../ [30.12.20] Interview with Mike Hoge

Note: The interview that you see here is a compilation of questions and answers over a period of ~7-8 months between Mike Hoge and Dmitriy, conducted online. The publication is approved by Mike. - flosha

Dmitriy_Phantom95: Greetings, Michael.
I'm a researcher of Gothic and its content. There are a few more things that intrigue fans of Gothic. We're really looking forward to any opportunity to discuss something like this.
With Regards.

Mike: Hey there. What did you want to know?

Dmitriy_Phantom95: Hi. First of all, I would like to discuss some plot details. For example, the story of chapter 5 and 6, in addition to the events inside the orc temple, which was tied to the orc assault from the underground orc city. In the end of chapter 5, the hero possibly could help the orcs to capture the old camp (in Gothic 2 there's the movie, maybe it was created based on the original ideas of Gothic 1?).
This event is referred to as "NEMESIS", which marks it as the retribution for the attitude of the old camp, for previously committing horrible atrocities: the riot at the moment of the creation of the barrier with the murder of the royal guards, killing of the fire mages, the war between the three camps, the capture of the free mine, killing a large number of people from the new camp. So we consider "NEMESIS" as a moment of revenge on the old camp for their crimes.
Can you please clarify this point of the plot?

Mike: Okay.
1. Orc invasion. The sleeper was supposed to be a demon who manipulates the minds of the prison's inhabitants. The sleeper would awaken, more and more, and become more powerful. This was fueling the aggression between the camps and would throw the prison world into chaos more and more, as the game progressed. Ultimately, the orcs were supposed to be driven to the surface (and out of their caves) to add even more chaos. Also, it was supposed to add new opponents to the game at a point where the player had probably seen most of the surface world.
The orc events from Gothic 2 were, however, not founded on that. When we did Gothic 2, we took the events from Gothic 1 as the drama actualy WAS, not as it was intended to be, regarding the Orc Invasion in Gothic 1. "Nemesis" was the name of the chapter. I think it was Stefan Nyuls idea to name it so. As the main part of the final story was rewritten in the last 4 months(!) of the project, we simply had no more time to get all ideas into the game.
2. The reason the barrier spell went wrong was indeed the magic of the sleeper, who interferred with the barrier. Being asleep, he had not much power, but he was able to trap the humans, because he knew he needed followers who he needed to manipulate in order to fully bring him into the world of the humans.

[Note by flosha: In the question and the answer above the events OrcAssault and Nemesis got confused, both in our early theories about what Nemesis is and in Mikes answer which was influenced from these theories, which, as we know today, were wrong. Today we know, that Nemesis had nothing to do with what Dmitriy proposed above and that the OrcAssault had nothing to do with the OldCamp. Nemesis and the OrcAssault were two independent events.]

Dmitriy_Phantom95: Thank you, Mike for your detailed answer, can you also clarify these points:
1. Was Khorinis and Minental part of the mainland at the time of Gothic 1 and Gothic Sequel, excluding Gothic 2?
2. The barrier was originally designed to be 20 years old? (Dialogues of the Gothic Comic book and one ambient miner)

Mike: 1. There was no worldmap when we did Gothic 1, so it was neither on the mainland, nor on an island at that point.
2. I cannot remember the age of the barrier, I think it's about 10 years, but I could be wrong, here. Maybe I can find some old documents where we described the timeline... but don't get your hopes up, much is lost, unfortunately…

Dmitriy_Phantom95: Old docs? Information from the green and black folders that you showed on the stream with Kai Rosenkranz will be of great value to fans. Can you please say more about this? And btw, do you remember anything about Finster?

Mike: Well…
1. looked at the old folders. Not much of use in there, though some cool antique artworks, some even drawn by me, most of them by Ralf or even Frank, before him.
2. Finster was never the name of the Gothic project. it was its predecessor. The 3 programmers applied for a cooperaion with Greenwood using the Finster project. we asked them if they were okay with throwing it all away and restarting with focus on 3rd person and a surface world (for Finster was 1st person dungeon, much like the Ultima Underworld series).
When we agreed to restart from scratch, Stefan Nyul choose the project name Orpheus. It wasn’t supposed to be the release name, ever.

Dmitriy_Phantom95: O, that made it clearer, thank you. What else is interesting to us, in particular we are talking about a black folder marked "Story", an early concept story from 1999.

Mike: Hm. hang on a sec. okay… That folder contained a short story written by a friend of Tom Putzki (I think he is a doctor and hobby author...) It is a novel set in the world of Gothic (early canon) and written in german… Must be something between 50 and 100 pages A4, The Piranhas wanted to throw the old folders into the garbage years ago, but I saved them. After all most of its content were my old notes...

Dmitriy_Phantom95: Wow, interesting! Really cool that you did it. Ok. Lets come to the next point. There are some points that require confirmation, and that we do not even know yet. Without project documents it will be difficult to put the puzzle together, although we are close to it. This is especially so for Gothic_Story and NSC_Characters. First of all, such NPCs as Ryan, Canthar, Fox, Bruce, Marus, Oric, Mort, Marvin. In the Alpha version of Gothic 1 Ryan probably also had a role of a supplier of goods, he could've worked even for the Orebarons or again for the fire mages. Also mercenary Fox could have given a mission to undermine Ryan's reputation. Why was it necessary to undermine the reputation of Ryan?
Well, perhaps due to the fact that Ryan was a competitor of Mordrag or had a conflict with one of them or with Bruce. Likely needed was, in order to miscredit him, to steal the key from his old chest in which would lay things ordered from fire mages and/or other people. Ryan's chest was the nearest hut to Graham, but Ryan himself, in later versions, was located in the hut nearest Mud’s, perhaps he was moved there only in these pre-release versions.

Mike: Sounds alright. Ryans key was a mission I remember I took out because I didn't like it or perhaps to say it in a better way, couldn’t use it when I redid all dialogs of chapter 1. We had several story authors working on the project but only dialogs of Stefan Nyul, Mattias Filler, some dialogs of Steffen Ruehl and the stuff I did myself remained at the end. Mario Röske did a few quests involving letters but didn’t write actual dialogs. To my knowledge there is nothing left of the other authors, except maybe a few names, we also redid those to improve the setting (readable names belonging to mages, sect camp and "normal" guys, etc.)
During that phase, we also redid the names of the gods. Mattias came to me and said: "The names of the gods are crap, we need to redo them..." So he did. There was nothing wrong with ryans key per se. It was just easier to redo the first chapter in the OC instead of carefully working around the bits the other authors had already implemented. We had very little time, then....
The focus amulet I am not really sure of. Its all in a blur, but if I remember correctly, we just didn’t need it - the stones were sufficient.

Dmitriy_Phantom95: Okay, thanks for the info, but I correctly described the essence of quests with him? Did the NPC with the name Fox really give this mission?

Mike: Ryans key was partly implemented. I don’t really recall what worked and what didn't. I recall the key having no object to unlock, then. Probably NPC Fox existed at that moment. This quest in particular was not taken out because we didn’t have time. We just felt we didn’t need it.
I regret not being able to implement the 4FriendsQuest and wrap up some dialogs with some of the NPCs after their quests were done. The rest was fine imho.

Dmitriy_Phantom95: Great. I will have a question for you about the biography and character traits of 4 friends of the nameless hero: Diego, Milten, Gorn and Lester. Can you please view this design document and check whether this story is canonical for the series?

Mike: It is material for the cancelled Gothic Sequel. (after Gothic 1, we did Gothic II instead.) It was not taken into account for the production of gothic II.

Dmitriy_Phantom95: Oh, ok. For now, I would like to ask a question about those mysterious freepoints in Gothic 1, which were named as FP_ConvinceCorristo_Key and FP_ConvinceCorristo_Scroll. Do you remember what it was intended for? I had two guesses: Either it had to do with the quest to join the fire mages, or it had something to do with persuading the fire mages to go to the new camp to help the water mages with their ritual.

Mike: Sorry can’t remember, but I would have guessed the same.

Dmitriy_Phantom95: Remembering Gothic and its legacy, we also thought about saving some of the materials that are still at risk of being lost. This group also includes the folders with design concepts and various notes that were shown during your and Kai's stream in 2018 year. As we know, in 2008, Ralf Marczinczik managed to digitize and gave to community all (or almost all) of his arts designed for Gothic 1. Of course, this was a great gift for the entire fan community and at the same time, it is a very important thing with point to guarantee that this material will be preserved and protected from possible risks of loss forever. Actually, we want to ask you a similar question about these legendary folders showed during the stream - is it possible to find any way to digitize this material and give it to the community for the 20th anniversary of Gothic? I am sure that this will be a huge gift for all of us, in fact some fans still dream about everything that has to do with Gothic and its development process, to be honest.

Mike: Well, most of the folders are concept notes and very ugly scribbles of first ideas. Some, however might be worth saving (you have to keep in mind I was not working as a concept artist) I could rummage through the old folders and put the good stuff on a scanner. But don't expect too much quantity.

Dmitriy_Phantom95: Wow, Thanks! This is good news. In fact, this is much more important for us, Gothic fans, than it might have seemed at first glance. No matter how ugly or not ugly it is... It is a history and it is part of the development of our favorite game, which we will always remember and keep in our heart. We will do everything possible to make out the handwriting, make several translations into other languages, and so on, those who really need it are ready to examine each letter under a magnifying glass, seriously! :)
Also, if there are any other notes, such as design documents in digital form or something similar, this will also be valuable to us. Many ideas can be used in modding projects or serve as inspiration for coming up with new ideas based on them. And of course it will be useful for writing articles in magazines or on websites, as well as in YouTube projects. This is actually interesting to many true fans of Gothic, it is always nice to deal with something like this and read something that you have never seen before and did not know. Especially for a such game that undoubtedly deserves such close attention to its history and material.

Dmitriy_Phantom95: Hi again. Recently, we managed to acquire two historical treasures, early Gothic version 0.56c (demo3) and version 0.64b (demo5). Of course, we are very excited and happy that we even have the opportunity to finally touch it with our own hands, to be honest, we did not even believe that we would ever get to play these early versions, but nevertheless, fate favored us.
At the moment, I have started analyzing and studying the material, gradually making edits to my big document about cut, unused and changed Gothic content.
A few days ago, I recorded a private video from demo 3, in which I demonstrated some features and monsters, and I would like to ask you some questions, more specifically, the reasons why all these interesting features were cut from the game at a later stage of development (things like throwing items, moving chairs or destroying furniture).
I see several reasons why PB decided to cut them out of the project of the game:
- A change in the design concept of the game. These features were not considered important and so they were gradually phased out of the game concept.
- These features could lead to potential bugs during play. For example, an NPC not able to correctly perform its specified daily routine due to the absence of a mobsi object that was destroyed or moved by the player to another location or mobsi objects blocking the NPC's path.
- Difficulties with implementing these mechanics and the technical inability to solve the problems that they caused.
- Lack of time to bring these features to a relatively acceptable result.
Could you please clarify this?

Mike: Nice - the reasons were all true. also nice to see the old stuff again - it brings back memories from 1997 / 98.

Dmitriy_Phantom95: Thank you, I am glad that I was able to bring back for you some memories in connection with viewing this historical Grail. This is why it is important to keep such things for a lifetime, because it is the memory and emotions that it can bring.
I have still a few thoughts. In this regard, I have several questions that need to be clarified and confirmed:
1.) is it True that after changing the name of Orpheus to Gothic(Main)/Phoenix(Internal) at the end of September 1997, the content itself continued to be produced according to your design concepts written back in the time of Orpheus? The redesign of the content in accordance with the new design vision began only after Ralf Marczinczik provided his first concept arts in the second half of 1998, right?
2.) Mesh AncientTemple1.3ds has the last edit date for January 1997, but location based on this mesh with already updated textures from February 1998 was shown to the public only in April/May of this year, can this location also be attributed to the Orpheus project?
3.) And who modeled these very early meshes of locations in particular for demo1 and demo2? Was it Tom Putzki?
4.) The First versions of the Zengine appeared in June 1997, by which time the engine had already been completely rewritten from turbo pascal to C++?
5.) Can you tell us something about Carsten Edenfeld, in particular about his coming to PB? We are interested in the time when exactly he came. Is it right that he worked for you back in 1996, at the time of Greenwood?

Mike: 1) Ralf Marczinczik was not the only concept artist involved. He was the one who worked for PB for the longest period, though. The other ones were called Claus Wohlgemuth (he did level concepts, for example for the new camp) and Vadim Pietrinczik (not sure about his last name) who did most of the monsters. I did some of the concepts myself, mostly the costumes, which I then gave to Ralf because he can paint much better slight_smile I think I have the originals still flying around somewhere...
2) No, this was an early prototype and we didn’t put it in the game. 3) Level modeling: Tom Putzki, Character models: Alex Brüggemann, Textures for both: Myself.
4) Dont know that anymore, but would guess so.
5) Uh, I dont remember, I think he came to PB in 98 or 99, better ask him.

[ Nota by flosha: The name of the artist is "Vadim Pietrzynski". ]

Dmitriy_Phantom95: Nice, thanks for the answers. Now I have such a non-standard question that I think no one has tried to ask you and other ex-PB yet.
Do you think it was right from the point of view of design and game logic to transfer OrcCity from the dungeons to the mesh of surface/oberwelt? (Gothic 1)
According to lore Gothic 1, orcs are represented by underground creatures. But, despite this statement, orcs live on the surface in tents, but the orcgraveyard is located underground, not on the surface. Initially, both of these locations should have been underground and according to the laws of logic, both should also have been redesigned and moved to the surface.
I guess that since PB began to clean up the concept of underground orcs, (In Gothic 2 and 3, this was achieved by 100%) then need have to do it more flexibly, and not so that would cut out one location and leave all other underground places developed still on an old concept. Can you please comment on this and make an argument?

Mike: Yes. The Orcs were indeed planned to be an underground culture. The Orc City should have been the dungeon level between surface and the temple of the sleeper. There was no time, so we cut it short. End of story. I think we made the best out of it with the given circumstances.

Dmitriy_Phantom95: Ok, good :) This rework came after the last trip to the publisher, (the middle of november 2000) when he issued an ultimatum in the form of the last unchanged release date, right? Do you think that if you had another half a year of time to finish the game, you would still include OrcCity (with initial design) and Abandonedmine in the game, or would you completely reject these locations without considering their completion? If I am correctly informed, then the abandoned mine, in addition to the training area, should also have a plot purpose. This location was originally intended for Quest by Cor Kalom to find the eggs of the crawler Queen. Apparently, after the alteration, the abandoned mine was cut out, and the lair of the crawler Queen was moved to the old mine. Can you please confirm this too?

Mike:
1: No, I think its good the way it is. There would be other things I regret having had not enough time for.
2: Abandoned mine should have been tutorial area. Scrapped that due to lack of time, too. Also not a problem for the game imho. Crawler queen was placed in old mine on purpose. Liked the idea that several camps had a reason to go there. Also shows that the different camps had completely different use for the magic ore (NC: Keep it in, OC: trade it out, SC: don't have a special plan for it).

Dmitriy_Phantom95: In order to find new interesting Lore details, I re-read all your interviews that you have ever given to the press. In your interview given to Czech website in 2011, on the 10th anniversary of Gothic, you were asked a big question on the subject of Gothic and including about this mysterious thing in the swamp near the PsiCamp. Unfortunately, you then focused on another part of the question and overlooked this thing without saying it. Can you please think about it now and give an answer on the purpose of this magic pedestal?
I have tried to solve this riddle before, and it seems that I even managed to make one assumption, but I am not 100% sure of this, because it will only be possible with the confirmation of one of the authors of the story of Gothic. Here's my assumption:
"This magical pedestal was used by orcish shamans to worship the sleeper. This can be found several confirmations:
1. The temple in the swamp camp is an orcish structure. Here In the Gothic Sequel there is a final battle with sleeper. Temple itself has secret passages leading inside the rock, in underground premises.
2. On the swamp there are decorative objects of orcs: skulls on wooden stakes, orc columns with writing.
3. The pedestal itself is an Orc creation because exactly the same pedestals are used by orcs to illuminate the territory of orccity.

Mike: Hmmm... Not sure. Could be this is over-interpreted and someone just put it there... I sure don't remember this object.

Dmitriy_Phantom95: Oh, ok. Btw, do you remember this cut-out area? There apparently was supposed to be the second pass to Khorinis. Purely from an aesthetic point of view, the path rests on a rock and the lack of rocks in the background spoils the impression of viewing this place in the game. But in early versions of 2000 (0.70-0.99), this path was definitely there, this screenshot is proof. And this place is marked on the OW1-OW3 maps..

Mike: Well, another path out of the barrier... At first I thought it would be fun to have another path out of the barrier, to show off its effect (also it would be plausible that the barrier cut off at least another path). But when we tested it, it just sucked, because it was punishing to the player without offering any rewarding experience, so we dropped the idea.

Dmitriy_Phantom95: Good. My next question about multiplayer. Say please, do you remember how far the development of multiplayer has gone? It could only be played over a local network?
Unfortunately, in version Gothic-0.64b PreAlpha, an attempt to create your own server leads to an error..

Mike: Yes there were plans to have a multiplayer mode implemented (and have other player join the "master game" of the nameless hero as one of the four friends. But this was only because we were really dumb, inexperienced "developers" back then and simply put too much on our plates. In the end, we had to realize we could be happy with finishing the game in single player mode and dropped the idea. This happened far too late, but luckily, we hadn't put too much effort in the feature. It was fun, playing the multiplayer version, though. However, it only ran for a very short amount of time during the development of the game and then broke again - I guess it was some kind of hack. You'd have to ask one of the programmers, I simply can't remember.

Dmitriy_Phantom95: O, cool, thanks for such more extensive responses. Pleasantly.
Mike, this may be a funny question, but did you plan to add the possibility of becoming an Ore Baron and Guru in Gothic 1? Honestly, becoming an Ore Baron was my dream in Gothic. When I played the game for the first time and found out that I was kicked out of the Old Camp, I was pretty angry and thought "What the hell is going on, wtf am I being recorded as a traitor and denied the opportunity to go higher up the career ladder?" At the time, I was really upset, because being exiled from the Old Camp was not part of my plans, moreover, it even deprived me of the opportunity to get the best equipment - a luxurious heavy guard armor, which should have been available at the beginning of Chapter 4.

Mike: Being thrown out of the OC caused internal debates, but at that point we had no time to find a solution for that complex problem. It was easier to tell the main story without branches - and it was also planned to be like that in the first place. Only when we implemented it, it dawned on some of the PB guys that they couldn’t continue in their beloved OC. I myself am a NC guy and didn’t really care all too much back then - after all there was no time for a proper main quest branching at that point, anyway. If I would be able to change that in retrospective, from today's point of view I think I would.

Dmitriy_Phantom95: Nice, I dont know about internal debates...
I thought a lot about the development of the storyline for old camp and realized that this would be difficult to do. There, in any case, will have to make edits to the main storyline. At the same time, the game for the old camp assumes such a path that the hero would have to attack the free camp + free mine together with other guards. Accordingly, in this case, when playing as a guard, he must arrive at the old camp early the moment like it is presented in the final version. (Destroy OM) Here in fact can create many interesting parts of the story, even showing the collapse of old mine eyes of hero, when the hero could be a witness to this incident (and consequently he should has goal of re-arrival in this place), and then play the role of a messenger who will deliver the news to the old camp... In general, there really would be possible to deploy unique and interesting part of the story exclusive for hero owned by the guild guards.
I am interested in this question - Do you personally think that under certain circumstances Gomez could accept the hero into the guild of Ore Barons? Do you see any circumstances that could contribute to this?

Mike: About ore barons: Well the ore barons didn’t really have a reason to take down that barrier, did they? So even if the player would have joined the OB (for example after he leads the assault on the free mine) he would eventually have to banish the sleeper and take down the barrier in order to finish the game - and then would break up with the OB, anyway.

Dmitriy_Phantom95: Ok... These replicas were found in the source scripts of the canceled Gothic Sequel. The dialogue is a bit contrary to some reports from Gothic 1, in particular about the interests of Gomez. I wonder who wrote all this... Maybe Mattias Filler or Stefan Nyul.
"func void Wrk_224_Igaraz_MAGE_Info ()
{
AI_Output (hero, self, "Wrk_224_MAGE_15_01"); //Erzähl mir über die Feuermagier.
AI_Output (self, hero, "Wrk_224_MAGE_02_02"); //Die Feuermagier haben einst eine magische Barriere um das gesamte Tal errichtet, damit die Minenarbeiter nicht fliehen konnten.
AI_Output (self, hero, "Wrk_224_MAGE_02_03"); //Sie unterstanden Gomez, dem stärksten Kämpfer und mächtigsten Mann innerhalb der Barriere.
AI_Output (self, hero, "Wrk_224_MAGE_02_04"); //Gomez forschte nach einem Weg, die Barriere zu sprengen, denn er wollte seine Freiheit zurück.
AI_Output (self, hero, "Wrk_224_MAGE_02_05"); //Aber die Feuermagier waren dagegen. Deshalb erließ Gomez den Befehl, sie alle... umzubringen.
AI_Output (self, hero, "Wrk_224_MAGE_02_06"); //Seine Handlanger warteten also bis die Magier schliefen und erschlugen sie.
AI_Output (self, hero, "Wrk_224_MAGE_02_07"); //Schließlich wurde die Barriere gesprengt, doch an diesem Tag sind alle, die an der Ermordung der Magier beteiligt waren, gestorben.
AI_Output (self, hero, "Wrk_224_MAGE_02_08"); //Nur Gomez selber, wurde seit diesem Tag nie wieder gesehen.
}"

Mike: This was done by the other team after we split. They came up with their own ideas at this point, and didn't consult me in this. This is not part of what I had in mind, thats all I can say to this.

Dmitriy_Phantom95: Understood, you too think it was a false decision to give Gomez an idea of escape? I believe yes because this contradicts his position presented in Gothic 1 where he and other prisoners clearly make it clear that "it is better to be a king inside a prison than a pawn on the loose".

Mike: Yup.

Dmitriy_Phantom95: Hm, ok. Btw, in the course of development, team 3d designers (Horst, Mario, Sascha) constantly added new places to the colony, such as the ruins of the monastery, the fog tower, orc arena... And, the question is - was the background information written for all these places?

Mike: No. I can remember that the fog tower storyline was implemented by Mario Röske, for example. He didn't ask, just did it and I liked it!

Dmitriy_Phantom95: Just a moment... There was a certain infopool from 1997, which gave some background information on a couple of similar places. I think it was written with an eye on the Orpheus map, right? For example, on the altar at the stone circle:
EBR: "Es soll einen Ort geben, der Toten das Leben zurückgeben kann. Ein Altar inmitten eines Steinkreises"
GUR: "Ein Ort der Toten und der Lebenden ist dieser Steinkreis der Verdammten"
KDF: "Der uralte Steinkreis soll mächtige magische Fähigkeiten haben. Leider konnte sie bisher niemand entdecken."
KDW: "Bist Du erst tot, rette Dich so schnell wie nur möglich zum Steinkreis der Verdammten. Wenn Du den Altar berührst wird neues Leben in Dich fließen."
I think you wrote these lines yourself because they have a date from the end of 1997, when there were no other storywriters in the team.

Mike: Whoa - thats old! At the beginning we were planning to resurrect the player at a mystical place inside the barrier, but we abandoned that idea, later. Not sure who wrote this... doesn't feel like me.

Dmitriy_Phantom95: Yes, this source had a lot of previously unknown information for fans. Here's another example about the barrier.
GUR: Die Magische Barriere zwängt unsere Gedanken in ein Korsett. Sie muß gebannt werden.
KDF: Ein sehr mächtiger Zauber, diese magische Barriere. Während tote Materie ungehindert passieren kann, werden Lebewesen sehr effektiv zurückgehalten.
According to the early idea, the barrier had a mental effect.

Btw, could I still ask you 3 questions regarding lore and content?
1: In early versions, there was a guild like "Die Meister". perhaps you remember some details about this guild and what kind of people were supposed to belong to it? The peculiarity of this guild is that it is present in scripts only very early versions of 1998-1999 and was later removed. It is also possible that it was replaced by some other guild.
2: Maybe you remember about the corellation between Orpheus and Phoenix as working titles. Why is there anywhere Phoenix in the scripts while the project early on went under the time Orpheus internally? Maybe Orpheus was the working title and Phoenix originally was thought as a real title for the game?
3: you said that drew some textures in early versions of Gothic. Can we determine which textures you drew and whether it will be possible to use them in modding projects in a higher quality?

Mike:
1. "Die Meister" were planned as a secret guild that operated in all 3 camps. Were thinking about putting the 4 friends in this guild, too... Never came to that.
2. No. One was replaced by the other at a certain time. Possibly there was confusion for a coupe of months (renaming things in the middle of the project usually leads to that).
For example, we exchanged the names for "Söldner" and "Gardisten" in the middle of the project. It took some guys months to get over that.
3. Pretty much all of the textures for the first alpha version(s). Characters, items and level. They are ancient and if anyone still wants to use them for whatever - be my guest.

Dmitriy_Phantom95: Cool, thanks for the answers and for your approval. We also resolved these issues with THQ Nordic. They, as the current copyright holders of Gothic, do not mind that fans use early materials if there is approval from the authors who developed the content. This is definitely a success for us.
Thank you again for giving me the time and answering my questions, all the best and see you soon!