Gothic's Cancelled Expansion
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This feature on Gamepressure looks back at a cancelled expansion pack for Piranha Bytes' original Gothic. The project - with the working title of Gothic Sequel - was never released, but it went on to influence other titles from the developer in many ways. According to the piece, skills, characters, locations, and enemies from Gothic Sequel were later utilized in Gothic II, Gothic 3, and even the Risen series. The article attempts to trace them all back to the source - the expansion that never was. An excerpt:
Alright then, backstory aside, I suppose you’re much more interested in what’s the actual content of the unreleased expansion. The very beginning is almost identical to what we remember from Gothic II. Having finally banished the Sleeper once and for all – or so we all thought – the nameless hero had found his rest under the rubble of the collapsed temple. Not for long, though, as he was soon teleported, half-dead, by Xardas to his tower in the Orc territory. The Necromancer had some bad news to deliver though – the destruction of the barrier surrounding the Valley of Mines had strained the delicate border between the dimensions.
From that point on, the Sleeper was able to send demons to the realm of men; and given some time without anyone doing something about it, he himself would eventually return. Faced with this new crisis, the nameless hero had no other choice but to get busy and deal with the demon once again. The problem was, the protagonist wasn’t at his best at the moment – he’d lost some endurance and skills, the exploding barrier had destroyed his equipment, including runes, the sword Uriziel and the Ancient Ore Armor. The character had once again become a blank page for the player to write on; we all know the drill.
After this brief introduction, Xardas would teleport the protagonist near the Old Camp, which would bring him to the first major novelty – at his destination the hero was to stumble upon Thora, a staff-wielding scout serving king Rhobar II. The king himself would also be present in the former colony, having chosen a mountain fortress (the lair of the stone dragon in Gothic II) as his temporary residence. What the ruler of Myrtana is doing in the Valley of Mines, nobody knows for sure; what we do know is that it would be nice to get there. And that’s where an old trick of Piranha’s would come into play, as it appears in each of their games – to get close to a powerful person, the player would need to complete a series of tasks, proving their loyalty and usefulness.
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While the expansion for the first Gothic was never to see the light of day, some of the ideas, plots, characters, or skills it would have featured were successfully employed later on, modified or not, in other works from the same developer. Some elements originally intended to debut in Gothic Sequel can be found in Gothic II, Night of the Raven, Gothic 3, or even in Risen 3: Titan Lords. Which ones, you ask? Quite a lot of them actually. I suppose the outline of the plot has already given you some ideas.
The intro to Gothic II was borrowed, almost entirely and without any modifications, from the would-be project (even the design of Xardas’ tower was left intact, resembling architecture of the mining colony more than anything we can find on the rest of Khorinis). This makes sense, as the starting points of both games were virtually carbon copies. In both of them the destruction of the barrier had demolished the castle in the former old camp. The only difference was that in Gothic II the scale of destruction was greater, which was in turn explained to be the work of dragons. The actual explanation is a bit more practical. The plot of Gothic II had no use for the so-called outer ring, so it could be discarded. The unreleased expansion, however, assumed something else – the location was intended to become a marketplace and a quarantine zone, where a group of healers was to fight against the demonic plague.
This would be a good moment to mention the new guilds, archetypes of paladins and dragon hunters from Gothic II. Gothic Sequel was to feature royal guards and demon hunters. The former, not surprisingly, would be stationed alongside the king in the mountain fortress (fun fact: their basic armor model can be seen in the intro to the first game). The latter were to be based in the new camp. Piranha Bytes was to return to the demon hunters concept several years later – the warriors would become one of the playable factions in the third installment of the Risen series.
