The philosophy of giving as much freedom to the player as possible had to be balanced with the need of retelling the story. To get on with the story they concentrated on dialogues the player had to "work off". In Gothic3 they want to break with this system and let the player choose how he wants to play the game. There won't be a defined way of upcoming meetings. Hoge used an example from Gothic2: You won't need to join a guild to get to Lord Hagen, it would be one out of many ways to reach your target. If you meet Lord Hagen it doesn't mean that he listens to you willingly, you'll maybe have to do some favours for him. The system doesn't only require different solutions but also results in different endings.