Gothic 3

The player must complete quests and slay wild animals and monsters to earn experience and improve skills. The game is reputation centric allowing the player to side with a faction. While there are six factions in the game, only three are joinable: the Rebels, the Orc mercenaries and the Hashishin. The remaining factions are the Rangers, the Nomads and the people of Nordmar.

The player is able to take advantage of missions to allow either side to take over towns. Dialog changes according to in-game actions and behavior. The game places a special focus on the interactivity of the environment. The controls have been altered slightly with a stronger focus on action.

The first part of Gothic tells the story of The Nameless Hero, a man thrust into the events of a penal colony. The colony takes the form of a natural landscape encased in a large magical shield known as The Barrier, much like an impenetrable dome. Over the course of the story, The Nameless Hero becomes acquainted with several characters, the most notable of which are Diego, Lee, Cor Angar, Lester, Gorn, Lares, Milten, and Xardas. Some of these characters are connected with the various factions of the game, which include the Old Camp, the New Camp and the Swamp Camp.

Also connected with these factions are the water and fire mages, of which Xardas is an outcast. Xardas, a necromancer, plays a central part to the survival and advancement of the character. Ultimately, he galvanizes the character toward the ultimate goal of stopping the summoning of a beast known as The Sleeper, but the entrance was guarded by a camp of orcs. The hero was helped by an orc shaman named Ur-Shak, who made an artifact that would prevent the orcs from attacking him.

Gothic 3 is powered by a custom engine called Genome; it supports Pixel Shader 3.0, has a multithreaded design and includes dynamic lighting (including self-shadowing). Character animation uses EMotion FX 2 and physics simulation is provided by Ageia's PhysX physics engine. It also uses IDV's SpeedTreeRT tree and plant software, Bink Video Technology from RAD Game Tools for the cutscenes, as well as the FMOD Sound System from Firelight Technologies for sound playback.

After a release with many problems and bugs, a dispute between the publisher and developer led to their separation in 2007. The game remained with the last released patch 1.12 in a buggy and unfinished state, and an announced further patch and editor were not finished.

Gothic 3 was a commercial success, with global sales over 500,000 copies by March 2007. It sold 100,000 units in its opening two days.

The game received "mixed" reviews, according to video game review aggregator Metacritic. Prior to its release in early October 2006, Gothic 3 was nominated as the best game of E3 by IGN. Since the release, most concerns have centered on bugs. Hyper's Daniel Wilks commended the game for its "ton of quests, reward[ing] exploration and approachable combat". However, he criticised it for "system hogging, feeling unfinished and atrocious voice acting".

A mobile game, Gothic 3: The Beginning, was produced by German developer Handy-Games GmbH and published by JoWooD. It takes place 140 years before the events in the first Gothic game, on the island of Khorinis. Xardas (one of the main characters from the original PC Gothic series), an orphan, raised by farmers, is visited one night by the ghost of Buthomar. The ghost tells the young Xardas about an unknown threat and asks him to find "the other four Chosen Ones".

Gothic 3: The Beginning was awarded up to seven awards. It received the Airgamer Award, from airgamer.de, while handy-player.de gave it the Handy-Player Award. Pocketgamer.co.uk gave it the Bronze Award. Other awards include the play2go gold award from play2go, the Silver Award from Mobile Games Faqs, a 90% award offered by looki.de, and the Next Award offered by projectnext.de.