At the highly visible Deep Silver stand of Koch Media and JoWood in Hall 3 beside a lot of other game highlights Gothic 3 has been presented. Piranha Bytes was represented by Kai Rosenkranz and JoWood was on-site with Brand Manager Stefan Berger. In two seperate rooms it was possible to test diverse games for XBox and PC among others Spellforce 2, Pancer Elite Action and of course Gothic 3.

The Koch Media/JoWooD-stand from outside

Kai commented on the state of the playable version "We have no special version available for the GC - what you are seeing and playing is just the current status or development which we have recorded and took to Leipzig. As a result, the game did not run completly stable. "The game is, at this time, not optimized at all" explained Kai. That's the reason why there were some lags.

KaiRo is explaining

In the playable version the little village Montera is accessible. The city gate is secured by an ork, in the inner city people are working or following their activities (as already implemented). During the presenation Kairo explained "Montera is one of the first settlements, that was conquered by orcs, consequently" he continued "life goes on quite normally here". The inhabtitants have so to speak adapted to the circumstance that now they are working for the orcs instead of the king. Stone houses and cottages are motley situated, everywhere are boxes and barrels, here and there a NPC is working. One or two orc-guards are watching out that everything keeps running. In the current version the dialogue system has not been implemented yet. As a consequence it hasn't been possible to speak to anyone. Any kind of menu is still missing and it's not possible to fight. Everything you can do is to run through the city which is equipped with some NPC's and to enjoy the graphics. The main character that could be seen in this version is not the hero from the predecessors but any NPC as the hero is not completely disigned yet. By the way the functions to circuit the hero with the camera have been added; consequently it's possible to watch the front and the profile of the character.

Stefan Berger is operating

Kai also commented on the perks and on the functionality of the skilling system: "In Gothic 2 you have had skills quoted in percentages: 10% one-handed weapons, 50% crossbow and so on. The skilling system in Gothic 3 is so to speak digitised "That means you can carry out a special move - or you can't", he exemplified the new concept and continued "This means, that the single skills are seperated in many little steps that can be leraned seperately."

For example concerning the “one-handed” skill there could be special attacks against orcs or moves against certain monsters. The degree of detail is extremly high. At the wayside in front of Montera's gates there is an Innos-shrine that is modelled much more detailed than in Gothic 2. Stefan Berger also activated the Wireframe-Mode at the computers for the presentation in order to demonstrate how many polygones even the figures consist of. Despite the larger and more detailed areas there won't be any loading times. As already in the predecessors the whole world is loaded into the memory. To realise this process the developpers resort to ressource-saving techniques. Areas in the distance, for example, are displayed more simply. Kai confirmed that the world of Gothic will be four times larger than the accessible parts of the world in gothic 2 and addon together.


Während der Päsentation beantwortete Kai auch einige Fragen zum Spiel.

KaiRo:

No, we said, that we focus on the first quarter 2006 and this month, it looks like, as we would be able to accomplish our target. At the moment, Gothic 3 won't be postponed.

KaiRo:

Yes, to find such a city, the player has to go to Vangard, the capital city of the kingdom Myrtana. There are still human beings dominating and resisting against orcs.

KaiRo:

No Speedtree yes - Speedgrass no.

KaiRo:

That's a good question. Probably it will boil down to a kind of "valuta".

KaiRo:

There will be an appearance of an middle ages-band, thats planned. But we have no concrete intentions wich band it will be...