Piranha Bytes - Interview @ World of Piranha

Not surprisingly the new fan site WorldofPiranha.de scored the first interview with Piranha Bytes after yesterday´s announcement.

10. The Gothic 2 Mod Khorana has reached a level of interaction and immersion with a lot of care for details, the likes of which we’ve never seen in the world of Gothic 2. That’s been done with movers, for instance, who are more numerous than in the whole Gothic 2 world in spite of a comparatively small world. That can only be done with a high level of manual work. Regarding Gothic 3 people often stated, that due to the sheer size of the world a lot had to be automatised along with a lot of handy work. In the future, what will the ratio be between automatically generated content and manually designed stuff? How much manual work and corresponding detail is possible?

We will do almost everything manually again. That especially applies to manually placed items and chest contents as well as manually placed monsters. We don’t think we should pursue the path of automatic generation. I’ve already said in another Interview (Game Face) that in my opinion the automatic levelling system was the biggest weakness in the design of Gothic 3, because a lot of problems that occurred later in the game (for instance balancing) were a consequence of this decision.
Regarding more interactivity – that’s just the point that we’ve put on top of the list beside a completely revised battle design – we’ve already started working on that as well.

The original German interview can be found nearby.