December 9, 2006 - Some games tend to set their goals too high, and fail to achieve them. Others however, set their goals too high, and still achieve them, but not without leaving a trail of mistakes behind in their wake. Gothic 3 is one of these games, what could have been a very enjoyable game if not for various issues that continuously crop up.

If you’ve played the previous two games in the Gothic series, you’ll know the story up to now. The hero, who has remained nameless thus far, entered the prison Valley of the Mines with a simple mission to deliver a letter. This mission, as many simple ones seem to, spiraled into a battle to save the entire world. Eventually playing through an adventure that would take him across the entire island, the prisoner found a way off the island with a group of allies, which took him back to Myrtana, the mainland.

This is how Gothic 3 begins. The war that has raged across the land has ended, with the orcs the victor, humanity subjugated, and the remnants of a resistance spread far across the land. As you play through the game, you’ll have to make choices as to whether or not you want to side with the orcs, or bring the king back to power and free the human race. The story is extremely non-linear, and while there are the ‘story’ quests to complete in order to advance the plot, it’s possible to forget about them entirely and go about your business doing other things.

One of the defining characteristics of the Gothic series has been a vast and open world, and with each game, it seems to get bigger. Gothic 3 provides three distinctly different (and large) areas to run around: there’re the sand-blasted deserts to the south, the mountainous region to the north, and the temperate region in between. Each of these areas is fairly large in themselves, and many hours can be spent in each of them, completing the quests that lie in wait. The quest log bears mentioning here, however. Since you’ll be getting over a hundred quests, you’d think there’d be a good way to keep track of them. While the log does sort quests according to the city you got them in, the only indication of what you’re supposed to do is the title of the quest and a bare snippet of dialogue recorded in the log. This dialogue sometimes reveals nothing about where you’re supposed to go or how you’re supposed to do your task, and often means hours of running around just trying to figure out where the quest-giver told you to go or accomplish.

My favorite thing about the world of Gothic 3 is that there’s no distinct separation between a dungeon and the overworld map. To start, there’re no loading screens between any areas, so it’s just one continuous stream of land. It’s entirely possible just to run around the world trying to find what kind of interesting things can be found, whether it be a small cave with a small tribe of goblins and their treasure, a hidden grove of valuable herbs, or a forgotten temple filled with riches and the undead that guard them.

There’s a lot to do in the world, though it can become repetitive. In towns scattered around Myrtana, as well as throughout the countryside, you’ll find people that need things done. You won’t run out of things to do anytime soon. The biggest problem is that these quests are usually the same general thing. Someone will want you to go kill something, someone will want you to go find something, or someone will want you to go collect something. And possibly kill something on the way. To get anywhere in the cities, you’ll need to build up reputation within them, and so you need to complete quests given to you. Unfortunately, this leads to something of a ‘city-grind’. You’ll enter a city, find everybody with quests, go complete said quests, and gain access to the head honcho/inner sanctum/council of leaders/whatever. Whenever you run into a new city, it feels like you’re doing the same thing over again.