Gothic 4 - Preview @ IGN

IGN also has a preview of Gothic 4, covering similar ground to the GameSpot article although with better depth.  The game is confusingly referred to as Arcania: A Gothic Tale and then Arcanium in various places, but I assume the latter is shoddy editing at the IGN end.  Either way, the schizophrenic feature divide to suit both European and NA audiences is the central message:

Brian Gladman, Dreamcatcher's global product marketing manager, filled us on some of the challenges of making a game for two markets, as well as switching developers. "You could take a blank disc and put it in a paper bag and put Gothic 4 on the bag and you'd sell half a million units in Germany," he said. "The passion for the Gothic universe is at that level…The attachment to Piranha Bytes in German-speaking countries would be akin to the attachment to a BioWare in North America. Anything that Piranha Bytes does is gold in Germany, whereas here it's irrelevant. The decision to go with a new developer for this one was not taken lightly but taken with an eye to really reaching out."