Gothic Gets Grander
An E3 Interview with Stefan Berger of JoWood

Josh 'Moxie' Sprague, 2005-06-09

When I meet Stefan Berger at the JoWood booth, he doesn't waste time jumping into the details. "The release will be Q1 2006 and as you can see it's a whole new graphics engine" he says before he directs my attention to a screen featuring a man clad in fur armor. "This isn't the main character that you see here, but look, you can choose to fight with one sword or with two." His character comes upon two bandits and draws one of the two swords strapped to his back. After a round of trading blows, Stefan then presses a button which causes his character to grab the second sword from his back and take a slick, dual-wield stance.

From here, we withdraw from battle and begin a short tour of the countryside. Cresting a hill, a pair of newly designed scavengers rise into view. Creatures that were once plain and sterile are now multi-hued, sporting furry crowns. I point out the swaying trees and ask if they're using SpeedTree. I'm told they are, but of course they're tailoring it for their own world. Here, Stefan remarks, "Gothic III is much more detailed; in Gothic II we had around 1200 polygons per character and here we have around 12,000." The poly-count isn't the only thing that has increased; the general size has increased as well. Stefan details this by saying, "In three, we have a much bigger landscape, about three times the size of Gothic II." Continuing, he adds, "The final game will have about twenty real settlements compared to about three in Gothic II [and its expansion]."

It is commonly thought that the Gothic series has had somewhat difficult controls up to this point and my host affirms this before I can pop the question. He assures me that III's controls have been simplified; left-click to attack and right-click to block - very easy. Quirky as their controls were, I appreciated that Gothic I and II were games that could be played completely one handed as I like to eat while I play. I ask if the option for the old control schemes will be included and I get a "Yes." I'm also told that the new inventory system is designed so that objects can be dragged and dropped with the mouse, but there isn't a visual for this in the demonstration.

"Will this game follow suit in coming out in both German and English?" I ask.

"It will come out in German first and then about four weeks later, it will be released in English," he says. "For number two it was about six months between releases." This should be good news for the Anglophones in our audience. He also mentions that they are planning on releasing demos before the game ships with the same time-frame between versions. Rounding out the info on the release, Stefan shares that, "the game is really huge, but we want to release it on one DVD."

Since Stefan is the brand manager for the Gothic series, I pitch a question which should be up his alley: "Gothic I was a bit underground here in North America and Gothic II was more well-known. Do you think Gothic III will follow suit and be even more popular than its predecessors?"

"We think so, because Gothic I was just thought of as a hard-core game out of Germany: 'It is a typical role-playing game.' 'It is hard to control.' So for number III we said, we need to make it much easier to control for every player and we need to do a much bigger PR campaign. Also, we are working much closer together with our fans. We are listening to them on the forums and plan on releasing more screenshots and videos as we progress. We also want to work more with the modding community after the game is released."

Continuing, he says, "the Piranha Bytes team are checking the forums every week to see what fans want. [For example], horseback riding is very big and we're looking to see if we can implement riding." This next year should offer a good opportunity to make good on these promises and improve in an area that may have been weak in the past.

Back on the screen, we come upon a small T-rex and he tells me "at night when you run around, you will hear them."

Stefan's enthusiasm has been bubbling beneath the surface this whole time, but it is here that it really begins to overflow. "I loved the Ultima series in the past," he shares, "and for me, it's another part of Ultima. It's so great. You have a free world where you can run around and interact with people. It's really a dream for every role-playing gamer. You can choose to fight with the humans or you can fight with the orcs."

"So, how many factions will there be in this one?" I ask.

"There will be six different groups this time. You will begin after showing up by ship on the mainland. The orcs have won the war and you can choose to fight with them or against them. The orcs aren't very intelligent and if you side with them the humans will say, 'Go away, we don't want anything to do with you.'"

"Like in Ultima 7, you would go into a shop at night and no one is there. Everyone is sleeping. In Gothic we want to make a living, breathing world where at night guards would tell you to be quiet because people are sleeping. You can go into a bar and have a drink with someone. If you go to a farm and kill someone, the next time you go there, his friend will say, "You killed my friend. Get out of here!"

Wrapping up our conversation, Stefan directs me back to our character and says, "Ok, watch here just a second...and there will be a trick." While I'm patiently waiting for whistles and bells, my host points out, " You see, he's scratching his ass. He's a normal hero, not superman." Once again, it's a living world.