Hey,
here are some reflections on postings EDL has sent to me.
Caradoc wrote:These short stories are wonderfull reading indeed. They really capture the right mood so to speak. You can sense and almost smell how rich gameworld it is, with a culture and history. Lots of back lore proves that you are taking this game seriously. Its great how the characters and happenings in these novels seem so gothic-like yet feeling fresh and unique. Shadowbeast for example was a gothic shadowbeast..heck I could regognize it's attack pattern from the text and already picture it what it looked in the gameworld or how the king's men drank ale joyfully inside while now knowing what was on loose
. I also enjoy this perspective you have chosen. It was a clever move to have these sneak peaks through the eyes of ordinary people and how these novels center around their ordinary lives. Makes everything feel plausable. You have good writers in your team and I hope you can bring the same quality of writing in arcania too.
I’m very glad that you like the stories and the perspective I have chosen. In my opinion this perspective is very important for the game. I believe that we need this ordinary people perspective to make Arcania a Gothic tale. Gothic began as a prison story, and the prison setting had a forming influence on the whole series. With Gothic 2 the story left the prison, but in its heart it remained a prison story. With Gothic 3 the Gothic world became bigger and more complex, but you can still feel the prison influence of Gothic 1. In my opinion, this results from the ordinary people perspective PB has chosen for the game. That’s the reason why we will stick to this perspective for Arcania and the Cleaved Maiden News.
Mister42 wrote:Story is great, the armour seems too...oriental.
The Setarrifian armors are indeed a little bit oriental, but the question is: Are they too oriental for a Gothic game?
To judge them correctly, we need to have a closer look at the Setarrifian culture as a whole. When we began to design the Setarrifian culture, we went through the former parts of the Gothic series looking for in-game links the Setarrifian culture could be based on. We discovered some ancient ruins spread over the Gothic world (Khorinis and Varant), and we decided to use these ruins as the basis of the Setarrifian culture (please see the Gothic artbook for reference as well). The idea behind it was that Setarrif has been an empire with settlements on the continent long, long time ago. The empire declined, but the ruins remained.
After this decision, our artists made new sketches of the ruins based on the Gothic references they had available. The main question was: How would the design of the ruins most probably have looked like if Gothic 2 and Gothic 3 were made with some advanced technical possibilities game developers can make use of today (more detailed textures, etc.)?
After that, our artists began to rebuild the ruins creating the architectural style of the Setarrifian culture.
Then, they began to develop the whole culture (weapons, armors, heraldry, flags, everyday objects, etc.). In my opinion, they made a very good job
And I personally think that the armors, buildings and all the other aspects of the Setarrifian culture still to be disclosed really fit nicely into the universe.
Cheers,
Hans-Jörg
12. September 2008 12:39 
. Next time I will try Kant, Hegel or Wittgenstein. That's gonna be much harder 
.