Gothic 3 gets Forsaken Gods expansion

By Robert Purchese Published 14 April, 2008

To bridge gap to fourth game.

JoWooD plans to release a Gothic 3 expansion in Q4 this year.

Dubbed Forsaken Gods, it promises to answer all sorts of outstanding questions and act as a "seamless step" to Gothic 4.

The publisher also insisted that it will be watching the forums closely to try and incorporate your ideas, so put on your robe and wizard hat and get thinking.

Otherwise there was little information on what will be in the expansion, but expect more quests and swords and ears and wands and magic sweets.

We really rather liked Gothic 3 when it came out in October 2006, landing it with a well-deserved 8/10.

Pop over to our Gothic 3 review to find out more.

Picture of Robert.

About Robert Purchese

Bertie is Eurogamer's Senior Staff Writer. When he's not hunting down news stories he's often found playing with his kids or gabbling about fantasy games and strange online worlds.

Read more articles from Robert by visiting the Robert Purchese archive page.

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Comments (16) Latest comment 4 years ago

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  • darc #1 4 years ago

    Awesome! I loved Gothic 3 but after the bashing it took I didn't expect a Gothic 4 at all. Can't wait!

  • mkreku #2 4 years ago

    Woohoo! I am SO getting this! I am currently replaying Gothic 3 with all the latest patches, and even though it's still stuttering, I'm enjoying it immensely.

    Also, Gothic 3 sold over 500,000+ copies around the world. I think another sequel was inevitable. This expansion will be interesting that way, since it's the new team doing it (Spellbound instead of Piranha Bytes). If they can pull it off, I have high hopes for Gothic 4!

    Piranha Bytes are working on an unnamed project right now, but chances are it'll be very similar to the original Gothic.

    http://rpb.deepsilver.com/

  • peppergomez #3 4 years ago

    i really tried to enjoy gothic 3, but even fully patched and with some community mods & optimizing, it was just too rough around the edges. terrible combat, underwhelming sound effects, and poorly implemented first person camera motion. oh well, glad there's stalker, oblivion, and upcoming fallout3.

  • Taximan #4 4 years ago

    Seamless bridge to 4 eh?

    So, will 4 be the first not to have the player's character knocked back to starting skills?

  • Cobalt-13 #5 4 years ago

    Will they fix the broken combat?

    Cause I had to turn on god-mode when I got to Nordmar.

    No way I was going to fight all those beasts who could easily insta-kill you if you made one mistake fighting them.

    Pity because the game could've been great.

  • r3n #6 4 years ago

    Gothic 3 ran at about 2 fps after being fully patched and had to be ditched. Not a chance I'll get the next one unless it's a finished product

  • space_ace #7 4 years ago

    gothic: forsaken bugs

  • mkreku #8 4 years ago

    I hate that I feel I have to defend this game but your comments really get on my nerves.

    Yes, it was buggy. Not so much now, after heavy patching. Actually, I haven't found any bugs at all, except for a cave where the enemies fall through a glitch in the world. Big deal, since there's like 200+ caves all in all.

    Yes, it's a system hog. But if you get "2 fps", you need to update your old rig to a more modern standard. I'm running it on max, 1280x1024 using a measly X1950XTX and averaging 40-60 fps. It still stutters from time to time, but what can you do.

    Yes, it's difficult. But if you, by the time you reach Nordmar, still get insta-killed by ANYTHING, I must question your skill at playing the game properly. Gothic isn't Halo. Noone's going to hold your hand and auto-heal you if you just sit and stare blankly at the screen. You're given the tools to develop your character as you please. You can botch it up and create the most worthless being ever, but is that the game's fault? I don' think so, but opinions may differ. Paladin armour + Regeneration skill + Heavy armour skill = walking tank. If that's still not enough for you, use a bow and run.

  • Lamb #9 4 years ago

    Good about time that they fixed this game. Got it when it first came out could not play it on my computer till now with the 1.6 community patch release.

    Why do we have to wait after the release date 1 or even 2 years in the case of Civilization 4 to play a game bug free and even then memory stack errors etc.

    This sucks.

  • darc #10 4 years ago

    Gothic 3 was a weird one for me. It worked perfectly right out of the box, and on a computer that was a year or two behind the curve. And I do NOT generally have good luck with PC games. Seems like Pirhanna didn't QA on a wide enough variety of hardware. Worked great for a few people, not at all for others. One common conclusion was that G3 ran best if you had a very fast HDD - I was running a RAID array w/ two Raptors.

    Looking forward to G4 *and* Deepsilver now (assuming the latter sees a U.S. translation and release.) Thanks mkreku.

  • Cobalt-13 #11 4 years ago

    Yes, it's difficult. But if you, by the time you reach Nordmar, still get insta-killed by ANYTHING, I must question your skill at playing the game properly.

    I could kill veteran arena fighters in seconds often without taking any damage, while a random couple of wolves or boars could force me to quickload several times.

    Even if my skill in combat was lacking, wich I doubt since I could play Gothic 2 just fine till the end, the combat in Gothic 3 clearly had issues.

    Paladin armour + Regeneration skill + Heavy armour skill = walking tank. If that's still not enough for you, use a bow and run.

    Using the bow to kite beasts works but is rather tedious and shouldn't be nessecary. It's in my opinion also a rather cheesy abuse of game mechanics, so you might as well use cheat codes.

  • mkreku #12 4 years ago

    Cobalt-13: Well, if you start a new game of Gothic 3 and listen carefully to the people talking to you after you've defeated the first bunch of weak orcs in the village (Ardea), you'll hear something like this:

    Villager: You need to get to Reddock, but beware! The woods are full of wolves!
    Nameless Hero: Don't worry, I've just defeated a bunch of orcs, a few wolves should pose no problem.
    Villager: Don't count on it, there may be more to it than it seems.

    Ok, don't quote me on that :D But still, that's the gist of it. It is MUCH easier to defeat humanoid opponents than animal ones in Gothic 3. I think that's just a design decision. I have to admit that I was stunned and frustrated at first too. But no Gothic game to date has been an easy ride so I learned to live with it and now I love the game despite being gang raped by a pack of wolves every 20 minutes.

  • Cobalt-13 #13 4 years ago

    I don't mind Gothic having difficult combat, but the beasts just seemed too hard-hitting and frustrating for creatures you encounter right at the beginning of the game, and the humanoid enemies were often too easy, removing almost all challenge from battles with them.

    The end result was that the combat rarely felt fun to me which is quite a downside for such a combat-heavy game.

    The only reason I kept playing was because I liked exploring the world.

    Perhaps I should have played as a mage.

  • peppergomez #14 4 years ago

    the combat was atrocious. being killed by a single wolf repeatedly is just a joke. gothic is like the poor man's version of oblivion, with lower quality gameplay and production values.

  • darc #15 4 years ago

    "Perhaps I should have played as a mage."

    I did get the impression that magic was more powerful than combat in this game, and at one point thought about starting over to get a proper mage going. But I didn't have the patience for a second playthrough. (No reflection on the game, which is among my faves - I never play games more than once.)

    As for the difficulty with combat, I found that environmental exploits were the way to have the most fun with it. It's pretty much a button masher with damage modifiers beyond that anyway, so how much can you possibly "fix" it? I remember working the angles in an early cave to take on an unmanageable number of bandits - it was time-consuming but fun. And I remember one especially large pack of wolves appearing in a field where there was a house nearby. I was able to hop onto a fence, then onto a roof to snipe. Maybe a "cheesy abuse" as Cobalt says, but I still had fun and it's one of those game moments that's stuck with me. (Also, notably, this is exactly what I'd have done in real life...)

    I loved Oblivion too, but there was something about G3 that I actually preferred. It was a little rough around the edges, but it was more continuous, more tangible, the characters seemed less canned, etc.
    Edited by 1 at 16/04/08 @ 20:57

  • DanAngelus #16 4 years ago

    I loved Oblivion too, but there was something about G3 that I actually preferred. It was a little rough around the edges, but it was more continuous, more tangible, the characters seemed less canned, etc.

    I totally agree, Oblivion was great, I loved the freedom of character to development and the amazing amount of mods that there are, but it doesn't have the same feeling as any of the Gothic games, not even Gothic III.

    I'm looking forward to the expansion and the upcoming Arcania (Gothic 4). Even though there have been problems with Gothic III, some of which still exist after the most up to date bugs, in my opinion it is still worth a play.

    The creatures, are harder to kill than most of the humanoid beings in the game, I think this is based on a simple principle, humanoid being (orcs, rebels, nordmarians, hashishin etc) fight, they have a style, defense and offense, whereas creatures (wolves, ripperbeasts, wild boars, and especially crawlers etc) attack and attack and attack as quickly and repeatedly as an animal would be expected to.

    For all these people who are complaining about it, if you don't like it, then don't play it. Simple.