rpgvaultarchive.ign.com 08/1999 01-31.08.1999 Week of August 1, 1999 Monday, August 2 Gothic Demo To Debut On Euro TV Publisher Egmont Interactive let us know that a playable demo of Gothic will debut on European TV on Wednesday: GOTHIC ON TV AT NBC GIGA On Wednesday the 4th of August the first playable demo version of GOTHIC - the 3D-Action-Role-Playing-Game will be unveiled on televisions NBC GIGA ( NBC EUROPE ). Tom Putzki and Michael Hoge from the German game developer PIRANHA BYTES will be guests of the show GIGA TV from 16:00 - 18:00 (GMT+1 time zone/Europe) on NBC Europe. Besides the presentation they will answer various questions about GOTHIC. Tom Putzki is head of marketing & public relations and 3D-level-modeling & game-designer at PIRANHA BYTES. Michael Hoge is the art director and GOTHIC'S game designer. GOTHIC will be released in January 2000, it is published by EGMONT INTERACTIVE. FOR MORE INFORMATION ABOUT GOTHIC PLEASE CONTACT: http://www.gothicthegame.com As of a few minutes ago, I was unable to access the URL above, but I assume it's the new official site for the game. For more on Gothic, you can check out our extensive Gothic interview with four team members from the end of July. In addition, you might also want to stop by our VN Gothic Board where Tom, Project Manager Stefan Nyul and other team members await your questions and comments. Week of August 8, 1999 Wednesday, August 11 Gothic Screenshots At Glide Underground Glide Underground has gotten hold of six Gothic screenshots, with thumbnails available on this page. Gothic is a 3D fantasy RPG which is being developed by Piranha Bytes, and Germany's Egmont Interactive will be publishing. Spotted at our network affiliate Blue's News. Monday, August 9 Gothic Screenshots At GA-Source GA-Source has obtained three screenshots of Gothic, with the thumbnails accessible on this page. Gothic is a real-time 3D fantasy RPG from Piranha Bytes, and Egmont Interactive is set to publish. For more information, check out Jonric's Gothic interview from June and be sure to visit our Gothic Board as well. Week of August 15, 1999 Thursday, August 19 New Gothic Site Opened German publisher Egmont Interactive opened a new Gothic site while I was away on vacation. It contains information on various aspects of the game, news and screenshots. In addition, there's a team interview dated tomorrow (it's already tomorrow in Europe). Here are a couple of snippets: Alex Brüggemann on the game background: All of us PIRANHAs love fantasy games. However, "fantasy" often means sweet little fairies daintily gliding over flowering meadows. Now that is definitely not what we like about the genre. So we began to develop a more sinister, brooding scenario. Most of the ideas stem from our sick, warped minds - which in turn have been fed with countless books and films. The basic setting of a huge prison leaving every individual to fend for him- or herself was inspired by the film "Escape from New York". Tom Putzki on the game world: GOTHIC takes place on a self-contained prison world enclosed by a magical barrier both above and below ground. This leaves the player an area of a square mile to explore. That's quite a chunk of landscape containing mountains, rivers, woods, settlements, fortresses plus a lot of dungeons. You'll have an entire underworld of mines, caves, ancient temple sites to discover and survive in! In addition to the official site, you may wish to check my Gothic team interview from late June. Week of August 22, 1999 Wednesday, August 25 Gothic Update Tom Putzki from developer Piranha Bytes passed along some information a bit earlier on his recent European TV appearance on NBC GIGA and on the progress of Gothic: it was fun and great. I was there with Mike, our Art Director and he presented the game in a very cool manner! BTW, you can find our TV appearance here at this link: http://giga.de/x-stream/archives/g/gothic/index.html Two weeks later I had a local German TV Station here inhouse and they made also a very cool report about us and our work. GOTHIC is coming along very well.... we've made three MoCap sessions with two guys doing the swordfighting, one girl for the dance moves and another very special attraction!!!! In addition, the Diary section of Piranha Bytes' site was updated on Monday: Back again ......Hi Friends.......another entry into our DIARY after a long time. During the last weeks there was so much going on here that we didn't manage to enter anything here at all. We have noticed it and from now on things will get better. From now on I ( Frank ) will support good old TOM a little bit, so you are updated regularly in the future. Therefore ... in the future just check here now and then. A subtle hint ... have a look at our TEAM-page ... slowly but surely there are more PIRANHAS getting into the aquarium.... Just to catch up with the news which have already been published by press - PIRANHA BYTES has done an exclusive deal with EGMONT INTERACTIVE about our game GOTHIC. EGMONT has bought the world-wide license for our game and included it into their range of products. Just have a look at www.gothicthegame.com. ... an interesting and very active fan page is supplied here. Here you can chat with us as well. Therefore ... look up http://gothic.gomp.ch. In this place thanks to DARKSKY and SIMON MOON :-)))) ... will I become famous on TV now ? That's already happened. For everybody, who has missed our performance ... http://giga.de/x-stream/archives/g/gothic/index.html shows the live video of our appearance on NBC GIGA. Enjoy yourself ... did anybody laugh there ? ... brief summary: The MoCaps ( MOTION CAPTURING shootings ) of our sword-fighting characters have been done in the HDO in Oberhausen ... Good Fun. Nice team there, it was a good laugh and we got some really cool moves ... Soon to be seen in GOTHIC ... get them and chop them hehehehehe.... Here you see the brave fighters Laurenz & Jürgen in action ... incidentally both masters in the medieval art of 'Freyfechten'. If you have questions or comments for the Gothic team, stop by our VN Gothic Board. This board has somehow been wiped of earlier posts, but we invite you and the team back to continue earlier discussions and to start new ones. Week of August 29, 1999 Tuesday, August 31 Gothic Info Release Developer Piranha Bytes and publisher Egmont Interactive sent along a media advisory with some information about Gothic: IT'S A GOTHIC WORLD: Trapped in the dark world of GOTHIC - within the tyranny you're dammed to forced labour in the ore mines - surrounded by a giant magic barrier - there's no escape - inpenetrateable! Nevertheless, whether you're a warrior, psionic mage, assassin or wizard - escape is the score! But you will need a lot of friends for survival in this real-time 3 D world full of threatening and menacing challenges, adventures, riddles, battles, quests, orks, trolls, goblins and demons - in 3rd person view. Forget everything you played before! New, even bigger challenges await you in GOTHIC: The 3D-Realtime-Action-Role-Playing-Game. In GOTHIC monsters have their own daily routine, they have a private life! They awake at night time or withdraw in the sunset. You meet more than 200 different game characters, but mind your behaviour. If you attack the wrong person, he's going to inform it his allies and comrades - and you will find yourself with a lot of new enemies, they even co-operate to attack! If a precipice keeps a troll of more than 4 meters height from fighting you, he will throw fierce creatures like goblins over it to attack. - Fight and be watchful. If a monster finds any of your weapons, it will pick it up and turn it right against you. EASY GAMING - GOTHIC can be played immediately - without complicated character generation, it only needs ten keys - and if your capabilities are improving you begin to metamorphise - right away. Whether alone or within a network with up to five players GOTHIC always means three things to you: SURVIVE, ALLY and BREAKOUT! If you have questions or comments about Gothic, you can head over to our VN Gothic Board and post them for the team.