First Gothic 4 details pop up

By Robert Purchese Published 28 April, 2008

Control the day and night cycle.

Developer Spellbound has delivered the first details for Gothic 4.

It will be subtitled Ancaria and take place 10 years after events in the third game. The action takes place on an archipelago where each island has its own climate, look and feel.

According to German PC Games Magazine (read by Tiscali Games), the headline attractions will be the opportunity to control a new day and night cycle with magic, plus the ability to ride all sorts of beasts plodding around the land.

Gothic 4 will also go to town on all the latest graphical flourishes, with sunlight and shaders said to be paid particular attention to, plus facelifts for returning characters and monsters.

Ancaria is the first game in the role-playing series not to be developed by Piranha Bytes. As such, Spellbound will be looking closely at forums to get fan feedback on its debut Gothic adventure.

It's also the first time the series will appear on consoles (360, PS3) as well as PC, although Spellbound has no release date to offer at the moment: "done when it's done".

Picture of Robert.

About Robert Purchese

Bertie is Eurogamer's Senior Staff Writer. When he's not hunting down news stories he's often found playing with his kids or gabbling about fantasy games and strange online worlds.

Read more articles from Robert by visiting the Robert Purchese archive page.

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Comments (10) Latest comment 4 years ago

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  • Dizzy #1 4 years ago

    "The action takes place on an archipelago where each island has its own climate, look and feel."

    Why do fantasy worlds always have to contain all possible climates in a few square kilometer space? Some unwritten rule?

    Jungle to snow in a few minutes? Try walking from tropical Himalaya lowlands to the high mountains. It takes a few weeks ;)
    Edited by 1 at 28/04/08 @ 10:37

  • Widge #2 4 years ago

    I'm ok with that, I like a bit of variety to my locales. Morrowind was drastically over its different regions, but not jarringly so. Made it a bit special to explore.

    By all reports, Gothic 3 was an atrocious bug fest. Hope Gothic 4 is a bit more refined.

  • Olemak #3 4 years ago

    Moving the franchise onto the consoles is an absolute must; I feel that the Gothic series was always better suited to the console than to the PC.

    With Bethesda tied up with Fallout for the time being, they do have a chance of finding a nice little fantasy RPG niche with Gothic 4, unless they spend too long time figuring the business out and be overcome by Elder Scrolls V, which I assume will be out in about 2 years or so.

  • OnlyMe #4 4 years ago

    Because, fantasy worlds are planets too, and in most cases follow more or less same rules of nature that our planet does. The climate changes from where on the planet you are, as well as culture. And the few square kilometers represents a larger distance than just a few square kilometers. That's why games like Final Fantasy have drastically different climates spread out across the world, where Oblivion is very much identical no matter where you are.

  • Widge #5 4 years ago

    Oblivion was quite generic in its locales, but I think that is more of a TES Lore thing. I've seen the map of where the games are set and its huge. Cyrodill is the more 'human' and normal setting, when you were on Vvardenfell in Morrowind (its where the dark elves tend to come from, my character in Obv is one and has had Morrowind banter with the odd shopkeeper) for the previous game, you got strange marshy areas, basic mud hut towns, the strange blue tinted and mushroom filled Telvanni area on the East, the huge cantons of Vivec, the middle of the map, the ash and volcano scarred centre of it all. Also a much wider array of strange beasties compared to the rather normal Cyrodill.

  • UncleLou #6 4 years ago

    Moving the franchise onto the consoles is an absolute must; I feel that the Gothic series was always better suited to the console than to the PC.


    Only problem being that the Gothic series makes 90% of its sales in German-speaking countries, and we don't like no stinkin' consoles here. :)

    FWIW, I see no problem for Gothic being available on consoles, though I can't quite follow why you think it's better suited to them. Quite on the contrary, I think console gamers are less willing than PC gamers to look past lower budget issues and technical difficulties which have always plagued the series (which didn't keep G1+2 from being two of my favourite RPGs of all time).

    All that aside, I am not entirely sure another devteam will capture the typical Gothic feel, but then Piranha Bytes kind of failed with G3 as well.

  • Rash' #7 4 years ago

    "It's also the first time the series will appear on consoles..."

    Except a shoddy PS3 port then.

  • Olemak #8 4 years ago

    UncleLou: Yeah, but maybe moving to the consoles will both make the game more accessible to the non-german speaking market and also ensure that the game is released in a conciderably more polished state than has been customary for the series so far.

    I see this as Gothic doing some growing up. So far the series has definately been living in the shadow of The Elder Scrolls - and I suppose it still will - but maybe they'll be able to reach new audiences with the fourth iteration - it certainly deserves to.

    To do so, they need to add inn stuff that TES doesn't do, tho, and not just copy features. Personally, I think this genre cries out for co-op and multiplayer, both split-screen and online. I'm rooting for co-op; it's the one feature that would pick my interest over the competition. Man, that would be awsome. But without a stand-out feature like that, it is pretty much a "meh" compared to it's big, big brother TES.

  • r3n #9 4 years ago

    maybe they should finish the game this time

  • Quint2020 #10 4 years ago

    Another RPG on the 360 is fine by me.

    The third game was actually rather good except for a lot of bugs, most of these were sorted in patches though.