Mike Hoge, the lead game designer of the Gothic series, visited our forums and talked a little bit about how he and the other PB employees created the world of Gothic. This is the second part, you can find the first part here.

1. Just to clarify: In the meantime, four people are working on the story. Björn, Mattias, Stefan and my humble self (just to make sure that nobody thinks I am the only one creating the story for Gothic III). Actually, it is very important that several people are working together on this because it is possible to check the story and each other then.

2. The origins of the swamp sect: After it was determined that there should be three camps, I originally planned to distribute the skills the player can obtain among the camps (Mage, Warrior, Thief/Archer). But I quickly realized that this was a bad idea. Why? The camps should be defined by their "political/social orientation". The player should not be forced to e.g. join the old camp just because he wants to become a warrior. So each camp needed their own warriors and mages. Thus different "kinds" of magic were needed. This yielded the idea of battle mages (later fire mages), transmuting mages (later water mages) and PSI mages (later sect mages). For each camp, an internal structure had to be found, e.g. templers are protecting the gurus, baals are proclaiming the faith, novices have to work etc.

Furthermore, each camp needed

a) a story (about its origins)
b) a plan
c) needs and supply

About a): The old camp was originally the castle of the guards. The most powerful prisoners settled down there. Therefore, the sect camp separated from them. Why? Because there was a man who lead some people in the swamp.

About b): Why did that guy do that? Simple. The magic barrier is the main topic of the colony. Each camp need a break-out plan. You can use these plans to defines the differences between the camps (in the end, the old camp did not get a plan because a valid alternative was found).

The psi camp should have powerful psi mages. This means that the leader of the sect has to be the most powerful psi mage and everybody else is learning from him. He is the guru. A guru? Sect! Sect? God! God? The sleeper! Bingo.

About c): To make the world plausible, the needs of prisoners had to be implemented so they can act as background for missions and dialogues. I am skipping the part about how these needs were developed.

The result was: The sect camp needed new members to awake the sleeper (i.e. recruiters in the other camps) and it needs drugs to create the state of consciousness required for the ritual: minecrawler extract, templers are hunters. Harvest of swampweed, novices are harvesting and processing the weed, the chief-alchemist is a powerful man (Cor Calom) and so on.

So, that's enough for now.