Just purchased Quake 4 and Doom 3: BFG, excelent!

Just bought both games and about to go through Quake 4, that's another one off my eBay watchlist, it's been a pretty good year. :)

Blues - nearly all your game shortcuts are 32x32 icons and this is the view i choose to view my gog games at. There are a few which are 16x16 and are small when displayed on my screen. These are little nightmares. Dreamfall chapters and doom 3. Not a biggie but please fix / prevent future releases from these issues. Thanks

Hi guys,

Sorry for a later reply.
Good point, let´s have a look at it:

Right of the batt I will say I am not here to lynch you or ped7g, all I want to say is that Morrowind, out of many Bethesda´s games, was unique and back in its time equally interesting as Gothic.

And allow me to repair my statement, you got me there (thanks, ped7g): first fully 3D open world RPG :)

I will go on a limp and say that the only game from Gothic series that should be compared to Morrowind is Gothic 1 and Gothic 2, although G2 wasn´t released yet when the Morrowind was out.

I would argue that Gothic´s freedom of movement was quite limited + the few loading screens you mentioned, thanks to which I didn´t consider it an open world.

What do I mean? I mean that, although Gothic´s world seems vast and open, what you have are carefully designed areas with manually placed monsters, which you had to go through in a certain order.
If you would try to skip that order, you would get killed, because enemies in that other location were much tougher and developers WANTED you to go through the first location first, so you would gain enough experience to be able to survive in the second.

This is by no means a critique of a design, I consider it a conscious decision on a developer´s part and one that´s functioning - and I liked it. But did not consider it an openworld because of that.

Also, you were limited to move in one enclosed location - mining colony, but well designed with various places to explore.
Second Gothic I would not hesitate to call an open world. You could actually feel being freed, because you could visit locations from previous game and see how small they were compared to second game (granted, you could not visit everything).

Apart from open world topic, I still remember people had difficulties getting used to the combat system. I had those too, but me being younger and stubborn I got used to the system, altough I couldn´t play any other, more streamlined game (like Morrowind) at that time - it would get me out of the control mindset for Gothic and I would need time to get be used to it again.
That´s one of the things they addressed in Gothic 2, allowing 2 modes of control, old one and new one.

Also, Enebias, you wrote:
"yet ALL of Morrowind's dungeons were separate maps, so I'd rather say that Gothic was more open that Morrowind..."
And despite that, also Oblivion, Skyrim, F3 and F:NV suffer from the same problem (because of Gamebryo), yet they are considered openworld games. Why? :)

Regarding the game not aging well - I agree, as I would say almost any game from that era needs at least Hi-res mod to be playable nowadays, same goes for Gothic. But when it comes to story and mechanics, I find it equally intriguing, just like back then.
Only other thing missing in Morrowind and first two Gothic games is Havoc system, which became more prevalent later, thanks to Half-Life 2.

Bethesdas writers are awful - agree as well, but I would still argue Morrowind was well written and had more atmosphere than Oblivion. Skyrim I didn´t played, so I can´t comment on that. FO3 wasn´t anything to write home about (especially after playing F:NV) and, from what I head, FO4 is no better in this regard. They should definitely invest into writing department.

Arena more known - well, that is why I said it is not true it was just another chapter - Daggerfall was enormously large, but for it vastness it lacked polish, uniqueness of locations (all the locations were the same assets repeating over and over) and it was not 3D. And by the time Morrowind was released, 7 years have passed since it was released. In a gaming, that is quite a long time, and people had expectations, especially after E2 trailer:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cGELOngSiRc

In general, Morrowind was considered much smaller than Daggerfall, but more lifelike and interesting thanks to attention to detail + being handcrafted - just like Gothic was! :)

That is all.
(Goodness, this post will be long.)

Fair points! :)

Just one clarification: you are most definitely not one of the "notorious" fanboys I was referring to. Just to be clear!

Dude, believe it or not: I did. Back then and still doing so now.
Baldur's Gate reinvigorated the RPG genre. True.
The original Fallouts are masterpieces like they aren't being made anymore. True.
Planescape: Torment is arguably the best RPG ever created. True. It also wasn't a commercial success. True.

Here's where my opinion starts to differ a bit:
Dragon Age Origins was Bioware's attempt to redo what they did with Baldur's Gate. And they somewhat succeeded with that. But I wouldn't call it a masterpiece.
The old Ultimas - we're talking about 4 to 7, right? Because everything before or after are good or great, but certainly no masterpieces.

I'd consider Gothic 1 as good and Gothic 2 as the best of the series. But if we're talking about a "empty void of a world, copy & paste scenery, dumb ai, lame characters, repeating quests" you'll find that all in the Gothic series.
.... and claiming that Ulima IX is even a tiny bit better than Morrowind? I have my doubts most RPG gamers would agree with you.

I'd consider the first 2 Gothics as a classic too, but they have about as much faults and flaws as Morrowind has. No respawn but at 2 or 3 (can't remember) occasions the whole world get's refilled with mobs? Punching a merchant 3 times unconscious, stealing all his stuff and he's still willing to trade with me? Immersion? Believable gameworld? What's that again?

And yes Morrowind had a huge impact, making it THE game. Morrowind was the best-selling and most highly acclaimed RPG for Xbox in 2002. Morrowind's Xbox release continued to rank among the top 10 sellers on the console one year after its initial release - a feat matched only by Halo: Combat Evolved.
Source: [url=https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Elder_Scrolls_III:_Morrowind#Reception]https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Elder_Scrolls_III:_Morrowind#Reception[/url]

Daggerfall was a lot. First and foremost, it's likely the game with the biggest gameworld ever. That being said, it's also pretty much the definition of being bland and generic. To give you an idea: there are a total of 4229 dungeons in Daggerfall, but only about 60 different designs for them.

So you were talking about me? I feel honored. :p
One thing to add though. Yes Bethesdas writers aren't good. But don't tell me the writing or the plot in Gothic 1 or 2 was that much better than in Morrowind.

Never said that, only that Bethesda's plain suck. Piranha Bytes are definitely not great either, I have to agree (even if the Gothics are among my favourite games ever) but at least every now and then there is some sarcasm and black humor capable of at least forcing a smirk out of the player.

Edit: Btw, in the end I insulted poverty and bought both Doom 3 and Quake 4. Does any of you know good mods for the BFG edition, maybe one restoring the original atmosphere?

I'mma just leave this right here.

GOTHIC IS BACK! The HISTORY of KHORINIS

Now THAT is a glorious project!

Innit though? Thanks to my boy(flea) boyflea over on Steam for the heads up! Here's the project's website if you want more information. Somehow, they even managed to get Andrzej Tomecki back!

"The Ultimate Collection:
As a special bonus, DOOM 3: BFG Edition will also include the original DOOM and DOOM II games, making it the definitive collection of the revolutionary games developed by id Software, the studio that pioneered the first-person shooter genre."

Is there any point in buying the Ultimate DOOM and DOOM 2?

EDIT: After digging around on the site a bit I found a link to this: [url=https://doomwiki.org/wiki/Doom_3:_BFG_Edition#Differences_with_Doom_and_Doom_2]https://doomwiki.org/wiki/Doom_3:_BFG_Edition#Differences_with_Doom_and_Doom_2[/url]

So it seems the BFG versions are slightly gimped compared with the original games.

Edit again: Godammit forum software, if you can't show a link properly, don't force link tags around it!

That got me stumped too. Think I've edited my last post around 7 times trying to get it right. *sheepish look*

The good thing is, it might be a sign that it's actually dying, forcing GoG do come up with something better. It would have been the time for it several years ago.

We only need Heretic and Hexen to complete this list of classics for the next promo...

This would be a mod to go for me :)

Very interesting, thank you! :)
If you have already tried it, could you tell me how much -if at all- does it alter the gameplay? Usually, when I use mods for a game I'm playing for the first time, I try to leave the "vanilla" mechanics unaltered, like in Unreal Gold with the HD texture patch.