The sadly underappreciated Gothic role-playing series has been around since 2001 and has told the tale of a soft-spoken nameless hero who ventures forth into a dark fantasy world and eventually becomes a skillful archer, mighty warrior, or powerful wizard while avoiding the perils of being slain by an orc. Perhaps even more sadly, the previous game in the series, Gothic 3, was released with noticeable technical issues, despite the fact that the game also took on an ambitious graphical overhaul. Now, the series is back with a new developer, Spellbound, and a new chapter: Arcania: Gothic 4. Arcania will have a new nameless hero, a new story, and a new home–whereas the previous games were for the PC only, Arcania will also appear on the Xbox 360 and the PlayStation 3.
We recently had a chance to see the Xbox 360 version of the game in motion to get a quick overview of the game, which starts off on a fairly large “tutorial island” before shipping you off to the rest of the game, which takes place on two other, even-more-vast islands. You play as a nameless shepherd (a brand-new character) whose entire world has been turned upside down by a violent, bloody raid on his home island perpetrated by the new king, Rhobar III, who bears more than a passing resemblance to the previous games’ nameless hero. The king’s raiding party kills off all your character’s friends and family, not to mention his fiancee, so you embark on a journey to seek revenge for your fallen comrades, and you can eventually become a swordsman, archer, or wizard, just like your predecessor.
Arcania seems to be easy to control and easy to play with the standard Xbox 360 controller–your character’s various skills are mapped to quick buttons (a single button press will switch your character from magic to melee to archery), while you can use the D pad to immediately switch to different quick-use items (such as food and other healing items)–a godsend to Gothic fans who previously struggled to pull healing potions out of their packs while they were being beaten to death by monsters.
In addition to reintroducing the series’ three different combat professions, Arcania will have a skill-tree system with points that can be invested each time you gain a level, and its combat systems will be streamlined to make them a bit easier to use. For instance, melee combat will take place with a single button to attack (but will have specific combination attacks based on timing and your character’s invested skill points) plus a separate button to either dodge or block with a shield if you have one; archery will let you autolock your targets at the cost of doing less damage, or zoom in on your targets for deadly headshots once you become more skilled; and magic will have three primary schools in fire (which can be developed to rain down damaging blasts in an area), ice (which both damages and slows the speed of enemies), and lightning (which temporarily stuns enemies by causing their bodies to briefly convulse in pain).
Since Arcania’s story takes place only 10 years after the events of Gothic 3, you can also expect to see reappearances by other familiar characters in the series, such as Diego and Gorn. And again, that new homicidal king sure looks and sounds a lot like the previous games’ nameless hero…but the developer suggests that the story of how the king became what he is may not be as straightforward as it seems. The game itself will be a bit more focused around its story and will have a more-linear structure that will take an estimated 30 to 50 hours to complete for players who just want to reach the end, though there will still be plenty of side content for those who want to poke around and do some exploring.
