Gothic and Risen Series Interview

There's an interesting interview with Piranha Bytes' Sascha Henrichs up on World of Games, during which the 3D environment artist tackles a considerable number of questions about the work he has done on the Gothic and Risen series of RPGs, as well as some hypothetical questions about future development work the studio might pursue. This is great stuff, so I'll quote a few of these:
7. Share with us a funny story that happened during the development of one of your games, preferably Night of the Raven, since that game has its anniversary.

Oh the (Night of the Raven)..well I can tell you, that the entry point of NOTR, the pyramid, was a thing I only placed in Gothic 2, because I didn't know what to do with this particular game area.

There was no design for this location. So I placed a pyramid, just because.

An architecture, that was completely different to any other buildings of gothic 2..It was also never referenced in any dialogue afaik.

Fortunately we had to create an add-on for Gothic 2, and so this pyramid came up pretty handy :) .

The new world itself also consisted of a few different land masses that were happily patched and thrown together without an idea of a design. There was just this Pyramid and based on this, we created the NOTR world.

The desert canyon was actually a prototype for another project we worked on, just after Gothic 1. But it was never finished and to not discard all the effort we put into this, I decided to weld this canyon into the new world.

It was a (stunt) but somehow it worked in the end haha.

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11. Would you like to go back to developing a new Gothic game?

Oh, ok, the following only represents my own opinion:

To be honest: not really. The one who develops a new Gothic, will get his fingers burned. He will be slashed by magazines and burned alive by die hard fans.

The expectations for this game would be so high, we couldn't meet them.

The times have changed, the Gothic games lived up by a different mood, we were much more experimental back in the day. Something that was very exciting and the player could feel this loose and playful approach, but this also led to exorbitant developing times and many many bugs. We fixed this, but we also parted from this sand box developing approach.

What is this desperate need for a new Gothic game? What is expected? Well, a Gothic 1 extension is expected. Basically the same game, but more of it and in a fresh looking environment. Despite the fact, that our company is no more the same like back in the day and we would have a hard time, getting back that (feel), chances are, we would be accused of plagiarism and lack of innovation. Like (copy-pasting) our selves. These are accusations, we actually have to face very often; nearly after every new project. But in combination with a new Gothic, this would be terrible for the Gothic world.

When we do this, this one has to be nailed. It has to be fabulous in every aspect and there should be a huge and long planning phase. I believe it to be developed some day. But not now.

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13. Seeing as a lot of years have passed since the release of Gothic 1, would you like to remake Gothic 1 or 2, with today's graphics and technology?

Good question. I would do it, if anyone would give us budget for this.
Sounds like a great idea for a Kickstarter!