Gothic 3 vs. The Elder Scrolls IV - Oblivion

Hmm Oblivion was buggy, too as it was published...
So since there are patches for both games already... it's undecided...

and according to a friend the atmosphere is much better in Gothic 3....

I don't know Gothic 3 but Oblivion was not *that* bugged when it was published. I played both english and french versions... The french one was really comic, it was some sort of mix between both languages and I spent a lot of time laughing. Fortunately, there's always a huge french community around a game (especially for TES) and they made non official patches which corrected everything only a couple of days after the national release.
The english version is great IMO. If you loved Morrowind or Daggerfall, you'll be upset on the first hours because everything seems to be too *easy*, with no liberty nor choice... If you hang on, you'll realize it's wrong and when played seriously, the game can really be as interesting as Morrowind or DF.
BTW bugs in Oblivion are now quite rare compared to Morrowind (or worst, Daggerfall) so you should not be disappointed.
And also the video is great though I did not understand everything.

[I must be cursed, I can't make small comments nor posts...]

there are already _3_ patches for Gothic 3.
If you apply them, it's ok :)
But there are still some bugs, but not even 1/4 of the amoung shown in this video.

It's such a pitty that Gothic 3 went so bad in the end. I think it would not have done any harm to announce the release date a bit later and take some more care for the quality assurance instead, because everyone who played G1/G2 was waiting for this game anyway, and the end of November or beginning of December would have been an excellent Christmas release date. I hope they'll keep maintaining it so that it will be stable with the next patch(es).

Actually the bugs in Gothic3 are not so bad here. I didn't experience any evil bug or even the (now fixed) save game bug and none of the bugs shown in the video, other than the vultures and lost monsters in the caves. The game even ran surprisingly smooth on my rather old PC (3GHz, 1.5GB, 9800Pro)

I have played Oblivion too and to me Gothic3 is the better game by a *great* margin. Simply from gameplay perspective.
Oblivion doesn't have the intense immersion of the Gothic series, but feels rather generic and Lego(R)-like. The scaling of the monsters, items, everything to your level is an unbelievably bad design decision IMHO, I can't imagine what made them did this. Also freedom of choice is less in Oblivion. Granted, you can choose your char down to the cheekbone, but it doesn't matter inside the game. Almost nothing matters in Oblivion. After having played around the guild quests and other quests I quickly solved the main quest, to just having it done with, and left the game alone.
I wholeheartedly agree to this review: http://www.rpgdot.com/index.php?hsaction=10053&ID=1217

All in all I found Gothic3, while still better than Oblivion, the weakest of the Gothic series.
The world is big but less story is distributed over a larger map. The quests are now mostly simple errands and the funny situations are much scarcer now.

Like said before here: It feels like a lost chance. A little more work on all the edges and it could have become a master-piece. Really a pity...

But still: even with this large a terrain, the map itself is as great as ever. They again made clever use of their seamless arbitrary-geometry level engine.

( DeusXL, cursed? Beat this. :P )

Errata: Silly me, fastly searched the review and didn't find it. The review above is *not Saturn approved*. But I can't find the one I meant anymore. :(

Oblivion is a great game. Very few bugs. Amazing rendering quality of outdoor world. Game will keep you busy for a while !!
You do need a lot of RAM for fluent gameplay. 1 Gb minimum.

Oblivion sucks. Morro was great but Oblivion sucks. If u remove FaceGen, SpeedTree, cute graphicsm physics and Radiant AI (is it called so?) u wil have an empty game (btw Morrowind had none of this list). There is no atmosphere.

Oblivion sucks. ;) The world feels more like Disneyland, and the dangerous demonic invasion is more like a demonic picnic that noone cares about... You rarely have any choices except for doinf the quest or not. If you do, they are meaningless.

http://rpgcodex.com/content.php?id=129

There are some cool quests, but most of them suck. When it came out, it was horribly buggy, but not as bad as Gothic 3. But Gothic 3 is neither unplayable nor "ridiculously buggy". The review you linked to is bullshit.

I like Gothic 3.

Ah yes, that's the review I actually meant.

"But Gothic 3 is neither unplayable nor “ridiculously buggy”. The review you linked to is bullshit."

No, the review is accurate. I've seen it for myself. Just because something doesn't happen on YOUR machine, doesn't mean that the game has no bugs.

games(tm) Uk mag rated Obvlivion highly (as did everyone) it absolutely slated Gothic3 as a piece of crap.. so OBLIVION for you my friend.

This friday there will be a demoversion von Gothic 3, so you can look if you like it

"No, the review is accurate. I’ve seen it for myself. Just because something doesn’t happen on YOUR machine, doesn’t mean that the game has no bugs." The review is bullshit for many reasons, not just the bugs. The most obvious one being the rating. Ridiculous.

He bitched about there being a patch released before the game was released and then complains about bugs und other stuff of the unpatched release-version. Who cares about that? You're not going to play the game unpatched.

And no, I did not say the game is perfect and completely bug free.

hm, difficult. maybe no game at all now, gives more more free time :))

More needs to be posted:
http://www.pixelrage.ro/articles/Gothic-3-English-Review/266,0.html
http://www.somethingawful.com/index.php?a=3705

;)

I can t play Oblivion. I tried several times but... nothing.
I really do not like it. The reviews keep saying that the world is alive and colorfull but
i do not see it: the space is empty, the capital city should be crowded but i never saw more than 3 4 npc at a time. For some reason the graphic is monocromatic, either green or blue and although very clean extremely repetitive. The outdoor are not that good either, from time to time u see a deer running but no more than that. The npc animations are missing and they are not very interesting at all, whenever u speak to them they are a way too fast to point u to a quest or something relevant to u . They do not seem to be worried or aware of what s going on.
Overall the world looks as big as not immersive and interesting.
Is it just a first impression ? Should i try to go a deep further in the game. Am i the only one to think like that ?

I love Oblivion, but it annoys me when people say it wasn't buggy. It was at least as buggy as Gothic 3, it's just that with Elder Scrolls games, the modders fix the bugs instead of the publisher, and in Bethesda's case, it rewards that by charging for official mods! After all there is a mod called 'The unofficial patch' that has been updated about 12 times as they are told about bugs and then fixed in the patch. It is about 10mb in size currently!! I bet a large number of Oblivion owners have this unofficial patch and then say Oblivion wasn't as buggy as Gothic 3! Can we please have a level playing field with PC games, the rose coloured glasses are turning to black and we're going blind with devotion while PC gaming declines month after month!

I think u should buy Oblivion!Gothic 3 is exelent game ,too but it has a lot of bugs and you need atleast 1 GB RAM to play normaly -.-.
For Oblivion you "only" need 512 RAM and game rocks!

Emil. I would not recommend Oblivion at 512mb of ram unless you have the very latest video card, a very fast CPU and a large virtual memory allocation. The positive thing about Gothic 3 is it's support for the lower end cards/PC's and I give them huge credit for that, but the bugs spoil it, but when I combine those two things it still comes out equal to Obivilon!