Risen versus Gothic 3: Graphics comparison of the RPGs
Risen hits retail stores today - a good occasion to compare the graphics of Risen and Gothic 3 since both games have been developed by Piranha Bytes.
Gothic 3 was released in 2006, Risen today on October 2, 2009 - both games and the graphics engine have been developed by Piranha Bytes. How has the graphics changed in the meantime? We do the direct comparison. With Risen we used the maximum graphics setting, inofficial tweaks were not possible. Gothic 3 (the add-on Forsaken Gods developed by the Indian studio Trin Games) has some benefits: Anti-aliasing (32xS with transparency MSAA) and a slight optimization of the visual range. Risen compensates this with an overhauled engine.
Below some direct comparison between Risen and Gothic 3 (Forsaken Gods) can be found. After that we tell you something about the engines of the two RPGs. How do you like the graphics comparison? Is Risen considerably better than the aged Gothic 3? Please tell us in the commentaries.
Risen: Engine details
Risen is realized with a new DirectX 9 engine that has been programmed almost completely from scratch and bears a lot of resemblance to the Genome Engine of Gothic 3. Render techniques like enhanced Depth of Field, Screen Space Ambient Occlusion, Cascade Shadow Mapping plus Soft Shadows as well as FP16 HDR Rendering including adaptive tone Mapping and new water shaders bring the graphics to a level noticeably higher than Gothic. The HDR is one of the reasons why Risen does not officially support Anti-aliasing.
More details can be found in our article Risen: Screenshots, technical details and performance evaluation.
Gothic 3: Engine details
The graphics engine is the proprietary Genome Engine. The engine focuses on a vast game world. Further engine features: Light and shadow system based on DirectX 9, dynamic weather, depth of field blur, reflections and Bloom effects without HDRR. The vegetation is supported by the SpeedTree engine. Emotion FX 2 is the animaton engine, physics simulation is done by Physx in the CPU version. More information can be found on Wikipedia.com.
More details about Gothic 3 can be found in High-res screenshots of Gothic 3: Forsaken Gods - graphics still competitive?
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