No discussion of a Gothic game would be complete without an A.I. drill-down. Peek in someone's house or draw your weapon in public in the prior games and you'd score a stern talking-to. Stubborn players got a sword in the gullet. "We gave our original A.I. a major overhaul," says Rosenkranz. "In addition to the human-to-human level, we've added two new layers: regional and global." Rosenkranz defines the regional layer as covering townwide attitudes and events for a specific region. "So whenever the hero manages to fall out of favor with the inhabitants of a town, this is being handled by the regional layer," he explains. "In time, the protagonist might use his persuasiveness to gain followers. If he wins over enough people in a city, he might trigger a revolution and expel or kill the occupying orcs." The global level, on the other hand, plies the huge, panoramic events that affect things like major plot checkpoints and war outcomes.