We seem to be talking across each other! For example...
Originally posted by FeathersMcGraw:
[qb]
Originally posted by croaker:
[qb]What I was trying to say was that NotR is the same basic Gothic II story line, but with some additions and alternations. [/qb]
It´s not the same storyline. The add-on has its own story which runs parallel to Gothic 2´s. It starts immediately. Xardas gives you a second quest.[/qb]
Exactly. It's still a story in BASICALLY the same world with BASICALLY the same story line: You've just been rescued from having handled the Sleeper, but you're back to being a weakling. Naturally there's a new threat that you need to build yourself up to handling with lots and lots of miniquests. In both you need to get the Eye of Innos, but in tNotR you also need a Beliar token.
The layout of the world is BASICALLY the same; many of the beasts, items, challenges and their locations are essentially unchanged.
So, like I keep *trying* to say without offending anyone is that unless you don't mind going through PRETTY MUCH the same story line multiple times -- which certainly is possible for the RPG player -- if you've got tNotR, it makes sense (to me) to install all four disks and play tNotR variant from the start.
This way you aren't going to be playing with foreknowledge of what's likely to be "around the next corner" and where you're likely to find this-or-that beast/object/challenge, and aren't going to be pulled out of the game by the surprise when there's something different.
But, it's also good to play all the way through to the end of the original Gothic II and then do tNotR variant, if you're cool with the parallel story variant idea.
I was just trying to make it clear that tNotR was *not* an additional chapter or two that you were expected to play only after finishing Gothic II.
Originally posted by FeathersMcGraw:
[qb]
The intent of Gothic II Gold was that all 4 disks were to be installed and the game playing to be the NotR variation.
No. The add-on was made to cash-in on a successfull game and the Gold version was released to make money again. TNotR came out 10 months after Gothic 2 in Germany. Most people who bought it knew Gothic 2.[/qb]
Again, we really don't disagree. I was trying to make it clear to others that tNotR disk 4 was intended to be installed *over* the three disk Gothic II and to produce a complete altered version of the original Gothic II story/game. It's *not* a separate game intended to be played as extra chapters that follow the end of Gothic II, as I had mistakenly understood from the beginning.
I clearly (at least to me) wasn't saying that tNotR wasn't a later-produced add-on, just that it isn't stand-alone and like a Gothic II.5 or the like.
Originally posted by FeathersMcGraw:
[qb]
I don't understand the "limited to a few hours" above, either. I've poured dozens of hours into Gothic II (unaltered) and NotR, and since I'd already played through the initial parts of Gothic II once, and wasn't going back through it to see how things would have worked making different choices, I rather wanted to play what was new to Gothic II Gold and thus found that I'd "wasted" many hours during the end of my holiday time off from work.
Didn´t you find all the NPCs who offered to help you reach the main goals of the first chapter much quicker? And didn´t you see that the add-on ends in the middle of chapter 2? The overhead is 15 hours maximum and it can be brought down to circa 5 hours I think.
Everybody should feel free to install all 4 disks right away, but don´t start cursing after your 50th reload, when you find out it´s to hard without prior experience in the Gothic world. [/qb]
Yes, definitely I saw the difference from the start -- right from the initial encounter. What I read your "limited to a few hours" as saying that your comments made it sound like one should be able to play through the original Gothic II in "a few hours" and then go and install tNotR. I know that (at least for my likely poor playing abilities) that getting all the way through Gothic II takes hundreds of hours.
Moreover I've needed to do 50+ reloads to survive the original Gothic II. I would regularly seem to find myself hitting a plateau where I couldn't get through any of the collection of current quests and not being able to find enough "rats in the cellar" to knock off to slowly eke my experience up to the next level. And I agree, it's noticably harder to advance and develop in tNotR. Enough so that I've (unfortunately) feeling like the only way I'll ever have a possibility to finish this game is to start hitting the cheat codes, which I didn't feel like I needed in Gothic I or II (at least as far as I had reached in the latter).
And finally you mention chapter two differences in tNotR -- sorry, I haven't been able to get close enough to bother even trying to go for chapter two! I'd need to be able to survive more than a single whack from an Orc (which, naturally all the other NPC fighters seem to do handily).