Gothic 3 Community Story Project Eastern Special 2010
The eastern special already was announced a long time ago and we will disclose a few secrets about the Community Story Project now.
We want to give you a first detailed overview in all parts of the game, we are working on. A new video, which shows these parts, is available in our YouTube Channel. It is the second teaser of the community story project and it shows the recent status of our project. So the scenes of the video don’t show a final state.
At the moment we make great progress in almost all parts. The tests of chapter 1 are running now for some time und the tests of the next chapter will start within the next days. The works on Chapter 3 and 4 make advancement and our new storywriters startet their projects successfully.
At the same time we want to do something for the public relations with this Easter special and created a press kit, representing the backgrounds and our project plans in detail. This presskit is send to all known game magazines and will be soon available for everyone.
Among other things this kit contains the following paragraphs on all the category groups we want to improve:
The concept
It is obviously that the game has not only one section, which needed to be revised. Six areas have emerged during the planning phase, which we want to improve.
The atmosphere of Gothic 3 is strongly behind those of its predecessor, which is attributable to a variety of factors. To get the content back on an equal level like the predecessors, we need to improve all of these factors.
Main Story
The Gothic 3 main story can be summarized in a few words and is told in the game with nor words. Important figures speak only a few sentences with the hero and send him on a mission without explaining the background. The connections between the strands are only curtly explained and there are neither longer quest series nor background information.
Based on a highly upgraded main story we will use, as in the previous parts, chapters to separate important events of the game. Overall, the player is more directed through the game without being shortened in his freedom, which was one of the major changes of Gothic 3. Another principal object is to put the story more towards the add on “Forsaken Gods” and the next part of the Gothic series “Arcarnia”.
Party system
Gothic 3 has a different faction system compared to the previous parts. The player don’t needs to join any interest group and actions of the player against another faction don’t create a reaction. There are no large phrases in the course of play.
The new faction system will address these issues. In the course of the game, the player has to join one of the three main groups (rebels, orcs or assassins) and has to select his affinity (magician or warrior). At the same time, there will be more faction-dependent or faction-related quests again. It will be possible to fight with the nordmar orcs against the clans. This was not possible in the game. Also we want to integrate the 3 minor fractions (druids, nordmarer and nomads) into the main story.
References
In the previous Gothic parts the player could get information in many places about various aspects of the story, monsters and NPCs, or the history of the world. In Gothic 3 this area was greatly neglected and so the world seemed devilish lifeless. Many elements of the game seem to be not finished or have been implemented only half-heartedly. Many questions from previous parts remain unanswered. The history of many places or objects is missing.
All these points we want to tackle and improve. In the game the player will meet old friends, will read more about the game world and will play many unfinished story parts of the previous parts.
Balancing
The balancing has been improved by the different community patches, which had their peak with the introduction of the Alternative Balancing in version 1.7. However, the patch improved the balancing in terms to leave as much of the game as it was.
The community story project will go a step further. We will improve the balancing and will try to come up to the qualities of Gothic 1 and Gothic 2. Also we will improve some parts, which are not logical or useless. These include a new weapon, chest-, skill-, and magic System.
Graphic
Gothic 3 had a very good graphic as it was released. However, the world was too colorful and doesn’t show the gloomy atmosphere and mood in the world, which is created by a war. Various smaller and larger fan projects have already worked before the Community Story Project was founded.
Based on two of these projects we are working on a dark version of textures. The atmosphere of war will be created by generally darker textures. Also we will revise NPC-, monster textures and effects. To also use newer computer hardware and to give the player an optimal feeling, textures with a higher resolution will replace the most textures. New textured armor and weapons complete this field. Players who do not like the new textures, will have the opportunity to exclude them form the installstion progress.
Music
The music of Gothic 3 was the part of the game that is most been praised by many fans. The soundtrack is epic and there are many songs that fit too many areas of the game (such as for example attack or explore situations, music for various periods of a day and different cities and vegetation sections of the game). However, these songs are distributed irregularly in these different areas so that the music is either very varied but also monotonous or repetitive. You can find the same the same situation by the ambient sounds.
With improved sounds and maybe entirely new songs the community story project will improve this imbalance.