Once activated, they can be used to quickly zoom from place to place. There are still teleportation stones, but they're conveniently located right outside of notable areas, such as the game's major cities and townships. YES NO The process of actually getting around the world has been made more painless than in Gothic games past. The team developing the game wants you to be able to explore anything you can see, so if you can make out snow-capped mountains in the distance, magic swamps, dark forests, or mysteriously lit houses perched on hill trails, there'll be some way to get there and explore. Round a corner past the blacksmith clanging a hammer on an anvil and you'll see a wide, uneven expanse of grassy land stretching to the foot of grey hills, or a towering rocky outcropping jutting into the open, blustery sea. It's a pretty, sprawling land, with rolling hills dotted with rock fragments, straw houses, broken wagon carts and impressive vistas. It serves as the training area for the game as you sling arrows at deer to collect parts for the father of your love interest, Ivy. This time around you play as a new character, a shepherd from a small town on an island called Feshyr. He's the corrupt king of this new land mass, which will be slightly smaller in size than the sprawling world map of Gothic 3. The fiction is still connected to the story from previous games, but the Nameless Hero of games past is no longer the playable character. The name also was reworked, going from Arcania: A Gothic Tale and later changed to Arcania: Gothic IV. The game went multiplatform, and the goal was to make something that could appeal to a broader audience, specifically targeting North America. In the days since Gothic 3, Piranha Bytes made Risen, and the Gothic series was transferred over to Spellbound Entertainment.
It wasn't user friendly, but attracted a user base so dedicated that fans continued to patch the tragically underdeveloped Gothic 3 after Piranha Bytes had moved on. More specifically, it was built for the type of gamer that dislikes direction, catering more to those who prefer making their own decisions, exploring and discovering new lands and mechanics at their own pace.
For the first three iterations, the Piranha Bytes-developed open-world role-playing fantasy franchise was for the PC crowd only. The Gothic series has undergone big changes in recent times.