Gothic II

[caption id="attachment_685" align="aligncenter" width="510" caption="Gothic II and you, in full armor ... woo! Time to beat some orcs"]Game of the Day series.

Say what you will about old 2D, sprite-based games, but their graphics certainly hold up better over time than their 3D counterparts. I suppose that the crusty ancients of the Atari 2600 days look beyond retro and into simply dated, but the polygon messes of the past decade seem worse. I loved Gothic II, but it falls into this category of digital decay.

My purchase came about solely from a review in Computer Source magazine, a free monthly publication you could find in grocery stores and the like in my area. It described the game as a "GTA 3" for RPG's, comparing more the adultness and encouragement of reckless antics than anything else. Their primary example cited the ability to pay for a, well let's just say, a woman of easy virtue down by the docks in the sleazy part of town. However, after getting sucked into the experience, those elements were so minimal as to be insignificant compared to its other strengths.

I can't remember if I played it before or after Oblivion, but I remember the novelty of characters speaking to you rather then you reading their words. Additionally, any dialog option you selected, your character would say. It's a bit of an oddity since you hear "yourself", but it makes the broken conversations a bit more smooth. On that topic, its been converted from the developers' native language of German to English by a very small group of voice actors, so perhaps things are lost in the translation.

Regardless it offered a truly changing world, plenty of risk, and tons of permanent choices. You learned to cherish those horrifying monster battles, because once they were dead they stayed dead! Most townsfolk could be killed, except the main-plot-dependent ones, and it followed that you could go completely evil and barely complete the story or at least join up with one faction and see how that panned out. Of the three factions I only had the fortitude to choose one, the dragon-slayers I believe, and I spent over a month giving generous gobs of time to completing it.

Magic was a bit wonky, if I recall, which is one reason I didn't consider joining the wizard faction. Controls in general were completely unorthodox and relied almost entirely on the keyboard. This upset many critics who no doubt preferred a point-and-click style, but worked great for me playing on a laptop with no mouse attached. Have you tried a 3D game using a touchpad? Ha!

Since the entire land was designed by hand, it had a very tight and interesting feel. Creatures and people got put on their own independent schedules, doing whatever it is they do. You could listen in on hushed conversations, watch blacksmiths doing their job, or see farmers defend their fields from monsters. Then there's the first terrifying orc encounter where I died many times, not realizing how underpowered I currently was. It's one of those games where you start weak and have to choose your destinations carefully otherwise there's nasty consequences.

It was awesome to see some of the world events and also their after-effects. There's only a few, but they're doozies! And finally there's the "twist" ending and a hint at the next game which I never got into. Even though it's just another game designed by a team, Gothic 2 is one of the few games that made me feel like it was alive.