The indignation of the goth. Whining and lamentations.
Hello, dear diary, so much time has passed since my last entry. This is because, quite frankly, nothing has happened. Today is an entirely different matter. Today is simply a celebration. I have finally escaped this boring island of Feshir, fleeing from this dirty little village of three houses. Just yesterday, by a stroke of fate, I nearly married my elderly, wrinkled girlfriend. Praise to Beliar, the people of Robar III, may he be blessed, sent the unfortunate one to the ancestors. Now I can travel, go wherever my eyes can see. This island was essentially just a training camp for me, and beyond the ocean, a vast world of freedom and new opportunities awaits me! How wonderful it feels! Until we meet again, my dear diary, Diego has awakened and is beating me with a whip, forcing me to row faster; for now, I can write no more.
Your, Arkady.
Excerpt from "Diaries of Unfulfilled Hopes".
Standing before the tavern "The Shattered Maiden," having just escaped the dull island of Feshir, I can hardly contain my excitement. You think, "Ah, finally, the good old Gothic will begin..."
Don't deceive yourself with illusions; it won’t begin.
Yes, I was warned, I remember. They said it a hundred times, but like a true fool and stubborn donkey, I only learn from my mistakes. But I have some excuse, somewhat. Your warnings were merely assumptions, and assumptions are not reliable. You know, I prefer to confirm everything based on my own experience. I was sad for a bit, but now I’ve decided to share with you all the charms that Arcania: Gothic 4 has prepared for us.
Well, as you can tell from the title of the post, this is certainly not a review, and the title makes it quite clear why. I (shamefully looking down at the floor) am one of those people for whom the Gothic game series shines in the top ten of my favorite and beloved games. The whole series, with the exception of perhaps the blasphemous addon-perversion "Rejected Gods" (I bowed to the statue of Beliar), has been completed by me several times. I’m telling you all this for a reason, because this fact absolutely influenced my perception of the new game in the series and, therefore, hindered me from being objective. I love the early parts of the saga too much to maintain a cool mind regarding what bears the proud name “Gothic.” This manifests as an effect of rejecting everything new in the game, as well as a sharp lack of the good old content that was cut out. Aha, such is the root of conservatism that probably can never be eradicated. Therefore, as I walk down a completely new path in a completely different game, I will allow myself to look back at its predecessors more than once, and not even twice, using them as a benchmark.
Evenings in Arcania can be beautiful.
Where to start? Ah, of course, the new hero! The good thing here is that they didn’t forcefully make us make the veteran old man gather mushrooms and kill bugs again. Indeed, after eradicating the vile creatures in wholesale quantities, he has earned retirement. Moreover, they have seated him on a throne. Even more, they have made him a cruel and mad ruler and the main villain whose miserable soul our newly-minted Nameless must hunt.
It’s a pity, though, that the new hero is somewhat... ahem, how to put it delicately... unheroic. Our alter-ego is again nameless; however, for a time, he bears an excellent nickname – “The Shepherd,” which lightly hints at his main profession. The look of the new hero will not be a revelation to anyone; I presume you have seen him more than once. A scrawny little brunette with a shabby unshaven look on his youthful face and a casually tousled fringe. What can I say, it’s not an imposing sight. But, as they say, you judge a book by its cover, but you follow it by its deeds. After all, we’re playing an RPG, which means we can turn this sissy into a Kostya Tszyu or, at the very least, a Jean-Claude Van Damme (aging drug addict? 0_0)!
Here he is, the handsome one, smoking a hookah. Let’s indulge in nostalgia a bit more.
Ah, if only it were that simple; I fear that transforming the young one into a respectable man will not work. We won’t be able to run through Arcania as a true badass. Why? Because of the rascal’s behavior. He acts like a fool, and his actions, much to everyone’s horror, are uncontrollable. The crucial element of behavior control is lost, which is the main feature of the genre – the option of making some choice at all.
It all begins with dialogues, which, like every other aspect of the game, have undergone total simplification. In 99.9% of cases, there is no choice of phrases in dialogues at all. You are forced to click the mouse on the only possible option, which you simply must say to end the conversation in the one correct way.
And if before we could choose between:
**
1). Oh, I think I’ll just leave now, out of goodwill.
2). Good sir, I’m starting to suspect that you are not a gentleman.
**
3). I’ll chew you up, you bastard.
Now, you’ll have to choose not for long, but from one specific option. The main character threatens only when it’s prescribed by the plot, is polite when he has to, and sentimental when he feels like it. This is one of the game’s biggest drawbacks, overshadowing probably any other. All this damned empty talk, I swear, could have been easily presented with the help of videos, rather than forcing players, once again, to futilely reach for the mouse. Perhaps this was done so that the player doesn’t accidentally fall asleep while listening to empty chatter.
The local orc clone, if they diversify the human clones with beards and clothing, then they must have neglected these. Probably based on the principle that "one cannot tell humans from orcs at first glance."
The problem of any choice arises before the hero very rarely. We have even been deprived of the banal ability to refuse an unnecessary quest. The main hero agrees to any venture himself, without asking or being aware. Imagine everything he would agree to, whatever might be proposed!
Examples of dialogues:
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-Will you help me find mushrooms?
-Yes!
-Will you find my son?
-Sure!
-Dance for us, Shepherd, let’s have some fun!
-Will do!
-Will you go to a dark cave teeming with goblins and skeletons to retrieve a family relic – the leather underpants left to my family by my great-grandfather Andrei Filippovich, stolen by my evil brother Arthur under the pressure of his grumbling wife Penelope, whom he married at the behest of our dying father, who was suffering from dysentery?
**
-Of course, no problem! Can you point me in the direction? – says the main hero with such a satisfied look, as if he has just been served a plate of dumplings, rather than being sent seven miles into a dangerous dungeon.**
I must admit, the old guys have been very well thought out.
All traces of the previous Nameless's sarcasm are gone. Witty jokes and sharp quips have given way to simple and dull statements. Encountering a good joke in the game is like tracking down an Ussuri tiger. Friendliness and optimism govern the character of the newly minted Gothic hero, as if he is the lost reincarnation of the infamous SpongeBob.
-Why don’t you go into that cave yourself? – occasionally asks the Shepherd to the person who is issuing him another quest "run and bring it. And do it fast!!!".
-Wait, there are goblins in there!!! – the NPC dismisses.
And again… and again… and then again… the Shepherd rushes into the darkness of another cave, all of them locked in a circle for convenience so that not a single imbecile accidentally gets lost.
Diego behind bars still shows his dentures.
And maybe I just don’t want to complete these unnecessary and uninteresting quests? Perhaps I don’t care about mushrooms/underpants/bugs… And I’d just like to drop everything and walk straight through to the victorious end; but alas, there’s yet another problem. Those damn tasks appear in the cursed journal, and I can’t leave any unresolved quests in it! I simply can’t, physically!
-Here are your underpants, good sir! – I hand over the simple loot with a smile to another clone.
-I’m a penniless man, a simple peasant, so I can’t offer you much gold. – says he, and...
-Item lost: -underpants.
**
-Item acquired: -250 gold.
-Item acquired: Ring of World Power.
-Item acquired: Rune of Ice Astral.
**
Well, it’s a bit little, of course, but as they say, let’s have it here.
From everything described above, a simple logical conclusion follows – if there is no option for dialogue phrases and intonations, there’s no role-playing. At all. Just as they dressed us in the shepherd’s shirt of simplicity, so in this quilted robe he will wander until the end of the game.
Damned if I know where the charisma of secondary characters went, the quest givers of small, simple tasks, which are very few compared to any of the previous series of the game. These faceless dummies are boring and predictable, you don’t empathize with them, no matter how much they whine about the sorrows of their lives.
The tavern is nice, yeah. It’s just a pity that we won’t find drunken brawls and interesting adventures there, just dummies wandering from table to table, faceless and voiceless.
All secondary characters, without exception, except perhaps Murdra, were stamped out in one shop using two or three templates. They are an army of nameless clones, which begins to get annoying around the middle of the game. You talk to a new character and realize that you’ve seen them already fifty times before in ten different guises. Well, even if he didn’t have a goaty beard and helmet, the clothing didn’t disguise that familiar mug!
The animation in dialogues is not off-putting, it’s quite tolerable, just again, the same for everyone. A characteristic example could be, say, the moment when the dummy you are debating with gets angry. He hunches over, humorously flails his arms, and clenches his fists. And you will meet this pose literally everywhere.
Women in Arcania fare just as poorly; all of them stand with their left hand on their hip, gesturing with their right hand, their left hip jutting out, feet shoulder-width apart.
Here, the miner is getting angry. The same stance is adopted by every inhabitant of the Southern Islands.
Aside from the empty chatter, nothing actually happens during the conversation. The interlocutors stand like statue dummies, won’t take a step to the right or a bow to the left. Hearing a random story about the geography and history of the world from their lips happens extremely rarely; Gothic 4 does not reveal the depth of its own universe.
Unlike secondary characters, our close friends from the past of our Nameless hero are all well done. They are crafted down to the minutest detail, characterful, though they have aged, it suits them well. In short, the presence of our former war friends brings pure delight and may cause a rare Gothic tear to shed.
Everything is also poor regarding quests; although they are multi-stage, they are disgustingly linear. It’s all like in the fairy tale of the rooster that choked on a grain. You need to go into a cave, but it is guarded by a guard who cannot simply be smacked down; there is only one way to get through - to get the guard drunk with moonshine. The moonshine must be obtained from the shaman, but he will require you to find his lost apprentice, and the apprentice won’t want to return to his master until you... It’s supposedly interesting, were there any variations available for the quests, but there is always just one. It’s sad.
Another frustrating and shameful amputation – the teachers, who were replaced by… If only I knew what to call this –
If it’s a tree, why doesn’t it branch out?
Did you see? Here’s all the leveling - we earn points, allocate pluses. No enjoyment whatsoever.
Yes, I agree, leveling in any of the Gothic parts was not a branching skill tree. Strength or agility, sword/bow/crossbow/magic use, a couple or three special skills like thievery or acrobatics, smithing, or hunting. But even compared to the previous stinginess of development, the current one is primitive! We have lost the colorful characters and logical explanations of how the hero became stronger, quicker, mastered the sword or the bow, gaining nothing worthwhile in return. Special skills, even thievery, have been eliminated for lack of necessity. Although, I can’t imagine that this tousled wonder, who has stolen something from anyone; he’s just too perfect, our Smach Bob.
The world's reaction to our actions exists, which is gratifying, it’s not as cardboard as it could have been. For example, killing the bulls standing in the corral at the tavern, we will invariably have an unpleasant conversation with the person who is watching over the animals. Freeing the baron from orc captivity, we will hear encouraging shouts from the castle's residents towards the main hero, saying, "What a good fellow!". After clearing the agricultural fields of pesky bugs, we see how the peasants return to work. It’s just a pity that such observations happen extremely rarely.
A classic model of a female clone.
Moreover, the ability to choose the difficulty level of the game, which was absent in the first games of the series, is here. Yes, just another element of simplification, don’t pay it any mind. Interestingly, the hardcore mode is replaced with the splendid term - “Gothic.” Apparently, the developers suspected that not all faithful fans of the series died from scoliosis and obesity, and it is probably them who should have squealed in joy at the sight of just this word. However, to hope that this infamous Gothic difficulty setting will transform all this misery into a sweet candy is, at the very least, naive. Just because the player begins to tear their nerves and sphincters doesn’t mean those pathetic corridors will transform into lush meadows, nor will the quests or dialogues sprout hundreds of branches.
Murdra, a character standing out from the series of faceless clones. The grandmother is used sparingly; why polish her so thoroughly?
There are no major bugs that would stop progress or simply mess up a quest in the game, but there are tons of minor ones. Sometimes you had to talk to empty armor worn by an invisible person, and defeated enemies commonly float in the air above the ground.
Well, all this horror with leveling, total cloning, and other nonsense could be forgiven, but the developers did not stop at these small amputations; they also castrated the game for greater effect. What am I talking about? Please sit down. They abandoned the distinctive element of the series - a lively, action-packed world.
They deprived us of a world where you could wander for hours, where you could walk exactly where your soul wished, exterminating all sorts of creatures along the way, exploring abandoned mines and ruins of fortresses, and after having strolled enough through dark forests and fragrant fields brimming with wildlife, once again returned to the main plot rails. No longer could you visit places veiled as