Having been out in Germany, Austria and Switzerland for about 4 months now, Gothic has received more than 13 awards now, where the lowest rating was 85%, the higher ones going up to the mid nineties!

And you read it all here at RPGDot already - Gothic is an excellent game indeed!

So, if you are still uncommon with the background story, here's a very short summary from my first preview:

"The world of Myrtana has fallen from the golden ages into a war with the Orcs, and only the magic ore from the mines can provide weapons and armor strong enough to withstand the attackers.

But who is to pick all the ore ? The idea is as simple as building a magic barrier around the mines, which imprisons all criminals into this barrier to pick ore for the kingdom of Myrtana; and only with this ore the prisoners can make a living within the barrier, by delivering the ore they picked to the kingdom and receiving food for it …

And, as fate twists, the player takes on the role of such a prisoner …"

During the course of the game, the player becomes stronger, more important and finally…pssst - no more spoilers here J

But as positive as the German press has reacted to Gothic, there has yet to be named a publisher for the English Version, for the US, for outside Europe - this game is too good to be known to the German language RPG community only!

But now there's light at the end of the tunnel: Recently, we have received our copy of the English language demo of Gothic, based on version 1.08h of the game and featuring about the same area/quests as the German upper world demo, which is available to the public, while this English demo is non-public at the time being (probably until negotiations with the publisher(s) are settled).

I eagerly unpacked the CD and installed the game - and I was really confident with the quality of the english actors - as good as in the German version.

While gameplay hasn't changed at all of course, the actors sound professional and the game will for sure leave its mark worldwide now.

A big kudos to Piranha Bytes, both for the game itself and for the great english localization!

For a more in depth coverage of Gothic, check out our First Impressions and our Review, as well as the english language samples on the official English Gothic site!

We have taken 18 screenshots from the English version for you. Since the grafx didn't change of course and we already have more than 150 pics in our massive Gothic Gallery, we decided to bring you some Inventory descriptions, statistics and books...