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Blood and Gore : While the combat is not very bloody, GamerDad saw gory human corpses the Orcs had displayed as warnings for the slaves. Language: the game featured the frank and rough language of warriors and bandits, but nothing that made GamerDad blush. Sexual Themes: there was no brothel this time, but GamerDad noticed that many of the female slaves had ... favored positions with their bosses.. Use of Drugs: GamerDad watched as the infamous swampweed was harvested in the desert. Violence: GamerDad found that the only way to the end was by slicing our way THROUGH one or more groups. The Gothic series of role-playing games for the PC are beloved by many for their excellent combination of combat and storytelling, but criticized for performance issues, a convoluted control scheme and punishing difficulty. Gothic 3 picks up where the excellent Gothic 2 Gold left off ﾖ your ship lands to discover that the Orcs have won the war and all of your past heroics are meaningless; you are left to once again make your way and discover your place in this new world order. Along the way you will discover a game that is all about the grey area between good and evil ... and full of performance and other problems that prevent this otherwise excellent experience from reaching the RPG stratosphere. The game is action-based and story-driven, featuring a huge landmass without loading zones or ﾑlevels'. Despite sounding similar to some ﾑother' game,Gothic 3has more in common with ﾑold-school' role-playing games than a certain recent console action game also released for the PC this year. There are hundreds of quests for you to accept or decline, most of which feed into your standing with a particular race or city. The reputation system drives the entire game ﾖ you cannot meet the leaders of towns without proving your worth by completing quests. This makes perfect sense, and doesn't feel like the busywork you are stuck with in many games ﾖ after all, you are just a human and of little value to the Orcs; in fact, they often remind you that you're lucky they don't just lock you up as a slave. The game lays out a very grey morality ﾖ showing how each of the factions can be brutal and merciful in turn, and how the motivations of each are self-serving and not in line with what their leaders are saying. By the time the end rolls around you will have some real choices to make. Unfortunately some of those choices are hampered by the unpolished state of the game as released. I was fortunate that the version released by Aspyr ran very well on my system, and I completed the 100 hour trek through the game without once crashing to the desktop. I had tons of quest completion issues and other bugs, including places where there was no text or voiced dialogue during an entire conversation. Also, while the magic and ranged combat systems are very good, the melee combat system sometimes boils down to a click-fest won by whoever connected the first hit. Finally, while it is nice to have a single load screen, the trade-off is that the game is unlikely to perform better than ﾑacceptable' on anything other than the most powerful computers available. The result is a very fractured experience ﾖ there is a lot about this game that is truly excellent, ﾑgame of the year' type stuff, but littered amongst that is a ton of broken quests, bugs, filler and other moments of frustration where you wonder if the quest you are trying to complete is broken or if you just need to try harder. I highly recommend this to hardcore role-players with powerful computers who are willing to persevere in the pursuit of the great experience Gothic 3 can provide.  
The first thing that struck me about the content of Gothic 3 was the grotesque way in which Goblins died ﾖ it is an artifact of ﾑexcessive ragdoll syndrome', but the twisted and broken body flying through the air and landing on the ground where they remained twitching for several moments. Many enemies die in similar ways, with awful death screams that make it feel much more realistic and chilling.
There are many other issues in the game that remind you that this is a game for older teens and adults. Since the Orcs won the war, you will find humans in all manner of terrible positions ﾖ slavery is rampant, and the slaves generally look terribly overworked and emaciated. There are humans who are rebelling, and they tend to have a dire outlook and appear to have suffered heavily during the war. The only ones who look healthy are those who have ﾑsold out' and work as mercenaries and operatives for the Orcs. There are other races and populations, but the themes of slave, dominator and subversive repeat throughout the game. One of the things that really pushed Gothic 2 Gold to an M rating and Adult GamerDad Seal was the fact that there was a brothel where you could ﾑhave some fun', resulting in a sex scene. Women don't get much better treatment in this game, but there isn't anything so overt. Slave women are sold in the desert, but hope to be matched to rich and powerful men as perhaps the sole means of advancing their lot in life. Also toned down is the drug use ... there are still swampweed plants and vendors, and water pipes and people smoking swampweed, but it is less prevalent and has fewer quests than in previous games. The language elements are representative of warriors in a male dominated society, but frankly I was frequently more troubled by what they were saying than their choice of words. Comments? Chat about it in our forums! Format For Printing | Tell A Friend | Digg | Slashdot | del.icio.us | Buy This Game Home > Review Archive > Video Games > Results: Gothic 3 |
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