The idea of creating this article came spontaneously, thanks to a critical portion of nostalgia, and a completely random coincidence. In view of the total stagnation of the RPG genre, I would like to talk about why swamp grass is better than any magic, why you are still not a citizen, and why the 2006 game still resist personal computers. So, the Gothic series.
In 1997, in the city of Essen (Germany), Mike Khoga, Alex Bruggemanne, Stefan Noule and Tom Putsk, a company was created Piranha bytes, The purpose of which was obviously to make games. In the same year, the company developed its first game engine – Zengine, subsequently renamed the better famous Zengin, and already the next year announced its first project. Action/RPG in the setting of the Middle Ages with fantasy elements, which had a very characteristic name Gothic. For the first time, the community saw the alpha version of the game at the E3 1999 conference, in the form of a three-minute video, comments on which is too much, but already there you can, even remotely, find something familiar.
After a year of development, a huge number of updates to versions of the engine, and all kinds of little things, determines the first accurate release date – July 2000, and it is reported that the game is practically ready. And here production hell began. The leadership was not very quite the final product and the total processing of everything began and the whole. The graphic nucleus, global changes in the engine, and rewriting the plot changed, in fact, a completely different game was developed, which retained only the concept. It is interesting that for E3 2000, Piranha bytes I developed the game on the old graphic core in order to impress the finished product.
As expected, in mid -2000, Gothic I never saw Sveta, the game was postponed first to August of the same year, and then to November. This all did not end, and in November Gothic I survived the next, but this time the last, transferring the game. The final release date was marked by March 2001. Here the master of ax and saws went into the matter and the massive cutting out of interesting (and not very) content began, rewriting the plot and refinement of all kinds of little things, from redrawing health and mana bands, to total refinement and changes in the surrounding world.
I saw the light Gothic As promised on March 15, 2001 in Germany, the publisher was the now deceased and little -known Egmont Interactive. However, in Russia, the game was released only on October 22, 2002 (just a month before the release of the second part in Germany), and the company was a company 1C.
Cover of the Russian version of the game.
The actions of the game take place in the Rudnikovka Valley-Minental, where because of a bloody war with green -skinned orcs, send everyone, somehow guilty prisoners. In order to minimize the rebellion and an attempt to escape, the mines should be surrounded by a magic barrier from which there is no way out, but to which food can be supplied, and even people. But, as always happens, something went wrong, and the magic dome grew to the size of the entire Rudnikovka Valley, thereby making hostages, all its inhabitants. The result was a rebellion, and now the prisoners have become true rulers here, who get ore for food and weapons from the king.
True and this was not the last point. After the rebellion, the entire population was divided into three, if not warring, then certainly rival camps. The confrontation of these can be cut out for a long time and dreary, but each of them is good in its own way. Of course, phrases like “you believe someone, but as a result you get into trouble” are universal for everyone, but the ideology and characters that inhabit cities are fundamentally different. The old camp is the most diverse of all, everyone lives in it, from mining to the magicians of fire and ore barons, which essentially refuel this place and control deliveries from outside. The new camp is the most extraordinary of all, on the one hand, there are thugs and thieves, all colors and colors, on the other hand, the magicians of water and mercenaries, led by the valiant general Lee, the former commander of the king, who was betrayed and stuffed into the colony to the rest. Swamp camp – a bunch of sectarians of "bites", a monastery of delirium, hookahs and jambs with grass. The locals of this are fanatics worshiping the powerful creature – sleeping, and not so reckless guru Yu’berion. In addition, each camp has its own escape plan, well, everyone, except the old. The new camp collects magic ore, hoping to collect such a quantity that the magical explosion caused with its help can destroy the barrier. And the fanatics of Yaro believe that the sleeper will show them the true path, and save them from all misfortunes, and the jambs will never end.
The Rudnikov valley, although not huge, but there is clearly a walk here
The main character, whose name we never find out – an ordinary prisoner sentenced to serving in the Rudnikov Valley. He is not a knight in sparkling armor, on the contrary, he is an ordinary person who, by coincidence, or intentionally, was sentenced to punishment. This was good Gothic, If in most newfangled RPG You were a “ultra -right” defender of all living things, and you had no doubt that you need to protect this world, and save everyone. Then the situation is quite the opposite. The main character is not that the world does not want to save, he always and everywhere seeks his benefit, thereby exposing himself as human.So, in the initial screensaver, when he is told to transmit a very important letter, he asks the only right question: “And what will I do for it?".
I do not see much sense to retell the story in order to avoid spoilers 18 years ago, and a tedious retelling of all events. And there are a lot of them there.
The very first thing https://casinolucki.com/ you will see in the colony is someone’s fist flying into your physiognomy
The world around him Gothic The creature is strange. The situation and does not seem colorful or rainbow, rather, on the contrary. For any action, whether it is a visit to someone else’s house, assigning someone else’s shop or because of a banal hostility – here you can safely get in the face. However, despite all of the above, everything is not so unambiguous. The fact is that the first Gothic if not, it was certainly one of the most living games in general. Each NPC has their own daily routine, people communicate, perform everyday routine, and at night, as it should be, they go to sleep. The game was good because I did not want to leave here, the world around, although it was aggressive, but certainly did not torture obvious hatred, people willingly spoke, asked for all kinds of help, while not being distracted from everyday routine. Unless the surrounding fauna tried in every possible way to gut you, and even though she often did it, it was not so scary.
In general, go beyond the borders of the city, unaccompanied, or proper level – more expensive. Creation of the Rudnikovka Valley will not adapt to your level and equipment, the battle even with a couple of weak creatures like scavengers or clamps will most likely lead to your death. And the meeting with them is inevitable, because even on the roads there is a high chance to meet something like that. Warm up all that some opponents simply do not want to die from a hero who did not have proper equipment, the enemy simply will not receive damage. Now even Dark Souls this cannot boast.
In the old camp, by the way, once even a concert in Extremo takes place, thereby fighting off the desire to leave that.
Equipment, by the way, there are more than plenty of. A variety of armor, both fractional and publicly available, the arsenal consists of swords, axes, a macer of both one -handed and two -handed, bows and crossbows are also present here. The only problem is that without possessing the proper characteristic you can’t even take a particular weapon into your hands, and if you spend all glasses on strength/dexterity/mana (the necessary to emphasize), but you will forget about the use of use, you will wave your sword as a stick, and you can kill only an ordinary scenes, and then not always.
By the way about the combat system in the first two units Gothic You can talk for a long time and dreary. Someone does not like it, and is considered elaborate and unusual, while others say that this is almost the best that you can come up with, and it is extremely intuitive. The fact is that all management in the game is built on arrows and action buttons. So to deliver a direct blow, you need to stick two keys, Ctrl and forward movement, Similar actions for lateral blows, block and all kinds of influences with characters, except that the arrow changes. According to personal feelings, I am still inclined to people who like this management, because not in all games you can be stolen to the death of a huge black troll, at the first level, a regular stick. And here you can.
But if you wave weapons, or shoot from a bow/crossbow (emphasize the necessary), you are not like it, for you there is magic, and it is not in a completely banal form. Of course, as elsewhere, there are spell scrolls, which can even use a little boy, but here is a real Jedi Magic power, available only when the magician enters into one round of magicians, whether it be the magicians of water, fire, or, forgive the Lord, guru. And then, immediately call demons, and nobody will let you immediately bring fire to the heads of the enemies. Magic in Gothic, The matter is serious, and you need to approach its study gradually, in circles. So, the first circle is only possible for you to call a firefly over yourself, and to rush with fiery arrows, but then, a circle at 6, you can already with a calm soul annihize everything around.
However, for the sake of gorgeous fire rain, you can spend a couple of dozens of training points
In addition to combat, there are secondary ones, called for mainly for light (and not very) enrichment. Among them are theft, drawing up, opening of castles and acrobatics, they need it not only, except that the autopsy of the castles is very useful, and acrobatics becomes a good help during long travels, but the rest are more likely to prejudice than something significant. There are also skills in extracting all kinds of skins, leather, fangs, claws, but this is all so obvious, so there is nothing special to talk about here.
Talk about graphics, music and all “visual-liable”, regarding Gothic, Very difficult. I will make it easier, and I will say that the test of time, the game definitely passed. You see, after years of progress, graphic revolutions, and the introduction of new technologies with complex names, the game remains beautiful. It is not one of those numerous isometric RPG, which are filled with role -playing elements, but which is simply inconvenient to play, especially after modern games. Not from the genre Dungeon Crawler, which by our time almost completely disappeared from radar. No, Gothic This is a completely modern game, yes, some models are borrowed from tetris here, yes, your kettle is more emotional than the faces of these characters, but in everything else, it is no different.
Wizardry 8 and Gothic. The difference on the face.
In addition to this, throughout the game you will be accompanied by a musical theme written by the chief composer Piranha bytes Kaim Rosencranets. You can only say about it that it was too good, and some compositions still arise in my head, with any mention of the series Gothic. Well, about localization, you can say a couple of words. In Russia, the game was published by the company 1c and localized as much as two times, by the company Russobit-m And Snowball Interactive. Voice acting, in general, was not bad, except that the voices were often repeated, but due to age, and against the background of the general quality of the localization of the beginning of the zero, it makes no sense to criticize it, it was really good.
The only serious illness of which the game was sick was its endless bugs. Moreover, the few of them even played into your hand, but here are constant flights, missing characters, non -working tasks, and “broken” preservations could even get out of us the most calm of us. Of course, most of them have long been fixed by patches, but to this day you can find errors that are incompatible with further passage. Although now they are more likely a special case than everyday life, and play in Gothic no difficulty. On Steam and GOG services.com, you can buy the latest version of the game with a patch for large -format monitors, except that the Russifier will have to look a little, but there are no problems with its installation.
Particularly desperate transfer the game to DirectX 11, apparently the "natural" moodiness of the game does not scare them
Despite the fact that the series itself Gothic Frozen, official patches have been released relatively recently in digital distribution services, for modern systems. However, in the fan community, Gothic never died, modifications for the game were done, and they do it to this day. And their quality, exactly like the degree of absurdity, varies from "Excellent" to "God you are, what a monster you are".
On the Internet, you can find as modifications aimed only at a change in the appearance GG and others, and full -fledged independent plot additions, or even transfer to another game engine. The so -called Project Orpheus The project of the team with the same name was an attempt to transfer the contents of the game to the engine TES V: Skyrim However, because of the teoks with Piranha bytes on the basis of copyright, the project ordered a long life.
There are more successful examples of amateur crafts. Modification Golden Mod, designed by a team with a long name Russian Gothic Mod Team, returns to the game, pre -carved aspects, and makes it more non -linear and large -scale. In general, many examples can be given by many, but almost all great modifications, one way or another, suffered from amusement or did not at all be born, although there were many interesting ideas.
Although the modifications that turn you into a woman, and Diego in the dark elf rivals is definitely not here. If only it were possible to play golf, and MAD would serve the ball. OH Wait.
As agreed earlier, Gothic It was developed for a long time and remoded several times, the cut content was not so much, it was just some unimaginable amount. But for the transfer of everything it will take more than one hour of time, so just recall the most interesting points that had to be abandoned. So, with the help of a two -handed ax, it was not very elegant to “open the locks”, the local trolls could throw cobblestones, the game included shields and helmets that later appeared in the third part. Well, the most important thing in the game was conceived by the multiplayer, moreover, he was almost ready, but it did not work out to find proper information on him, but I could not imagine how it would all work. In general, tasks and locations were most affected, more than ten quests were cut out of the game, including training from Diego, and such places as the city of orcs or an abandoned mine.
Easter and secrets, there are not as many as we would like, but among them you can find something suitable. So, in the old camp there was a barrel that could be climbed into, and sit there, do not ask why, I have no idea, of course there is an idea that it is somehow connected with the cut of the guild of thieves, but this. In the credits of the game, gratitude to Buddha and Peter Molinjo (creator Fable, and the main storyteller of the middle of the zero) was indicated. Well, the most popular – abbreviation "KSO", hinting to us at the same name of the Testers clan, which included Kai Rosencrantz. And there is also a “chroman” quest, it is rather not even an Easter clock, but still a very interesting creature. The bottom line is that you had to solve very muddy puzzles, and on their basis look for books that are already as many as five, and which are scattered in dangerous places of the Rudnikovka Valley, the most interesting thing is that after you find the last book, it seems to be written “a secret stranger to take the secret to the grave” and all. No rewards, no answer to the question that it was at all, nothing. Years later, the community never found an answer that it was at all, and this task is the most disappointing in the game, if not in the series.
The same KSO and hero in the barrel
Gothic In a matter of days, she did not become super popular, she did not bring great money to the developers, she was simply good, not without flaws, of course, but with a good game. The press accepted the first brainchild Piranha bytes In general, positively. So, publisher IGN The game set an assessment 8.6/10, on Metacritic The game has 81/100 to this day, and in Russia, now rested Absolute Games With Nomad in the role of the chief judge, he awarded the game 70 out of 100 points, noting only a weak plot and a lot of bugs, Very A lot of bugs
Despite the fact that the game was not deprived of shortcomings, critics did not say as one "My God, this is 10/10 ", The game was commercially successful and the appearance of the second part was only a matter of time. And time came a little more than a year after the release of the first part. November 29, 2002, the light saw the second part of the already cult series, but this is a completely different story. The conversation about which will go next time, the most interesting is still ahead.