Gothic II

Gothic II is a computer role-playing game and the sequel to Gothic, by the German developer Piranha Bytes. It was first released on November 29, 2002 in Germany, with North America following almost one year later on October 28, 2003. The game was published by JoWood Productions and Atari.

Prologue
After the barrier around the prison colony was destroyed, ore supplies for the kingdom have stopped. The king decides to send Lord Hagen with 100 paladins to the island to secure the ore. On Khorinis, prisoners that escaped the camp raided the country and seeing as the militia was unable to protect them; some farmers formed an alliance with the refugees and no longer paid allegiance to the king. Evil did not disappear with the Sleeper being banned as with his last cry the Sleeper summoned the most evil creatures. Xardas felt this and rescued the Nameless Hero from under the ruins of the sleepers temple, where he has laid for weeks, becoming weak.

Plot
The Nameless Hero is instructed by Xardas on the new danger, an army of evil that has gathered in the mine valley, led by dragons. Xardas sends the Hero to Lord Hagen, leader of the paladins, to retrieve the Eye of Innos, an artifact which makes it possible to speak with the dragons and learn more about their motivation. The Nameless Hero starts to the City of Khorinis and after he found a way to enter the city, he learns he has to join one of the factions – the militia, the fire mages or the mercenaries – to be permitted entrance to Lord Hagen. When finally meeting the head of the paladins, the Nameless Hero is first sent into the mine valley, which is now overrun by Orcs, to bring back evidence of the dragons. In the castle, the former old camp, Garond heads the mission of the paladins. He also knows about the dragons, since the castle has already been attacked by them, but is only willing to write a notice on it for Lord Hagen, after the Nameless Hero has gathered information on the status in the mines. By the time the Hero exits the valley with the note about the dragons, the evil forces have become aware of his quest. Seekers are spread throughout the isle, with the goal to kill him. Presented with the note Lord Hagen is willing to give the Eye of Innos to the Hero and sends him to the monastery of the fire mages to retrieve it. But shortly before the Hero arrives there, the eye was stolen. The Hero chases after the thief, but just arrives in time to witness Seekers destroy the Eye of Innos. A smith can repair the amulet, but for the magical power to be restored, a ritual with high mages representing the three gods is necessary. Vatras, the water mage, prepares the ritual and represents Adanos. With former fire mage Xardas representing Beliar, Pyrokar, head of the fire mages, joins the ritual reluctantly to represent Innos. The mages manage to restore the power of the Eye of Innos and so the Hero can head back to the valley to destroy the four dragons that live there. After all of the dragons are killed, the Hero travels to Xardas' tower to report to him, but the mage is gone. The Hero is given a note from Xardas by Lester, telling him he was to find more information in the fire mages' monastery, in the book 'The Halls of Irdorath'. The book contains a sea map, showing the way to the isle Irdorath, one of the ancient temples of Beliar that once disappeared. The hero assembles a crew and gets a ship and a captain for that ship to sail to Irdorath and confront the leader of the dragons – the undead dragon.

Setting
Like Gothic, Gothic II is set on the medieval styled isle Khorinis. Places include the City of Khorinis, the monastery of the fire mages, farms and woods. The mine valley of part I is also in the game, though it has changed. Of the old camp only the castle remains, the new camp has turned into a region of ice, and the swamp camp is made inaccessible by a fence built by the orcs. The place final visited in the game is Irdorath, a dungeon similar to the temple in Gothic.

Khorinis is a rich area with beautiful farms and dense forests. The main trade resource of Khorinis is the magic ore delivered from its prison colony to the King, who is fighting the orcs on the mainland. All the farms in Khorinis are owned by one landowner who has hired mercenaries to protect him and his farms from the militia when they try to collect taxes from the farms. This has caused Khorinis to be on the edge of a civil war. The city is low on food and relies on travelling merchants as the ships from the mainland have stopped coming because of the war.

People in Khorinis believe in three gods. Adanos, the god of water and balance. Innos, the god of fire and good. Beliar, the god of evil and darkness.

Reception
While Gothic II received very high reviews in the German press, it did not fare that well in North America, where it received high ratings, too, but also negative reviews. One of the reasons for the overall worse reviews were the graphics. The translation of the script and the voice acting in the English version were also criticized, and were felt by critics to be out of place and poorer than in the German version. Much of the voice acting criticism falls upon the change in the voice for the character Diego. While the game received almost perfect ratings from RPG dedicated websites RPGdot and Just RPG, it still received fairly high reviews with ratings of 8.0 of 10 and above on most websites, including IGN and GameSpot. The worst review Gothic II received was on GameSpy, with a rating of 2 out of 5.

Engine
The game engine is basically a modified version of the Gothic engine. The texture resolution has been improved by the factor 4 and the world is said to be three times as detailed as in the first game. While the graphics are less detailed than other engines of the time, there is almost no loading time.

Release and distribution
The German version of the game was published by JoWood and released on November 29, 2002. In the United Kingdom and Scandinavia, JoWood and Atari co-published the game, released on June 13, 2003. The US release by Atari followed a few months later on October 28. However, according to Piranha Bytes, Atari did not officially confirm the US release to them, so they did not spread the word about this release for months. On October 17, 2005 publisher JoWood announced that Aspyr Media was going to publish four of their titles in North America, one of them being Gothic II Gold, which includes Gothic II as well as the expansion pack Gothic II - Night of the Raven. Aspyr Media released Gothic II Gold on November 29, 2005. In Germany, Gothic II is also available in a Collector's Edition, together with the add-on and Gothic. An English demo version of the game which contains the first part was released on March 17, 2005, when the game was released in several new territories.

Official

 * Official Gothic II web site
 * World of Gothic - Official Gothic fan site