game would ever take place on the main land, it must be a constrained area, e.g. the Kings last stronghold. I think the PB-Gothic-3 mistakes you describe are well discussed. The progressive thing is now to focus on the actions of THQ.
Not any time soon. I recently streamed a challenge run for Gothic 1 and 2 where I only used scrolls for everything, which was fun, but I doubt I'll be doing another walkthrough or casual LP any time soon.
Very convenient to show only few bugs from elex 2 to support your shallow opinion about the game. Elex 1 and 2 both have great stories in it and a handmade world worth to explore + jetpack upgrade in Elex 2 is just amazing. They had really small budget and they have made a lot good stuff, Magalan world is really captivating.
@@DrizztRPG Elex 2 was absolute shit. I streamed the game from start to finish. Go ahead and whinge about my "shallow opinions" after watching that, instead of assuming 30 seconds of this video amounts to my complete opinion on the subject.
I have finished both games 100%, every quest done, every item collected. The elex world and story is worth to experience. Those games are ment to play "slow" that way you will be able to find hidden questlines and amazing locations that will boost the player experience. If you will only run through the main questline and speed everything up, you will miss ALOT of this world. For me environment exploration of Magalan is amazing. You are the one who made this video called "The Sad End of Piranha Bytes" which is just a passive agrresive + agressive "whining" about the company and their games. You have the right to your opinion sadly. Personally I dont agree with you at all, every player have his own experience and I had alot of fun playing elex games.
@@DrizztRPG @DrizztRPG I thoroughly explored the world of Elex 2. My playthrough took maybe 80-90 hours. I was as thorough as I could stand to be. Elex 2 does not compare in any regard to Gothic 1, Gothic 2, Risen or even Elex 1 in terms of how compelling the world was to explore. And that's not even the worst of its problems. Believe it or not I actually thought Elex 1 had some promise. I generally enjoyed it and could see a lot of room to grow in the sequel. Instead they did everything worse, and I was genuinely shocked at how much worse it was. We can disagree. Nothing wrong with that. Enjoy what you enjoy and don't let anyone tell you that you shouldn't. But you came at me calling my opinion "shallow" because I threw a bit of snark in at the end of this video and you wanted to act like that was my complete analysis. I wasn't reviewing the game in this video, because Elex 2 wasn't even the topic.
I loved Risen. Objectively a 7/10 game, but it came at the right moment, made me relax, it was fun. Then I saw the strank and independent follower in Risen 2, and I completely lost interest in anything by this company.
There's a very good reason why developers like FromSoftware have hit a literal gold mine after pioneering the Soulslike genre. The age of clunky, janky, artificially difficult RPG's that rely on grinding and exploits to proceed is long dead...and so are developers like Piranha Bytes who are proof that a niche audience can only sustain you for so long.
Artificially difficult? And you are saying that FromSoftware pioneered the Soulslike genre. And that's basically THE definition of Artificial difficulty. Think, then speak.
Good riddance. They disappointed time and time again. Elex 2 was the last nail in the coffin. I felt robbed after playing that disaster. Incompetence deserves bankruptcy.
naahh..... G1,G2 and risen1are very good games....all other sucks... thing its name is byorn said on risen 2 that they finaly made game that they wanted 2 make... didnt even try 2 pirate when seen gameplay... so, think they got what they deserve
@@independentthought3390 you did not play it on release it seems. it was almost unplayable and needed patching. I also played the beta and reported some bugs, they did not care to fix them and to this very day you will still find those bugs.
Excuse me? Immense disaster of Gothic 3 - I think you mean Gothic 4 Risen. Gothic 3 is not perfect yet ( it's still being worked on and improved by the community to fix bugs and add new content and fixing any holes in the existing story line) however it's NOT a disaster. Like a Proper first person RPG Gothic 3 can be played for weeks or months if you talk to everyone, do everything and spam save while trying to get it all just right. I didn't play 1 and 2 because both had a lack of first person view and are very dated. If it were not for Gothic 3 I would not have a love for first person RPG's like Fallout, The Elder Scrolls, Dishonored or Far Cry.
Gothic 3 was a disaster. The community volunteering to 'fix' it in their free time doesn't make Gothic 3 a good game. As it was released, by PB, for players to purchase, it was a disaster. Modders and the community do not retroactively make a bad game good. Gothic 3 is a terrible game that was borderline unplayable, and it's not the job of modders to excuse PB's lack of quality control. It is entirely correct to define Gothic 3 as a disaster.
@@DivergentDroid You're also giving a lot of credit to the past 18 years of people modding the game and forgetting that the game was a nearly-unplayable mess when it launched, with severe technical issues baked into the engine itself that took modders over a decade to even start to crack into. I'm not going to dig into my own opinions here, I've spoken till I'm blue in the face more than enough, but I don't consider things like "it can be played for weeks or months if you talk to everyone" to be inherently a positive trait. A game can be extremely long and that doesn't make any of that experience automatically good.
@@Valvadrix Especially since the first person view just moved the camera into the third-person model's head. That's what the intentionally-janky first person mods of things like Dark Souls do, and the motion sickness that results is treated as a feature.
I'm sorry? Gothic 3 is barely a functional game. Even with patches. And this game has terrible first person mode, like, what are you even talking about?
@@DamnedRunner I made some notes for the sake of making a video, but I happened to come down with an illness the same day and am still getting over it.
This studio is a big part of my childhood. Ita sad to see it go but it's not unexpected. That's just how the industry rolls.
I still love Risen 1. One of my favorite games of all time!
My brother
Risen 1 was the first PB game i've played and i was blown away by the beautifully crafted world,outstanding soundtrack and immersive gameplay. I still have the game box containing the manual and the disk. I also enjoyed Elex 1,and to some extent Gothic 3,especially the soundtrack,Kai Rosenkranz is truly a wizard. Thanks for the entertainment you provided me through the years PB...
Man elex was so good. I hope they make another game. Their worlds really were inspired
Was it? I really like Risen 2 but I have to admit that the game is mediocre at best.
Thanks for making this video Morg.
It's sad but it was coming for a while now.
I already lost the last bit of hope for PB when Mike Hoge left, but still: rip in peace
Yep. No matter how much copium one is willing huff, one could tell he was gone.
Farewell 😢to PiranhaBytes ,the developers of my most perfect game i've ever played : *Gothic* (2001)
Honestly really sad. I have only played gothic 1 and 2 so far, since i only discovered them recently, but it was always nice and kinda inspiring that such a legacy eurojank studio could stay in business for so long. Sad they never finished an elex 3.
Elex 3 would have killed them if Elex 2 hadn't done it already.
I'm amazed they lasted this long, tbh. The company was basically riding off Gothic 2 this whole time. The closest they got to a 'decent' release since Gothic 2 was Risen, which was basically a loose remake of Gothic 2. They've tried, sure...maybe. But everything else they've ever released has just been swings and misses still rehashing the same tired format of Gothic, with mild alterations here or there. It's like PB were a one-trick pony, and they could never work out how to do that one trick properly again.
Totally agree. I have not played all of their games, but one thing I can say about the games I played - they had atmosphere. They were immersive.
But its a shame they never improved on the janky side of things.
Rehashing the same tired format of Gothic? I WISH they were trying to do that after Risen 1. Thing is afterwards they started experimenting and with Elex they did the most insane thing: they made Gothic, but without most of the elements that made Gothic actually good. They added quest markers (WHAT?!), made the character progression far from immersive, made NPCs act nonsensically (Berserker offering you electronics right from the start, knowing full well he's gonna get kicked out if anyone finds out) and so on. And then Bjorn insisted on even more mindless experimenting with Elex 2 and here we are. Bjorn killed PB.
They no longer even understood the unique qualities of Gothic and Gothic 2 by the time of Risen 2. The "influence" it had on their subsequent projects were just references.
@@Morgannin Not for me. I tried Gothic 2 back in 2005, and couldn't even get past the first hour. A year later I tried Gothic 3, and it was a buggy mess at worst, and an average RPG at best. Many years later I tried Risen 1 and 2, and loved both games. Risem 3 and Elex 1 were OKish. Never tried Gothic 1 or Elex 2.
@@independentthought3390 Interesting. I wonder what put you off in the first hour of Gothic 2. I was utterly immersed the first time I played it, and the first time I played it was the German demo where I couldn't understand a word I was hearing or reading.
R.I.P - Piranha Bytes - Oh the memories Gothic 2 brought us.
RIP Piranha Bytes, one of my favorite game devs in my teenage years
Thank you for your video. It's depressing that PB ended but yet their games still live and the memories when I play Gothic games as a child will never fade.
A big part of what gives their games such a great atmosphere are the music and especially the German voice acting. I could overlook a lot of the technical and gameplay flaws in their later games simply because of the audio. It‘s no wonder PB games are nowhere near as popular internationally if all you ever heard was the English voice acting, oh boy is it bad…
@@trisymphony Funny thing is, that's what made it stick with me. English VA in fantasy games tend to be so plain and uninspired. Gothic decided to hire a bunch of local yokels for the English VA and it made it so much more unique. The local pastor sounding like a televangelist made him unforgettable. The NH's sarcastic tone in Gothic 2 was brilliant. Not everyone knocked it out of the park (I'm glad I played 2 well before 1, I don't think I could have suffered through the NH's terrible voice in Gothic 1 if I wasn't already hooked on Gothic 2) but generally speaking, I can't think of a fantasy rpg where I enjoyed the voice acting more.
Damn I started playing Elex in July and that was my first PB game. Didn't realize they were already defunct when I started playing. RIP
Bjorn and Jenny fucking ruined this studio, and THEY get to keep going? FUCK that.
To be fair, all the other developers probably went to work for much better studios. I read somewhere that some of them even got hired at Alkimia to work on the Gothic remake, but I couldn't find that source again when making this video.
@@Morgannin Kai Rosenkrantz is confirmed. I don't know about others.
@@RockSooks Yeah but we found that out a while ago, and he left PB back around 2010. I was specifically referring to people who worked for the studio at the time of its closure. There was an article I read claiming that some of them were hired at Alkimia, but I couldn't find it again, and had no other source to verify it.
It's all very sad. But for me, the saddest part is that they (PB, of course) were never able to surpass the first Gothic. A game, a masterpiece, that predates Morrowind by a year, Oblivion with its radiant AI by five and that was a great source of inspiration for CD Projekt RED and its Witcher saga.
Yes, I love Gothic II (but for too many reasons to detail here I find it “inferior” to its predecessor). Yes, I love Risen, which could have been better if in the second half had been more to do than exterminate lizardmen. And I also love Risen 2, which is a big departure in many ways from the formula, but the islands were beautiful and the voodoo a welcome addition in a videogame’s world where magic is mostly ice, fire and lightning.
Nevertheless, the atmosphere of Gothic, its world building, the eccentric settlements and the general feeling of hostility conveyed by the valley of mines are all elements that have always remained unsurpassed, even if this venerable software house endured almost a quarter of a century of changes, in the industry and inside the staff.
Woah, I’ve written too much. Sorry. :P
Goddamn Embracer........THQ Nordic done save the studio just to be shutdown few years later
It's sad, but was inevitable I think. It's surprising they lasted so long, all things considered. The Gothic 3 mess destroyed any chance they may have had in breaking big in the US market, and so they rode the coattails of European loyalty ever since. Risen 2 may have been a comeback for them if they had kept Risen 1's design and just improved on it, but with Risen 2 they completely redesigned their formula from the ground up, and in doing so completely lost everything that made the first two Gothic games, and Risen 1, so damn good and beloved. They never really recovered from Risen 2, and mostly survived on that aforementioned European loyalty and cult classic status. Reminds me of certain cult heavy metal bands that release a great album or two in their early careers, and can just keep going for decades on the strength of those albums alone. But seeing as game development is far more expensive and riskier than making albums, it stands to reason that PB couldn't keep at it forever. I don't think they'll be missed much either. I really liked Elex 1, but understand why so many people didn't. So for most people, they were now on a four-game losing streak. Even of those such as myself who liked the first Elex, a lot of us were let down by - or even outright hated - the second game. How many people could have possibly been looking forward to Elex 3, really?
Sad, but inevitable, and possibly overdue. Still, I can say they gave me three of my all-time favourite RPGs in G1, G2 and R1, another strong contender in E1, and as terrible an objective mess as it was, I will always cherish G3 out of nostalgic attachment. That's still a pretty strong legacy to me from a single, small and relatively poorly-funded studio.
To be honest, I don't think Gothic really made a splash in the US whatsoever. I never met anybody who had heard of it before I told them about it. Piranha Bytes didn't really have much of a reputation to lose when Gothic 3 came out. The problem was always that they were trying to punch well above their weight class, and nobody who tried it was that impressed. Add to that the fact that by the time of Gothic 3, the market in the US skewed heavily toward consoles, which is why even other euro jank rpgs like Two Worlds had more of a reputation here.
But you're right. They couldn't stick to one thing. Constantly trying to reinvent themselves in the framework of an "open world" narrative rpg meant they never mastered certain fundamentals, but they always seemed blind to exactly what was so inadequate in their games. The inordinate worship they got from devout fanboys closer to home is all they seemed to pay attention to.
I don't know if I'm in the minority but I've called the downfall of PB at Risen 2. They lost my loyalty with it and I also felt kinda betrayed. It's unfathomable to grasp how bad R2 is from an objective standpoint.
As an european, trying to explain the US market how pirate games are done right is one of most hubris attempts I know of in gaming. G1+2 was highly influenced by local german/also slavic idiosyncracies, that's what made it work. It was influenced by experience not creativity and they didn't seem to know that.
It took The Witcher and KingdomCome to repeat that formular.
I Understand the urge to do something new, but one has to stick to his strengths also.
to make my point: ever noticed the ruined industrial complexes and rusting pitheads in Elex1?
Those impressions of long gone industrial and mining successes are deeply rooted in the collective psyche and history of the area (I live there) where PB operated. It's all around them in front of their door. There is nothing creative in it to put it in a game. If they'd stick to that theme in Elex1 they'd probably would've make it work, just by intuition.
Morgannin did you ever play the Gothic 2 mod Archolos? I hear its a great mod and full game?
@@theoleadventurer1199 I did. I disagree about it being great. But I streamed it on Twitch a while back, and saved the whole thing as a Collection if you want to watch it.
@@Morgannin Thats why I checked your channel first after I read abut it but didn't see a play list for Archolos?
@@theoleadventurer1199 Twitch is hard to navigate because it's a terrible website but you can find it from my channel and just look in Collections. Here's the first stream, in any case. www.twitch.tv/morgannin/v/1560306015?sr=a&t=0s
@@Morgannin Thanks buddy! heading to watch it now :)
No game has recaptured the magic of Gothic 1 and 2 for me. The last Piranha Bytes game I enjoyed was Risen 1. Kai Rosenkranz not being PB's composer really affected the atmosphere of all the games after Risen 1. Really good video. I'm glad I found your channel.
i played all their games and loved all but elex 2, that was the first game i could not finish due to bugs, and the devs were trolling on the forum, while solutions like patch rollbacks that would lead to loss of progress were known from other players, devs were saying stuff like try restarting and pics or didnt happen :)), when i received the news a few months ago, although disappointed my first thought was "makes sense", just to get my point across for me gothic 3 was a much better game than elex 2
@@andreigreceanu9287 From my perspective, the only reason I consider Elex 2 to be a "worse" game is that Gothic 3 should have been a lesson they never forget. Elex 2 had so many problems and such uninspired design, from the relatively empty and pointless world to the badly designed main quests where you literally mop up crowds of enemies standing in the middle of nowhere for most of it, on top of all the technical malfunctions of it, all of which make it seem like sheer hubris and arrogance to think that was good enough.
@@Morgannin all of that true, would have found an excuse for it tho, if i could finish the game properly, it took them 3 weeks to fix the bugs, would have only lost about 8 hours of game time if i rolled back the patch, but i thought/hoped that it would be a quick fix, problem is their representants replies on the forums pissed me off so much that by the time their patch fixed thing i totally lost all interest in the game
@@andreigreceanu9287 Consider it something of a mercy. By design, Elex 2 was truly awful, even if all the bugs were fixed.
Given the fact that THQ is now managing the Gothic IP. Do you think Gothic 3 should be retconned. And if yes what would be the best way to do so?
@@UberCola There's a lot that could change, a lot I'd argue needs to be changed, but it needs to be set up better from the beginning. It would need some minor retcons to the first two, and either set up the freedom of choice (good, evil or neutral) way better in the first two, or give up on that idea entirely. The way it fit into the series by then created a huge departure in the method of storytelling, and left us with a really lame narrative that didn't seem to acknowledge the first two games in a meaningful way. It really wanted to push the "freedom of choice" idea at all costs, which meant nothing you did really meant anything. I don't think they can make it work without more linearity than what Gothic 3 had, or else it will just feel like what it was: a mediocre Elder Scrolls wannabe.
@@Morgannin Yeah, you are right Gothic 3 is a true abomination. Changing the game formula and the Orcs makes it impossible to see these three titles as one.The End of Gothic 2 is the ship leaving Irdorath. My big dream is, that in THQ-Gothic 3 this very ship will sink and the nameless hero becomes a castaway on an island.
@@UberColaI don't see a strong narrative continuity there, either. Washing up on an island, alone? What would he do there? What would that contribute to the greater narrative and setting of the previous games?
Them getting to Myrtana made plenty of sense. It's been the backdrop for the entire setting and lore. But getting there after the war was fully lost deflated the entire war concept they set up in the background, the presentation of the orcs was heavily altered from what they set us up to expect (just to allow them to present them as a faction you can join), and they tried to give you an Elder Scrolls level of freedom to engage with the story as much or as little as you chose, but that didn't work because the main story and central conflict is pretty much what everything was based around anyway. You couldn't truly avoid it because everything you did, even the most mundane side quests, were based on it or at least contributed reputation in the cities which put you closer to the leaders. The actual "freedom of choice" was ultimately the permission to do as little as possible and just speedrun the main story in a handful of steps, basically. In the pursuit of that misguided freedom of choice, they just made everything you *could* do boring and shallow.
@@Morgannin One option would be that the Island is a pimped up Version of Jharkendar. Excluding the Night of the Raven from THQ-Gothic-2 would make this game easier to produce. I get your point that the main land is the real deal. But the attempt to create a map with three different climate zones is likely to crash the IP a second time. So if a THQ-Gothic game would ever take place on the main land, it must be a constrained area, e.g. the Kings last stronghold. I think the PB-Gothic-3 mistakes you describe are well discussed. The progressive thing is now to focus on the actions of THQ.
Unfortunate news. Are you planning on doing another play through of gothic?
Not any time soon. I recently streamed a challenge run for Gothic 1 and 2 where I only used scrolls for everything, which was fun, but I doubt I'll be doing another walkthrough or casual LP any time soon.
Very convenient to show only few bugs from elex 2 to support your shallow opinion about the game. Elex 1 and 2 both have great stories in it and a handmade world worth to explore + jetpack upgrade in Elex 2 is just amazing. They had really small budget and they have made a lot good stuff, Magalan world is really captivating.
@@DrizztRPG Elex 2 was absolute shit. I streamed the game from start to finish. Go ahead and whinge about my "shallow opinions" after watching that, instead of assuming 30 seconds of this video amounts to my complete opinion on the subject.
I have finished both games 100%, every quest done, every item collected. The elex world and story is worth to experience. Those games are ment to play "slow" that way you will be able to find hidden questlines and amazing locations that will boost the player experience. If you will only run through the main questline and speed everything up, you will miss ALOT of this world. For me environment exploration of Magalan is amazing.
You are the one who made this video called "The Sad End of Piranha Bytes" which is just a passive agrresive + agressive "whining" about the company and their games. You have the right to your opinion sadly. Personally I dont agree with you at all, every player have his own experience and I had alot of fun playing elex games.
@@DrizztRPG @DrizztRPG I thoroughly explored the world of Elex 2. My playthrough took maybe 80-90 hours. I was as thorough as I could stand to be. Elex 2 does not compare in any regard to Gothic 1, Gothic 2, Risen or even Elex 1 in terms of how compelling the world was to explore. And that's not even the worst of its problems. Believe it or not I actually thought Elex 1 had some promise. I generally enjoyed it and could see a lot of room to grow in the sequel. Instead they did everything worse, and I was genuinely shocked at how much worse it was.
We can disagree. Nothing wrong with that. Enjoy what you enjoy and don't let anyone tell you that you shouldn't. But you came at me calling my opinion "shallow" because I threw a bit of snark in at the end of this video and you wanted to act like that was my complete analysis. I wasn't reviewing the game in this video, because Elex 2 wasn't even the topic.
Terraformation begins
dang 😢
I loved Risen. Objectively a 7/10 game, but it came at the right moment, made me relax, it was fun. Then I saw the strank and independent follower in Risen 2, and I completely lost interest in anything by this company.
Absolutely heartbreaking ...
There's a very good reason why developers like FromSoftware have hit a literal gold mine after pioneering the Soulslike genre.
The age of clunky, janky, artificially difficult RPG's that rely on grinding and exploits to proceed is long dead...and so are developers like Piranha Bytes who are proof that a niche audience can only sustain you for so long.
Artificially difficult? And you are saying that FromSoftware pioneered the Soulslike genre. And that's basically THE definition of Artificial difficulty. Think, then speak.
@@Amonny
If you projected any harder, they could point you at a wall to show off Powerpoint presentations.
Pioneering the Soulslike genre? Nah they just outright copied it from Severence: Blade of Darkness (2001).
RIP They made few amazing games. Gothic 1 Gothic 2 and Risen 1 will be alive for a long time.
Shoulda made better games
Good riddance. They disappointed time and time again. Elex 2 was the last nail in the coffin. I felt robbed after playing that disaster. Incompetence deserves bankruptcy.
Fun to laugh at but yeah their games mostly suck let's be real bar 1 or 2 genuinely good games, shame to see the eurojank go
naahh..... G1,G2 and risen1are very good games....all other sucks...
thing its name is byorn said on risen 2 that they finaly made game that they wanted 2 make...
didnt even try 2 pirate when seen gameplay...
so, think they got what they deserve
hey, Gothic 3 was good too!
OMG you are 100% right! G1, G2 and R1 had the good old spirit, all the other titles were just bad.
@@garok2412 not on a release... Think fans fix stutering just few years ago..... Yea... Try vanila G3 and U will see why we all take a dump on it
Risen 2 was pretty great, though. Much less generic than the others, and a lot funnier, with some of the best side quests in any PB game.
@@independentthought3390 you did not play it on release it seems. it was almost unplayable and needed patching. I also played the beta and reported some bugs, they did not care to fix them and to this very day you will still find those bugs.
Excuse me? Immense disaster of Gothic 3 - I think you mean Gothic 4 Risen. Gothic 3 is not perfect yet ( it's still being worked on and improved by the community to fix bugs and add new content and fixing any holes in the existing story line) however it's NOT a disaster. Like a Proper first person RPG Gothic 3 can be played for weeks or months if you talk to everyone, do everything and spam save while trying to get it all just right. I didn't play 1 and 2 because both had a lack of first person view and are very dated. If it were not for Gothic 3 I would not have a love for first person RPG's like Fallout, The Elder Scrolls, Dishonored or Far Cry.
Gothic 3 was a disaster. The community volunteering to 'fix' it in their free time doesn't make Gothic 3 a good game. As it was released, by PB, for players to purchase, it was a disaster. Modders and the community do not retroactively make a bad game good. Gothic 3 is a terrible game that was borderline unplayable, and it's not the job of modders to excuse PB's lack of quality control. It is entirely correct to define Gothic 3 as a disaster.
@@DivergentDroid You're also giving a lot of credit to the past 18 years of people modding the game and forgetting that the game was a nearly-unplayable mess when it launched, with severe technical issues baked into the engine itself that took modders over a decade to even start to crack into.
I'm not going to dig into my own opinions here, I've spoken till I'm blue in the face more than enough, but I don't consider things like "it can be played for weeks or months if you talk to everyone" to be inherently a positive trait. A game can be extremely long and that doesn't make any of that experience automatically good.
I can't even imagine the horror of playing that trash in first person. It's bad enough in third person.
@@Valvadrix Especially since the first person view just moved the camera into the third-person model's head. That's what the intentionally-janky first person mods of things like Dark Souls do, and the motion sickness that results is treated as a feature.
I'm sorry? Gothic 3 is barely a functional game. Even with patches. And this game has terrible first person mode, like, what are you even talking about?
f
It was mediocre anyway.
What do you think about the Gothic Remake Showcase?
@@DamnedRunner I made some notes for the sake of making a video, but I happened to come down with an illness the same day and am still getting over it.