Accidental Aesop: Due to the It's Up to You nature of quest design, the series accidentally produces an anti-authoritarian/pro-anarchist message. Nearly every person at the top of their respective organization or hierarchy comes across as ineffectual and helpless in the face of the challenges of their position until the Hero comes along. Additionally, many turn out to be hopelessly arrogant or deluded, and some are outright evil. Meanwhile, the Hero, his True Companions, and most of the sympathetic people from the Colony days, are depicted as Heroic Neutral types, self-reliant, freedom-loving, cynical, and wary of authority, and more than willing to violate rules or entirely break with and work against authority when it inevitably makes a boneheaded or self-sabotaging decision that hurts everyone.
Accidental Innuendo: The sidequest in Gothic 2 where you distribute sausages as food rations to the members of an all-male monastery has proven itself to be prime fuel for immature memes, not helped at all by some of the novices noting that the delivery includes a sausage for the Hero too and trying to get their hands on it. This example primarily applies to the English translation. The quest was clearly meant to be funny in the German original too, but "Wurst", the German word for "sausage", is not innuendo there, but rather falls into the Inherently Funny Word category.
King Rhobar II, well-intentioned hero-king who is unfortunately in way over his head, or shortsighted, manipulative tyrant with delusions of being the Big Good? This is debated in-universe as well, with some characters holding out hope that he can save them all, while others see him as a useless exploiter who can just go to hell.
When asking Diego about the other camps in the first game, he says some pretty deprecating and dismissive things about them. This is despite the fact that he is friends with Gorn and Lester, who are from those camps, respectively. Does their individual friendship transcend his opinion of their camp, or is Diego just feigning "Old Camp supremacy" when in public because it is expected of him?
Also concerning Diego, in the first game's intro, he stops Bullit and his men from roughing up the protagonist, and proves to be very sympathetic quickly, serving to counterbalance the bad impression of the Old Camp Bullit left. However, you later learn that Bullit does this to every newcomer. Could the same also be true for Diego? Knowing the unscrupulous and mafia-esque ways of the Old Camp, could it be that the two are actually in cahoots, pulling some kind of Good Cop/Bad CopStockholm Syndrome gambit in order to convince newcomers that they need protection, with Bullit driving the scared new-arrivals right into the arms of Big Brother Mentor Diego while they are at their most vulnerable and open to suggestion?
Vatras requests three plants of swamp weed for the ritual to repair the Eye of Innos, stating it is essential for success. Should you not bring any though, he will just skip that step and complete the ritual anyway with no ill effects. This has led to some tongue-in-cheek interpretations of him as The Stoner, trying to trick the Hero into bringing him his next fix under a pretense. German content creators via Memetic Mutation would later spin this interpretation further and apply it to the other two mages present at the ceremony as well, treating all three as basically Silver FoxKavorka Man type party dudes with ridiculously elaborate, hedonistic lifestyles.
The three gods. Innos can be understood either as a fairly benevolent Crystal Dragon Jesus or a Knight TemplarBlack-and-White InsanityPrinciples Zealot. Beliar interpretations are fairly consistent, namely as a God of EvilSatan analogue, but at least one major Game Mod simply casts him as the god of freedom at all costs in an Order vs. Chaos struggle against Innos. Adanos has the widest range; he can be either a Jerkass God who condemns his followers to death en-masse like Innos, the Only Sane ManReasonable Authority Figure among the gods who recognizes the need for societal structure and individual fulfillment both, or Stupid Neutral. The Balance Between Good and Evil aspect in particular tends to throw people for a loop, because it's not entirely clear whether Adanos, in traditional Chronic Backstabbing Disorder D&D invokedTrue Neutral fashion, alternatingly supports his brothers depending on who's weaker at the time, or simply presents a less authoritarian take on the principles Innos stands for, while still always allying with Innos against the God of Evil when he shows his face. It does not help that the Hero can talk to Innos and Beliar in person in the third game, but Adanos only ever appears indirectly, via myth or the claims his priests make about what he is like and what he wants.
In the second game, you get to meet your old orcish friend Ur-Shak again, but things go south when a quest requires the Hero to kill an orc shaman who turns out to have been Ur-Shak's mentor. This results in Ur-Shak inheriting his position as a leader of the army and the friendship breaking down, with Ur-Shak accusing the Hero of always having been just another evil human too, and the Hero accusing Ur-Shak in turn of deceiving him and considerably downplaying his actual standing among the orcs and complicity in their invasion. What makes it an example of this trope is how exactly you meet him: He is found overlooking paladin Fajeth's camp from a high cliffsite as an orc attack bears down on it. When asked about this, he simply claims he was watching with melancholy how humans and orcs still cannot get along and that he is still an outcast to both races. Is this true, and did he only rejoin his people out of vengeance after what he perceives as the Hero's betrayal, or was it a bald-faced lie and he was actually commanding the assault from that tactically advantageous position?
The Minecrawler Queen in the first game is a deliberate example. Because she is a King Mook, we are conditioned to expect Rank Scales with Asskicking in fiction, and she awaits us at the end of a dungeon, you would think she'd be a challenging boss. But instead, she is stationary and almost completely defenseless. However, Minecrawlers are very obviously based on eusocial insects, such as bees and ants, and their queens are not fighters either, relying on the regular specimens to keep them safe, so this is actually a case of Shown Their Work.
Dragons in the second game are set up as the ultimate evil and commanders of the enemy forces you spend most of the story preparing to fight, but the way they've been implemented somewhat gets in the way of the heroic, climactic battles you may be hoping for, though in an odd manner. For ranged fighters or magic users, they are trivial, just keep shooting and occasionally sidestep a fireball. However, for melee characters, they are Demonic Spiders, as explained under its entry below. This causes most players of melee builds to not even bother trying to fight them fairly, instead relying on cheese strategies involving companions or summons, thus invoking the trope again. It's quite possible to become renowned throughout Khorinis as the only successful dragonslayer, without having personally killed a single dragon.
Awesome Music: The main refrain of Gothic I/II is awesome. The soundtrack for the trilogy is overall well regarded.
Badass Decay: Orcs in the first two games were utterly brutal endgame enemies, one of which was often already enough to spell doom for the Hero until reaching a very high level, and they still liked to appear in groups anyway. They very rarely talked, usually attacking on sight, and were presented as basically an alien, unstoppable force of destruction and evil. By comparison, in the third game, despite the obligatory new game De-power, you kill orcs en masse on your own right from the start, they are no longer automatically hostile, allowing you to walk around in their settlements and use the facilities unhindered, they talk frequently, and are generally presented as somewhat dorky and goofy, struggling with petty everyday grievances and 20 Bear Asses type scenarios so they can give you quests.
Big-Lipped Alligator Moment: In Gothic II, hidden in a cave in northern Khorinis, you will discover the Dragon Slicer, the strongest sword in the game by raw stats. It is guarded by hordes of undead, including the incredibly rare and powerful undead paladins, and is hovering in the air in a pillar of light. What makes it a BLAM is that, despite the game's central premise of slaying dragons and the weapon's Infinity +1 Sword status, the Dragon Slicer is very much not a Sword of Plot Advancement. In fact, no context is given at all for its existence, why it is found there, and what the story is with the odd conditions of its discovery.
Broken Base: The War of the Gods. In the original Gothic, Beliar is said to be loyal to Innos, neither the Orcs nor the Sleeper are ever associated with him and there is not that much proof of the existence of the gods to begin with. In Gothic II and 3, Innos and Beliar are at war with each other with that war being the main driver of the conflict of both games. Is it a Plot Tumor that superceded the original premise and made the setting less Low Fantasy or is it a great addition to the lore?
The second game lets the Nameless Hero begin an apprenticeship under one of three master craftsmen, roughly aligned in a Fighter, Mage, Thief pattern: Harad the Blacksmith, Constantino the Alchemist, and Bosper the Bowyer/Fur-Trader. Expect anyone who is familiar with the game, regardless of class or build, to always go for Harad, unless they are roleplaying heavily or doing a Self-Imposed Challenge. Almost nobody ever chooses Constantino, as he is a complete beginner's trap and ironically the worst option for magesnote he pays you for bringing him a certain type of mushroom. Not only is there a finite amount of these, when consumed in large quantities, they have a significant Rare Candy effect on your mana attribute, in a game all about maximizing permanent stat boosts like that. To make matters even worse, starting from chapter 3, you can learn recipes from him even if you're not his apprentice, provided you already know at least one basic potion recipe from someone else. While Bosper is a decent option on his own, Harad is simply superior in every way because you can make much more money with blacksmithing and because raw steel, unlike animal pelts, is an infinite and easily farmable resource. Additionally, alchemy and hunting have many trainers available, while Harad is the only option for learning blacksmithing unless you're playing a mercenary.
Among more experienced players of the second game (and to a lesser extent the first), don't expect to see many two-handed weapon builds. They are perfectly serviceable armaments, but relying on Stun Lock is one of the easiest ways to beat stronger enemies early, and that's much harder to do with two-handers than their one-handed counterparts.
Conversely, in the third game, especially on higher difficulties, you'll be hard-pressed to find any weapon being used that isn't a halberd or spear, as reach, rather than damage, is king here, and the whirlwind attack becomes a Game-Breaker when used with reach weapons.
Again in the second game, many crafts and talents may be learned from masters specialized in them in addition to increasing combat stats, theoretically allowing a player to integrate with the world and its setting more and customize their build further beyond chosen guild. However, in practice, regardless of guild or build, everyone will learn hunting skills and thievery (even though two of the three guilds are expected to be law-abiding, honorable and good), as they are good sources of extra income with no downsides, and the latter also gives additional experience points. In a similar vein, because the meta is based around permanent stat boosters, expect everyone to invest into the ancient languages and alchemy skills. Simply put, all these options are so good that you'd be deliberately handicapping yourself if you didn't take them all.
Ore Baron Gomez is the ruthless leader of the Old Camp. After the inmates killed their overseers, Gomez took control of the camp and the nearby mine, forcing the king to supply him with everything he demands in exchange for magical ore. While Gomez and his lackeys live a life of luxury, the majority of the Old Camp still has to work in the mine so they can pay the protection money collected by his guards. The Ore Barons also forced the king to send them women, whom they keep as their personal slaves. When his mine got flooded in an accident, Gomez had his men take over the New Camp's mine by force, resulting in the deaths of dozens of New Camp members while also having the few members of the other two camps who had stayed inside Old Camp killed. When the Fire Mages protested against his actions, Gomez had them killed as well.
Bloodwyn is the greedy guardsman from the Old Camp. The first thing he does to the Nameless Hero is asking "kindly" for protection money; refusal results in him sending his henchmen to beat up and maybe even kill the Hero. He later participates in cowardly murdering the Firemages. In the Gothic IIExpansion Pack, Night of the Raven, he joined the bandits and was put in charge of the mine, where he mercilessly forces the slaves to work without any breaks, not caring that there are angry Minecrawlers and cursed guardians in the mine. By the time the Hero arrives, many slaves are already dead, either killed by the creatures, worked to death, or of starvation. Others are so exhausted they can barely stand and some are already hallucinating, because they haven't seen the sun for weeks. After the disguised Hero kills all the vermin inside the mine for Bloodwyn, the latter doesn't even attempt to thank him for his actions, instead trying to get rid of the Hero so that he alone can get all the gold inside.
In Germany, the first two games are regularly brought up as the best german RPGs and are often ranked among the best german games period.
Outside of Germany, they are still highly regarded by many as some of the best and most immersive open-world RPGs (or, in many cases, best and most immersive games) of all time.
In the unpatched G3, several animals (most notably boars) had the tendency to stunlock and kill within seconds even experienced characters. It reached Memetic Mutation levels before later patches reduced their attack frequency.
The Seekers in II. After Act II, they are everywhere, hit hard and can possess you.
Dragons in the second game, but only for melee characters. Their default melee attack will knock your several meters back and is very finicky to dodge, and they have a rapid, permanent health regeneration which will top them back up to full in no time if you can't keep the pressure on.
Dragon Snappers, on account of having the highest attack power of any creature in the game, surpassing even the bosses, and appearing in packs. No matter how much Level Grinding you do, they never stop being able to take you down in seconds.
The The Very Definitely Final Dungeon in the original Gothic, the Sleeper Temple, is a lengthy, confusing mess of caves, lava seas, unintuitive button puzzles and instant death traps, in a game that had almost no dungeons before. A point of particular contention is the fact that once the player almost reaches the end of it, they encounter a Broken Bridge and have to return to the overworld, only to fulfill a fairly short sidequest that gains them the Sword of Plot Advancement before they go back to the temple, forcing them to go through the whole dungeon again.
The Halls of Irdorath, comprising the entirety of chapter 6 in the second game, arguably have this even worse. The Sleeper Temple at least had an exciting Tomb Raider-esque appeal, with its rivers of lava, visually distinct burial chambers and many different traps and puzzles that kept variety between the combat segments. The Halls, meanwhile, are basically nothing but a long combat gauntlet in an aesthetically homogeneous cave/stone temple area. Unlike the rest of the game, this section plays more or less the exact same on every run and just before the end, there is the gatekeeper's maze, That One Puzzle, not because it's hard but because it is extremely time-consuming and tedious even when you already know how to solve it. With the Dragon Hunt of chapter 4 arguably being the actual narrative climax of the game, and chapter 5 working well as a nice little denouement, it is not uncommon to hear veteran players say they consider their runs finished after chapter 5 already.
Draco in Leather Pants: A strange example mixed with Fanon. Scar, one of the Ore Barons of the Old Camp, has become subjected to this in recent years. In canon, all the Ore Barons are extreme Jerkasses who deliberately enforce the abuse and quasi-enslavement of the Digger class in order to facilitate their own life of boundless luxury and will ruthlessly kill anyone who threatens their power or even just whom they perceive as disrespectful. Scar himself is introduced gleefully describing Gomez' intention to rape one of the recently arrived female slaves. However, because the highly popular Game ModChronicles of Myrtana: Archolos features a Gainax Ending where it's revealed that Marvin, the game's sympathetic protagonist, somehow ends up becoming Scar, it has become popular to simply treat Scar as Marvin and pretend he was never anything else but a kind person deserving of salvation. One prominent mod even has him surviving the events of the Colony and later appearing as a Geralt of Rivia-esque Hero of Another Story whom the Nameless Hero happily teams up with.
Epileptic Trees: The conversation with the final boss of Gothic II. He claims to have a hidden true identity that the Hero knows and which appears to horrify him, but the boss never states what it is. He also asserts that Xardas was wrong on an unspecified subject of importance and misinformed the Hero in turn, making a crucial mistake. The most common fan theory is that the boss is somehow a reincarnation of the Sleeper from Gothic I and in that sense, Xardas was wrong to have assumed him beaten, but it still doesn't perfectly match the direction of the conversation or the Hero's unusually emotional response. Because none of this is addressed in any way in the sequel, it doubles as a Riddle for the Ages.
Gothic I ends with The Barrier destroyed and the Sleeper banished... but hundreds of dangerous convicts are now free.
In Gothic II the Nameless Hero and his friends raid Halls of Irdorath, saving the world... but it doesn't stop orcs from conquering Khorinis and, as you learn in Gothic 3, the entire continent.
Fan Nickname: The Polish fandom affectionately refers to the protagonist as "Bezi", which is short for "Bezimienny" (Polish for "Nameless"). It's kinda as if English-speaking fans called him "Lessie", if you allow for such comparison.
Mod stories very commonly utilize the Elsewhere Fic format, typically on an island setting you're trying to establish yourself in and/or leave again. Basically, the Fanon is that the ocean containing Khorinis is actually a whole Adventure-Friendly World of similar islands.
Both due to the expansion pack's main theme and the developers' later Risen series, the community also has an affinity for having the protagonist encountering pirates or even outright being one.
Fanon: More than one Game Mod has utilized the idea that there are other locations/isles in or around Khorinis which use Khor- in their name as a Theme Naming prefix.
Fanon Discontinuity: The release of Gothic 3 and the following games made under the license owned by JoWooD all created some backlash and led many of the hardcore fans to declare this even before Piranha Bytes declared the expansions Canon Discontinuity. Some felt the franchise was already ruined, while others simply pretended the Gothic series never got a followup beyond Gothic II's Expansion Pack.
Friendly Fandoms: With The Witcher, though the latter has since massively eclipsed Gothic in popularity. Still, particularly in the early days of the former, there was a lot of overlap between fandoms, probably due to both being experimental DarkLow FantasyRPGs, produced in and inspired by Central/Eastern Europe, featuring rough, machismo-filled worlds and a voiced protagonist who is completely done with the shit everyone keeps giving him. The Germans Love David Hasselhoff situation regarding Gothic in Poland, home-country of The Witcher, doesn't hurt, either. The same overlap appears to exist in Russia as well.
Hunting skills in Gothic I, exploitation of monster patrol patterns and the Insurmountable Waist-High Fence aversions in Gothic 3.
Summoning Magic in Gothic II could get pretty close at times.
Ranged Weapons becomes one in Gothic 4, thanks to bugs with monsters spawning.
Genius Bonus: The big inscription on the wall of the temple leading into Jharkendar is done in authentic Germanic runes and translates into an accurate summary of the situation there and a warning not to unseal the portal.
Gothic is very popular in Poland. Great dubbing, affordable pricenote Not to mention ease of piracy and the fact any PC from its era could run it helped a lot. By the time of the second game, it was already enshrined as one of the "must plays" that everyone was familiar with.
It was also very popular in Russia. Until Forsaken Gods and Arcania killed it, that is. It's still considered Cult Classic.
Good Bad Bugs: All the Gothic games have these, and many are used by players to make the games far more enjoyable.
Gothic I has the unlimited Roast Meat bug, and the strafe off cliffs with no damage bug.
Gothic II allows for the economy to be exploited via an AI programming glitch in which you beat the crap out of a merchant, take his crap, wake till he gets up, sell him what you took off him, and repeat. The Expansion Pack fixed this by having a merchant's inventory despawn if downed by conventional attacks. However, if you weaken them sufficiently, then freeze them with an Ice Block spell and wait for the spell's damage-over-time to kill them instead, it is still possible to take everything, though this will obviously cost you the merchant.
Similarly, mercenaries in the second game get a quest from Buster to bring him as many horns of shadowbeasts as possible. This is generally considered one of the most rewarding quests in the game, paying out sizeably not just in money but also, more importantly, XP. Before it was patched, one could just beat up Buster, take back the horns already given, and sell them back once more as if they were new, allowing for easy power-levelling.
There is also the "corpse cave" bug. Basically, the game is divided into several huge loading zones/subworlds. If for story-reasons, an NPC travels between such worlds, the game does not actually transport them there. Instead, it spawns an identical doppelganger in that world with the scripts and dialogue and all attached to him, while killing the original in the previous world and dumping their body in a hidden location. Due to a bug, it was possible to access one of those locations though, deep in a Khorinis mineshaft, where one could find the corpses and loot them of valuable stuff.
To join mercenaries in Gothic II you might need to beat up some of them. However, if you lure them under the ramp leading to Onar's house, they get stuck, running around in circles- you can freely attack and they won't defend themselves. Very useful trick, especially with Night of the Raven add-on, where the base game becomes very hard.
Gothic 3 allows you to beat up people for their stuff (which respawns), and when done in towns where everyone is your friend, you can make a small fortune in less than ten minutes.
In Gothic I, there are at least a few places with guards who will warn you and then attack you if you try to walk past them. However, taking your weapon out allows you to walk right past them while they're busy warning you to hide your weapon.
In the same game, holding any movement key while falling will allow you to land safely without taking any damage no matter how high the fall.
Because of unplanned by creators AI behavior in some moment there are some funny responses, like after Old Camp becomes agressive to everyone else one of their victims becomes Mudnote because he had no labeled faction, so if you attack him, no one will care or while reclaiming New Mine with Gorn his crime recognition system will often bug out, causing him to label you a murderer and attack you if you deal any actual killing blows while there.
Memetic Badass: Common boars, collectively as a species, were this in early days of the release of Gothic III. Due to broken game balance, they could easily Stun Lock the Hero (explicitly a One-Man Army in this installment) to death even at high levels.
There is an entire meme community around the Gothic series, especially parts I and II, in Poland, with reaction macros, Machinima clips, Voice Clip Songs... It's like this before the first sequel was announced and has been going strong ever since. And of course, there is the infamous line, which transcended beyond just the game's fandom.
There's no evidence Gomez knew about the massacre of Fire Mages. Explanation A meme in the Polish fan community, referencing the controversial far-right politician Janusz Korwin-Mikke, who claimed that "there's no evidence Hitler knew about the Holocaust".
"Swamp weed" as an euphemism for... weed.
Moral Event Horizon: The protagonist can cross it in the second game by opening the castle gates, leaving all the inhabitants to be mercilessly slaughtered by the orc besiegers, or in the third game by entering the service of Beliar, which requires the slaughter and/or enslavement of all the continent's remaining free peoples, including some friends from previous adventures.
Narm: The first game has a system to prevent body-blocking and interrupted pathfinding where NPCs will get annoyed and rudely ask you to step out of their way if you are standing too close to them, even drawing their weapons and attacking if you do not comply quickly enough. This system is too oversensitive and can cause quite the Mood Whiplash when it triggers immediately after the scenes where characters declare you a treasured friend or welcome you to their guild with all the associated honors and ceremony.
Never Live It Down: Saturas gives you a What the Hell, Hero? rant when you first meet him in Gothic II due to your use of the water mages' ore heap to recharge Uriziel. He gets over it relatively quickly, but this does not stop it from being the first thing that comes to peoples' mind when thinking about Saturas' role in Gothic II.
Gothic 1 has such unstable game coding that it was even prone to crashing on systems available at time of release. Gothic 3 was this to some extent, but Jo Wood / Pirahna Bytes approved Community Patches have largely fixed this.
Forsaken Gods was a very obvious version of this, but the same team that fixed Gothic 3 has managed to turn this game into something, while somewhat weak story wise, is playable and fully functional in a gameplay sense.
Gothic 3, specially if you haven't played any of the previous two games. The storyline is "tenuous" to say the best, and very few characters will actually get detailed at explaining anything. While this can be considered a token of realism (people aren't usually prone to give full elaborate explanations to a stranger that just knocked at their door), it also means you can easily get lost and walk around aimlessly without knowing what the hell is going on. At the very start of the game you're given the task of finding Xardas (the main quest) but no info at all about where he is. You'll need to do a lot of sidequests to just get some clues about his location, and at the beginning they'll be pretty vague. The game also makes little to no effort to explain who Xardas is, nor what his role in the previous games was, so if you're a newcomer to the series you'll probably spend a good portion of the game without really understanding why you have to seek him at all.
One main quest, finding the fire chalices, will take almost all of the game for you to complete it. However, the quest itself is given by a very minor character in the first rebel outpost you'll probably visit, and he's not extremely hard to miss by the way. To add further insult, the quest was broken in the initial release, and took quite some patches to get it fixed.
Ladders in the first game were likely responsible for more deaths than enemies. Taken out in the second game and lampshaded in the add-on.
In vanilla Night of the Raven, boni count towards the Diminishing Returns for Balance learning point cost system. You collect boni-granting items all throughout the game, but this means that a player who actually uses them after finding will run into the cost increase quickly and end up significantly weaker than a player who only uses learning points to get their skill increases until the lategame where they become prohibitively expensive and then consumes their boni-granting items all at once on top of that. Making the cost increase not account for boni is thus a standard feature of most mods nowadays.
The loot system in the third game has been criticized. Rather than having hand-placed, location-based loot, there's now a "rare chests" mechanic. Basically, there's in total around 50 rare chests placed throughout the game world, which are the only chests containing any meaningful item drops. The content of any given rare chest however is determined by how many rare chests you've opened before, the value going up with each opened chest. This means that 100% Completion (or at least meticulously combing the entire map) is mandatory if you're hoping for anything but a Better Off Sold weapon.
The crime system in the same game is also widely disliked. Rather than tying crime discovery to witnesses as in the previous games, crimes are now always discovered, though if you are not seen doing it, you are not initially exposed as the culprit. The more crimes you commit in a city, the more your suspicion level rises, until eventually you are automatically exposed and the whole city becomes hostile to you, even if there was never a witness to any of your crimes. You can slow down the rate at which the suspicion level grows by learning the persuasion skill, but it cannot be halted completely, and there is no way to bring it down again. With previous games fully encouraging and rewarding being a Kleptomaniac Hero, this comes across as an unfun, illogical, and oddly unnecessary restriction.
Sequel Difficulty Drop: While still not exactly easy, Gothic II (when first released, that is; the addon is another issue) is a lot easier and more forgiving than its predecessor thanks to a more streamlined control scheme and a smoother beginning.
Gothic 3, when compared to beloved Gothic I/II (+Night of the Raven).
Forsaken Gods and Arcania (+its add-on), which makes Gothic 3 look as good as the first two games.
One-Scene Wonder: The first bandit you encounter in the second game is well-beloved for switching from trying to lure you into a trap to being a Nice Guy who gets really invested in helping you survive as soon as you let him know you're a former convict too. You can even warn him so he's not killed when Cavalorn clears out his gang's hideout. He doesn't even have a name and seizes to be relevant after the first few minutes of the game, but still sticks out as one of the most helpful and oddly likeable characters in the entire series.
Only the Creator Does It Right: Just ask the fanbase and look at the ratings Forsaken Gods and Arcania have received. The fandom was very happy when Piranha Bytes regained the rights and declared both games non-canon. That being said, some feel Gothic 3 showed that not even the creator can do it right anymore.
Gothic 3 did away with the context-sensitive jumping system from the earlier installments, making the Insurmountable Waist-High Fence aversion much more difficult and less awesome.
Most of the changes between the second and third game were not well received, in fact. This includes the lack of evolving weapon animations with increasing skill, the new crime and loot systems, and the replacement of faction membership with reputation points.
Especially in the German community, Gothic I and II were often considered the ideal of how a German RPG should look, a dark, dirty world with an incredibly thick atmosphere (the main reason why you can perform entirely pointless animations) where one has to work his way up to become a badass. Fans generally refer to this as the Gothic Feeling. The huge changes made by Gothic 3 and the following games have often been criticized by the fanbase for lacking that particular feeling around them. Risen, on the other hand, was quickly considered to be possessing the Gothic Feeling and therefore, a worthy Spiritual Successor by most.
Arcania in particular suffers from this. The general consensus is that that it would have at least gotten a few more So Okay, It's Average reviews more had it not claimed to be a successor to the Gothic series, yet done away with most traditions and features the games were notable for, like the ability to attack anyone or pass time by sleeping in beds.
Past the end of the second chapter in the original Gothic, the player is railroaded into working with the New Camp, regardless of previous faction choice. This is unfortunate because intriguing plot developments are happening in the other two camps at the same time, yet you neither see them nor get to participate in them:
In the case of the Old Camp its former facade of civility with the New and Swamp camps disappears completely, turning it into a xenophobic Omnicidal Neutral military dictatorship ruled by an increasingly paranoid and betrayal-obsessed mad dictator. The gates are closed, the camp goes into lockdown, nobody can come or go except for the soldiers sent to invade the other camps. This could have led down many intriguing roleplay paths for a PC who has committed themselves to the Old Camp and is stuck in there: Do they honor their oaths and go My Master, Right or Wrong? Try to avoid trouble and the purges while planning their escape? Join a conspiracy to get rid of the current leadership and find a new direction for the camp?
As for the Swamp Camp, their spiritual leader, camp founder and prophet dies, but not before revealing that the deity they based their society around and depended upon for freedom is actually a powerful demon and must be stopped. A splinter faction of fanatics refuses to accept this and leaves the camp to continue their worship, while the rest remain under the provisory leadership of the head ofthe armed forces, who is deeply disturbed by the revelation and intends for the Brotherhood to become The Atoner. There is ton of potential from this vantage point. How are the attempts at atonement supposed to look? Will the camp experience a Crisis of Faith based on their entire societal foundation collapsing, or do they find something worth saving in the old teachings to make into their new identity? Does the split between fanatics and atoners cause long-term instabilities? We never get to know, because the Swamp Camp is never again involved in the story of the series in a meaningful way and there is no new content should the player decide to go back there later.
Somewhat related to the above, despite the game's general theme of advancing through the ranks of a multi-tiered society, the player can never become an Ore Baron or Guru. These would have been the perfect reward for staying loyal to the Old Camp despite everything, or mending the Brotherhood's schism, respectively.
Towards the end of the first game, the Hero can partake in an optional segment where he single-handedly tears up the entire Old Camp in order to rescue the blacksmith Stone. However, this section is often considered a bit of a Big-Lipped Alligator Moment. The Hero enters a Tranquil Fury state and seems highly concerned about Stone's fate and saving him, despite the fact that Stone is not only an extremely minor character whom you are very likely to never even have talked to in most playthroughs up to that point, but also, if you do talk to him, he's nothing but a complete Jerkass to you! Therefore, it is commonly agreed that the segment would make significantly more sense if you were rescuing a character the Hero and player have actually built an attachment to, for example, Diego. Similarly, after foreshadowing an encounter with her several times, this seems like the moment where the Hero would finally get to talk to and free Sex Slave Velaya, but she has no such dialogue, instead just continuing her slave AI routines even though her environment is now a Ghost Town.
The handling of the Lee/Rhobar subplot has often been criticized as it evolved over time, especially the resolution in Gothic 3. From the first game already, Lee is presented as something of a Hero of Another Story, a former general of the King who due to court politics was framed and thrown into the Colony, where he has become the leader and A Father to His Men to a force of mercenaries. Balancing the care for his new charges with his desire for revenge and clearing his name, Lee is shown playing the long game magnificently, gathering allies and establishing for himself a reputation as a Reasonable Authority Figurewho is not however above putting on the pressure if necessary. His frustration and anger are shown repeatedly, reinforcing that he lives for the final confrontation yet to happen and cannot let things go. Come Gothic 3 and... this entire subplot is relegated to a tiny sidequest with maybe half a dozen lines of dialogue. Lee's regular method of operation is absent; unlike in the previous game, there is no careful preparation, no calling in of old contacts or blackmailing of enemies, no clever strategy for dealing with the elite guards and mages standing guard. You simply hand Lee a teleporter stone to the King's throne room, kill everyone there with just the two of you, and the quest is finished. Neither Lee nor the King have anything to say about this confrontation, before or (in Lee's case) after. My Name Is Inigo Montoya? Vengeance Feels Empty? What's that? People have also noticed the Disproportionate Retribution and Motive Decay creeping in over time, as Lee states in the first game that the King was innocent and only deceived by the nobles, who were the actual party to blame. Come the third game, and Lee is interested only in killing the King. This in itself would have made for an excellent Plot Twist if called attention to, perhaps allowing for last-minute reconciliation.
The chapter system of the first and second games was a brilliant way to make the most of the relatively small game world and how the story makes you visit many areas repeatedly; with each new chapter, there would be new quests, story developments and enemies, with the status quo notably changing and stakes escalating, and even the generic NPCs' responses would evolve to account for your actions and recent events. Unfortunately, when the second game's Night of the RavenExpansion Pack added the new Jharkendar worldspace, this system was barely implemented. While new monsters do spawn as chapters advance, there are no further story bits or quests after you have completed the main Jharkendar missions, as is mandatory, in chapter II or III. Nothing is made of what becomes of the bandits under Thorus' leadership, the pirates being stranded, the pirate-bandit war, the Water Mages' plans to restore the temple to its former glory, or the orc colonization attempt of the area. Made worse by how Greg, Lares, and the Water Mages all appear as major characters in the first half of the game in the lead-up to Jharkendar and then suddenly have nothing left to say for the rest of it.
The farms/separatists vs city/royalists conflict of the second game is said to be tethering at the edge of complete escalation, with everyone expected to pick a side sooner or later, but you leave the isle before you can witness or take part in said escalation and canonically, the whole thing is rendered moot by the orcs being a Conflict Killer and just conquering and enslaving both parties.
Mining ore in the first game. Despite it being the entire purpose of the Colony, despite the whole social structure being based around a kind of pseudo-feudalism where newcomers like the player character are forced into the role of miners and despite the fact that ore is even the currency of the Colony, nothing interesting is done with it gameplaywise. There is no skill system for mining, no chance of rare finds or an increase in social status for your mining prowess, you cannot make money this way and at no point are there any missions requiring or even just encouraging you to do any actual mining. All you can do is play an animation. Seemingly with this in mind, Gothic II introduces the concept of gold mining, which is more fleshed-out.
The second game has you put together a crew of seasoned adventurers to assault The Very Definitely Final Dungeon, consisting of your True Companions and other important characters you've met throughout the story, with a suprising amount of choice and variables involved note Some will join you if you did a certain quest for them, but others will join only if you did not do their personal quest, usually because completing it means giving them a new purpose or new obligations which they can't leave behind to go adventuring with you now. One potential recruit will refuse if you've killed too many innocents by that point. Another is secretly a Double Agent for the enemy and will betray you. Yet another will only show up if you steal the paladin's ship, rather than getting legal permission to take it. And while you can dismiss and re-hire some companions infinitely, others will tell you to fuck off for yanking them around if you try to get them back after one dismissal. However, once you're actually there, Angar is the only character who is willing to accompany you into the dungeon even part of the way, and he still chickens out whenever a boss is ahead. Everyone else stays on the ship and does nothing except serve as trainers and merchants in case you've still got any skill points or gold left over.
Bloodwyn in Night of the Raven can be strategically taunted to reduce his stats, making the fight with him easier. Nowhere else in the entire series does this concept appear again.
Unfortunate Character Design: The undead dragon in the second game has a glowing magic rune right on his crotch.
Vindicated by History: Gothic III, despite still not seen as to even being close as good as Gothic I or II, is looked at much more positively today compared to it's release in 2006. First and foremost reason for this is, off course, most bugs being routed out and new improvements being constantly made by the still very active Community. Forsaken Gods, as well as Arcania and its addon being of so horrendous quality only contributed to that.
What Do You Mean, It's Not Political?: The Church of Innos is highly militant, judgmental, and concerned with wealth and donations over the well-being of its faithful. It's also in almost every way a very close analogue to the Roman Catholic Church.
in Gothic I