Gothic, Risen and the potential of Piranha Bytes RPGs

When harvesting turnips was revolutionary. A love letter to RPGs made with love.

Harvesting turnips is not a revolutionary act, but Gothic 2 has made it so.

The first time I played the Gothic 2 demo, I was awed by the simple act of gathering turnips and exchanging them for payment.

Perhaps a monotonous, inconsequential act, but not to an open-world game, where simple interactions provide downtime and contrast to endless fighting and looting.

I was immersed, living in that world, not being forced to fight or crawl through dungeons. I could relax for a spell, work at a farm, gather turnips and be rewarded for it.

Games made by Piranha Bytes and Bethesda have something essential in common:

• They vie for the same genre - open-world action-RPG

• Their combat is passable but lacking in finesse and precision

• They are not known for stellar writing

• They exude potential that does not become fully realized

• The design philosophy of both studios seems to create something bittersweet: open-ended games with great exploration, while ignoring other aspects that would elevate them beyond the mechanics of exploration.

The RPG revolution was not televised 🐉

Gothic 2 was revolutionary at a time when Western RPGs were failing to create complex simulations and living worlds. Their characters were often static NPCs, staying in one limited area and acting as quest dispensers.

In Morrowind we found an open world brought to life by some of the most intriguing lore in any digital creation ever - but its inhabitants were mostly static, both mechanically and as characters.

Searching for memorable characters in Gothic may be a fruitless endeavor. But its denizens were alive in a manner that eluded most other games.

Sometimes later, Oblivion, made by Bethesda, would be hailed as revolutionary for its open-world and the liveliness of its people.

Except Gothic had achieved this years prior by having schedules for its inhabitants, and by creating one of the most immersive towns in a game ever.

Khorinis is a natural environment that seems built by humans and not just game designers, as interesting to explore and live in as it was in 2002.

Risen extended this to its Harbor Town and the fortress of the Inquisition. Both are evocative examples of organic living spaces.
They feel natural, they provide a place of respite and downtime away from the dangers of the island.

Gothic 2 surpassed what we thought possible at the time, and many modern games. It might have done this because it lacked a bigger frame of reference for immersion.

Its creators didn't have much to compare it to at the time. They only knew they wanted characters that felt like living people.

By contrast, other games throw themselves into the race for bigger worlds, focusing on scale instead of naturalism, while Gothic did well to create a smaller but more detailed play-space.

Risen was an attempt to improve the Gothic formula.

Take what made the series compelling:

• The smaller game-world is more focused and detailed.

• Quests may be completed in multiple ways.

• The freedom and potential for exploration may seem overwhelming but are completely natural. The world opens up slowly and makes it easy to forget we are not visiting a real place.

• The choice and intermixing politics of the three main factions.

• Lively and believable locations.

• The mesmerizing mood of Gothic 2.

Make everything pretty with modern graphics (supporting the mood with contemplative sunsets), and improve the combat with a basic dodge mechanic and more complex enemy resistances and weak points.

Piranha Bytes' design philosophy had returned to its potential - in theory, Risen would be as compelling and revolutionary as Gothic 2.

In practice, Risen carried Gothic's limitations forward:

• The story is once more formulaic, dealing with a great evil that will be defeated by the protagonist.

• The hero is the standard gruff mercenary, with no essential choice for players to become the protagonist.

• The writing is mostly functional, forgettable.

• The story follows the same pattern of virtually complete freedom in its first half, and devolves into a hack-and-slash in the second.

Gothic 3 would repeat some of these mistakes, limited by a lack of focus, wanting to compete with open-world games without the time and resources to do so.

Risen lacked the novelty of Gothic, but not its potential.

Harbor Town is close to achieving the same quality of natural space as Khorinis. At a glance it seems built with the same qualities: it feels self-contained, its people have schedules of work and rest, and plenty of craftsmen keep the city busy and supplied.

What Risen lacks compared to the Gothic games is novelty. Their worlds were revolutionary two decades ago. Risen was inspired to follow their formula, but its design had already been done better in Gothic 2.

Writing and naturalism ✍🏻

The same applies to the islands present in both games. The one in Gothic 2 has somewhat larger spaces where the player can wander without being attacked.

Perhaps being constantly attacked on a dangerous island is realist or naturalist - except this interferes with the design philosophy of RPGs, where downtime away from combat is crucial in making the world feel organic.

I thought the issue was too much combat in Risen, but in practice Gothic 2 feels better at spacing out its encounters and providing downtime, at least for the first half.

Risen was a welcome change in direction and a promising new beginning.

Piranha Bytes seemed to have rediscovered their craft. But their games tend to lack in two major ways:

• The worldbuilding is often forgettable. This may be a lack of good writing, a lack of better integration between worldbuilding and quests, or both.

• The protagonist is often formulaic and bland. The hero's characterization is done through choice and action, but the games make it difficult to feel you are the one accomplishing something, because the hero speaks with his own voice and has a set personality.

The ELEX games wanted to progress by making the hero be part of a community, and giving him a son. Laudable efforts, limited by having a set personality and not allowing enough space for players to embody their own character.

An issue shared with The Witcher 3, from which Elex takes some inspiration. The Witcher games, however, brandish better writing, memorable characters, and tighter integration between lore and quests.

CDPR, the makers of The Witcher and Cyberpunk, have progressed because they understand the importance of writing in creating and sustaining worldbuilding, interesting characters and complex quests.
The design philosophy of Piranha Bytes and CDPR is quite similar, yet only the latter has leveraged writing to forge something memorable.

Where Gothic has remained a cult classic, The Witcher enjoys the adulation of the mainstream market.

To be fair, CDPR has the advantage of extensive marketing - built on the Witcher and Cyberpunk brands - but they know to support this with above-average writing.
Risen and ELEX are honest efforts to carry the Gothic torch forward, yet they still do not understand the importance of writing.

The promise of a new beginning 🌅

I only had patience to complete Risen once. I was pleasantly surprised by the first half of the game, even though there are barely any interesting quests and characters.

Choices become more an more limited as we follow the story. The more I progressed, the less involved I felt, the more I had to push myself to continue and try to care about its world.

This is where both Risen and Gothic 2 shine and fall. Their promise of freedom is strong, mesmerizing, giving the impression that its open-ended design is set in stone and will be followed until the end.

The charm of Piranha Bytes games stands in the beautiful, contemplative design of their worlds, and the promise of choice and reactivity.

Risen is great at building this illusion and maintaining it for the first 10 to 20 hours, at which point it loses focus and devolves into a shallow hack-and-slash.

From the open-ended design, where you roam the island, complete quests in different ways, and choose how fast you wish to progress, Risen transforms into a dungeon crawling slog.

Dungeon crawling has its place, especially in an open-world. When it is mandatory and overtakes the rest of the gameplay, it breaks the promise of freedom essential to open-world games.

Gothic and Risen are both good at gradually introducing the hero into a believable world, where combat is not the only means to gain experience and progress.

Gothic 2 bears the advantage again. Its introduction is friendlier, less focused on combat, allowing the hero to reach proper civilization faster. Risen takes somewhat longer, especially if the player wants to avoid the unfriendly swamp.

Since Gothic 2 is the best at creating a believable world, it's more confident in not having to force the player into a major combat encounter.

Risen tried to follow this design philosophy, but failed partially because of how long it takes to reach its first truly inhabited space.

When harvesting turnips was revolutionary 🌱

By contrast, Risen has the advantage of more than one major "town". Some time after the introduction, the hero may reach the swamp camp of the outlaws, or the two major inhabited spaces of the island - Harbor Town and the fortress of the Inquisition.

More so, on the way to the Harbor, we can stop at a small farm and get proper rest as a mandatory requirement to complete a quest.

This is where we can harvest grain, an objective that harkens back to one of the defining moments of Gothic 2's introduction.

In Risen, you can harvest grain to help an Inquisition novice with his field work, but the interaction does not hold the same charm.

Not because it is out of place, but because Risen does not progress the PB formula enough. Virtual farming is also less novel than it was at the beginning of the century.

Harvesting as part of a quest has been done better in Gothic 2:

• As in Risen, it provides a basic introduction to the world.

• It signals to the player that quests may be completed by other means apart from fighting.

• It is part of a more complex quest that serves the plot and the worldbuilding better.

• Interacting with the environment in peaceful ways brings choice to gameplay and naturalism to worldbuilding.

There hadn't been many games with Gothic's level of interactivity before - some prominent names were Fallout 1 and 2, the Ultima games, and Deus Ex.

Some action games had introduced a better degree of world interactivity, but none had managed to surround the player so naturally, to create a space that felt as a living world.

Harvesting is wonderful when the rest of the game provides contrast with more engaging activities, and integrates lore with narrative design and quests.

Risen fails mostly by not having long-standing consequences for quests. Even faction choice becomes inconsequential. The game will soon avoid their politics and interaction in favor of dungeon-crawling and defeating the great evil.

This issue began with Gothic 3, which was brimming with tedious quests, likely a result of limited development time.

Following Gothic 2, Risen does its best. One story has you uncovering the secrets of an old pirate for his daughter. Another one will have you investigating a murder, and dealing weed to try and rule out the perpetrator.
The consequences for completing these quests are not impactful, yet they stand out in contrast to the more uninspired ones.

The games should focus on these stories and faction politics, and find ways to make their conclusion more impactful.

It may be argued the trials of everyday life become moot when you're facing an extinction-level event, which happens in Risen. Except this hurts the gameplay, where forcing the player onto a set path works against the freedom necessary for a good RPG.

Role-playing is about more than combat 🎭

Freedom away from combat and systems which provide downtime are part of the charm of good open-world games, especially ones made by Bethesda, Piranha Bytes and CDPR.

Downtime is necessary to give the world dimension and personality beyond the immediate stimulation of fighting and looting.

Activities that provide downtime are potentially endless, with varying degrees of immersion and fun:

• Sleeping helps to pass the time, heal and offers the opportunity to progress skills.

• Crafting systems give us the chance for deeper customization and provide downtime experience.

• Completing quests in different ways supports player choice and reactivity.

• More esoteric mechanics - for video games - like meditation or contemplation may be used for downtime and further player characterization.

• Most downtime mechanics and skills must contribute to player improvement, or leveling-up: crafting, talking, spending time with other characters, trading. Even simple walking and exploration should be integrated in the game's upgrade system by offering experience for new discoveries or turning movement into its own skill.

• They need to be viable ways - systemic, narrative and mechanic - for the player to engage with the world, gain experience, and provide downtime away from adrenaline-inducing activities.

Gothic 2 understands this better with its simple prayer mechanic, where certain benefits may be obtained by trading in health points or gold.

This may be a gameplay commodification of a worldbuilding detail, but it adds character to the game by letting the player practice a form of worship. The hero may be religious, have spiritual inclinations or simply use the opportunity to trade his health for treasure.

Risen has renounced this, sadly.

• Gameplay-wise, prayer is easy to replace, with another game mechanic or by using the UI for trade.

• Worship and religion helped support the world's personality, making a lore element tangible and practical, with extra choice for the hero.

• There's a trace of a contemplative mechanic in Risen, where the nameless hero will muse on the fragility of life when talking about a grave. Small details such as this give the world and its people life. But with complete separation from gameplay it is a downgrade from Gothic 2, when it could be used to provide further choice.

Otherwise, Risen shares its meditative quality with Gothic 2, sustained by the wonderful mood, the pastel painting scenery, the music flowing between a relaxed ambient tone and a sad lamentation.

Mood-wise, Gothic 2 and Risen are as strong as ever, a timeless feat which proves you don't need realistic graphics to create a moody believable world.

On one side, the worlds made by Piranha Bytes are memorable through their sheer beauty, beauty not even some modern games can replicate. On the other, their literary more direct characterization has been forgettable.

Piranha Bytes' efforts have also improved here: Gothic and Risen tended to a formulaic mix of fantasy and medieval realism, without the expansive lore of TES or The Witcher.

ELEX followed its ambition admirably, with a novel world that is at once medieval, steampunk and futuristic.

ELEX tried something that most fiction will dare not approach. Yet without better writing it was once again ignored even by people who will otherwise enjoy wandering a world that effortlessly combines futurism with medieval realism.

As with people, world characterization may be explicit or implicit:

• Explicit when details are revealed through specific means, without ambiguity about the meaning of something. Often done through talking, knowledge recorded in books, notes etc.

• Implicit, done through environmental storytelling or behavior. The reader or player understands the meaning of something - for example when witnessing the aftermath of an event or how characters act in different contexts. We can describe the appearance and mood of an environment, revealing information about events and worldbuilding and letting players decide the meaning on their own.

Piranha Bytes games are doing well with implicit storytelling. The disadvantage of environmental storytelling stands in its temporal limitation - not every worldbuilding detail and historical event may be summed in a present consequence.

Implicit and explicit meaning need to constantly support each other. Both contribute to making a complex world and people in equal means, and can feel shallow on their own.

It may be difficult to pinpoint why PB games are forgettable, especially when ELEX is so ambitious with its world. Mostly, it seems to be a lack of interesting characters and a world devoid of complex lore, and the mandatory integration of lore into quests.

Gothic, Risen, ELEX all play with worldbuilding, both implicit and explicit, but never to reach the heights of something like TES, Fallout, The Legacy of Kain, The Witcher.

When people remember games like Fallout or The Witcher, the worldbuilding and the complex characterization are always at the forefront.

The Elder Scrolls games focus on lore and sometimes interesting quests, but less so on the protagonist, where players are often limited in defining themselves as complex characters.

Without other forms of characterization, player expression remains limited, but subject to personal preference. For people who enjoy being the rugged hero, this sparse approach to the protagonist may be enough.

🐉

In all these ways - difficulty, ambition, complex RPG design, rough combat system - Gothic 2 is a very 90s game, and Risen tried to maintain this spirit and improve upon it.

Gothic can be excruciatingly difficult, a detail equally frustrating and a matter of pride - you cannot simply stroll through the world of Gothic without improving your agility, a feat that relies on both patience and attention to detail. But once you do, the system can be rewarding.

You are not progressing just thanks to more health and stronger weapons, but because you pay attention and understand your own abilities and enemy behavior. You are rewarded for being just a bit smarter.

In terms of combat design, Piranha Bytes had created the precursors to the Souls games. Modern games, especially of the action variety, are praised for their movement and brutal but tactical combat systems, for good reason.

Difficulty may seem unfair, but the games rely on precise movement mechanics, on the need to observe enemy behavior and be aware of your own abilities.

Gothic 2 had achieved this, though in a more primitive less graceful way, lacking fluid movement, using a more limited set of skills. The ever-useful dodge or roll or dash mechanics are missing from Gothic 2, though Risen introduced a basic dodge sidestep.

Combat in modern games is often praised, while combat in Gothic 2 was seen as clunky and unrefined because it lacks fluid movement.

The design philosophy is the same, but Gothic suffers because of the less refined and comfortable mechanical implementation.

How to improve the Piranha Bytes formula 🐟

Piranha Bytes games are already doing their best - they could become mainstream classics with a simple attitude and design philosophy adjustment. Unsurprisingly, these recommendations also apply to Bethesda games.

First, hire good dedicated writers. The lack of more interesting dialogue and quest design hurts the games, and should be used to support what is otherwise a world with potential, especially mechanically.

The Elex games have tried to use more extensive worldbuilding, but without better writing and more interesting quests, the games remain formulaic.

The world may be beautiful, ripe for exploration, and provide downtime. Without the proper context - complex worldbuilding integrated into the game, and more mature quests, the illusion and the immersion will fade easily.

The world tends to become a shallow theme-park - as it happens with Bethesda games - or a beautiful cardboard cutout lacking substance.

Regardless of personal opinion about writing, worldbuilding and dialogue can elevate a game to something memorable that transcends its medium.

For examples, look at Bioshock, the Mass Effect series, the Legacy of Kain series, and others, games that have become classics thanks to stellar writing.

Take The Witcher 3 as example, a game which has influenced the ELEX series.

The Witcher's gameplay is not particularly great, nor is it weak. The combat is passable, and the game will sometimes rely on enemies with unjustified resistances and impenetrable health bars.

But The Witcher has some of the best writing in gaming, a modernist grimdark approach to fantasy, partially cliched but functional for what the game needs.

The Witcher is a mainstream classic largely thanks to its writing. Piranha Bytes games are ignored because they lack complex characters and stories, or more exactly bland writing.

This is the one aspect that too many RPGs fail to grasp. They think writing must be as simplistic as possible while ignoring games which have become classics thanks to their literary prowess.

Second, improve the combat system by taking inspiration from modern action games. Movement and combat mechanics have progressed considerably, and are engaging by combining speed, precision, and tactical design.

PB has always had the right idea about combat, and have partially adopted this design in the ELEX games.

Traversing the environment with the excellent jetpack is fun and functional, but the combat needs work to be fluid and engaging. Though better than in past games, the combat remains forgettable.

As always, take inspiration from games that combine fluid movement with tactical elements: Sekiro, Dead Cells, and yes, Doom Eternal and chess.

Create interlocking tactical systems where the player and the enemies have complementary abilities. Study chess, and put the player on the chessboard.

Third, focus on what matters. Do not waste your or the player's time with an empty open-world map. Good action games using a hub-world have proven interesting gameplay is what maintains immersion.

And we had that proof long ago, in the Gothic games - they were exemplary works of focused play-space.

Piranha Bytes does not need to compete with huge open-world games, but focus on what made Gothic great: the detailed world, choice and reactivity, faction politics, natural living spaces, beautiful nostalgic mood.

Piranha Bytes games are for RPG lovers 💘

When the adventure is done, when looking back at how immersive Gothic 2 was, when fighting through disappointment and market ignorance, who are Piranha Bytes games for:

• Fans of open-world action games.

• People who enjoy taking part in inter-faction politics.

• People who want to explore an open-world without extended survival mechanics. There is a survival aspect in PB games because of their difficulty, but without extensive systems like base-building.

• People who are not bothered by forgettable writing and formulaic stories.

• People who enjoy a harsh difficulty system.

Ultimately, the heart of Piranha Bytes has mostly been in the right place.

The future of their games may be questionable, but the studio's design philosophy is now closer to fulfilling its potential than it's ever been.

Their games tend to excel at:

• Exploration

• World immersion

• Choice and reactivity

• Combat

What they need to become classics is inspiration from modern action games and a willingness to tell more mature stories with better writing.

Regardless of potential and market preference, the design philosophy of Gothic and Risen should be celebrated.

Choice and reactivity in games have gained prominence with time, and seem a natural occurrence now. But back then they were more abstract, a strange feature that only obsessive RPG fans may care about.

For Piranha Bytes, they were nothing new. On the contrary, the city of Khorinis felt so natural - functionally and as design philosophy - that it was expected more games would study it and try to emulate a naturalist living environment.

The Gothic games appeared out of nowhere. In a better world, they would gain more than cult status to become models on how to create an immersive world, inhabited by real people.

Though the gaming industry may have forgotten, Gothic 2 was revolutionary. Some of its lessons and immersive design are as valuable now as they were when we were young, and so impressed with its believable world.

Before Oblivion, before The Witcher, before Dark Souls, there was Gothic 2.

Share your knowledge in the comments.