Mike: I always used to plan in 5-year steps. Now another of these steps reaches its conclusion with Risen 2. After that, I REALLY would like to do a different kind game - at least a different kind of setting. Pirates are cool but still too close to the fantasy setting imho, which i have been working on for 10 years now.

Mike: I designed the whole story of Gothic 1. We were of course several dialogue writers but all of the guilds, background, setting and most of the main characters came from me. It took 3 years to get that all together and I have applied major changes to the main plot even 4 months before the goldmaster.

Mike: I chose the Hero texture out of about 100 face textures that we had. I tried to pick a face which imho suited the nameless hero's character. The face was there. I only picked it. I didn't inted it to look like mine, I guess I did it subconciously. :)

Mike: Not at all. He looks more like Horst now (Who was responsible for the design in G3) - which is okay :)

Mike: No. We used only tiny bits. When the addon was cancelled, we couldN't use much - we had to start from scratch.

Mike: There is a lot to say to that, so let me pick one example. The new camp's dam was a Design decision i made out of several reasons.

Every camp should have had their way of supporting themselves with food, the old camp would exchange ore with the outside world, the sect camp would trade their drugs for food with the other camps (those guys didin't eat much anyway, because they were high all the time) and the new camp would grow their own food. I tried to find different ways to do things for each camp.

Then I thought about what food the new camp should grow, and I thought that rice terraces would be the best approach beacause the plants were not so difficult to display like e.g. a wheat field would have been and you could have a massive dam for the water supply. I addition, the dam made the otherwise kind of small new camp look bigger.

Mike: It is never enough. Apart from that, I think Gothic 1 could have used more polishing in the camps dialogues during the last parts of the game. People were still talking the same crap as they were doing in the beginning of the game and the hero could pick choices like "Hi! I'm new here..." in the 6th chapter. That was crap.

Oh, yes, and there were the 4 Frineds of the Hero, which were supposed to have a secret meeting later in the game which never occured becauce we had no more time. Other than that (an a coouple of bugs) I'm quite satisfied with our first work.

Mike: It should have increased the variety of opponents. You were always fighting against monsters, so I thouhgt it would be nice to fight against some bandits as well. Moreover, the whole new camp intenal comflct came too short imho and I thought there should be independent bandits who do not give a damn about what Lee says. Applying a quest to it would have been nice, though.

Mike: Not really It became clear to us that we could not implement all the features that we wanted to, so we dropped that thought quite early.

Mike: No. We do not earn much. But we have a job that we are glad to do. That's a reward in itself.

About the development cost. Gothic 1 cost several millions and brought back only a few of them. With Gothic 2 we got that money back and achieved our break-even. With the addon, we actually started to make a bit of money.

Mike: The idea was Tom Putzki's. He was responsible for our whole internal PR and marketing and he knew the guys from a concert he went to. The idea was indeed great. With modern technology, you regrettably would have to put a much bigger effort (more money (lots and lots of it) to it than "back in the day...")

Mike: Ultima 6, 7 Dungeon Master and the like. Practically everything I could lay my hands on. I do it today, in spite of having a family. Sometines I go to "Do Not Disturb Mode" to enjoy games like Fallout 3.

Mike: No. :) Please forgive me if I do not elaborate on that. It would be worth a thread an a philosophers' forum.

Mike: The Magic barrier was created by 12 magicians, Xardas being one of them! When Xardas left the old camp, there were only 5 Mages left.. So they took Milten as an apprentice, when he was thrown into the prison after the barrier had been created. There is a dialogue in the game where one of the mages gets the numbers wrong. I think it was Saturas... I noticed that error, fixed it and some ex-team member of mine "fixed" it back because he didn't understand the background. There is no missing mage. The guy just messed it up :)

Mike: Nobody is innocent.

Mike: The Nameless Hero is the Avatar of Adanos. The Undead Dragon is the Avatar of Beliar, carrying the "energy" of the sleeper.

Mike: We felt Gomez to be too prominent - most of the people would have killed him and remember that perticular moment - Raven might also hve ben killed, but he was not so prominent and therefore his death was not so prominent in the player's memory.

Mike: Lack of time.

Mike: Problem is, that the publisher isn't willing to pay fo that - and we coldn't afford to, because we had to work on the first milestone of the NEW project and needed the money to pay our team. Personally, I think it's a great idea to have a modkit out, but it's so much more work to do it than "simply releasing the tools".

Mike: Play Fallout 3 - or New Vegas - or both. Then you have your answer.

Mike: We get the rights to Gothic back when we have finished Risen 2. Why? Because we did only sell them to our ex-publisher for a certain amount of time ;)

Wise move.



Thanks for the questions, see you on the net.

Mike