The first part of a series of interviews with Gothic Alpha passionates. I conducted it with Psimek, who is in the process of creating a new video with unknown trivia from the world of Gothic. As part of the creation of the series, I contacted people who had been researching previous versions of Gothic and asked them 7 questions: four questions common to each and three individual.
There is a ton of material from the development period of games in the Gothic series – especially the first part. Talking to Gothic fans, who have also spent a lot of time analysing or acquiring this material, is a good way to get an idea. They will give us an idea not only of the unreleased content itself, but also of the collaboration between Gothic’s creators.
Interview
1. How it happened, that you started to research the previous versions of Gothic? Getting as many informations as possible was an aim itself, or did you need it to another aim?
Hi. My adventure with the alpha versions started sometime in 2009. I remember that I was going to primary school at the time and at that time I found a trailer for the first part of Gothic on the Internet. I was a bit surprised as well as intrigued, because even though it was a trailer for the first part, it was very different from the premiere one. I tried, as a 12-year-old, to look for any information on where to download this “Gothic”. At the time, I didn’t realise that it was one of the pre-alpha versions dating back to 2000 or even late 1999. Unfortunately, to this day this version has not seen the light of day.
In 2015, I had the pleasure of watching a few episodes of unknown trivia from Archii dedicated mainly to the 1.04d demo version. Naturally, I became very curious about the topic. On the other hand, in 2017, there was material published on the The History of Khorinis channel regarding the plans with their mod. There they mentioned version 1.01d, and more specifically the pre-release map of the Colony, where on it, near the Old Mine, a road led beyond the areas we know from the final version. Looking for any information about this version, I found the channel “Phantom95”, whom I contacted. Together, we also came up with the idea of creating some footage with a voiceover (at the time my friend from the city), which was not yet on Youtube.
Of course, before I started creating YouTube videos and sharing my knowledge publicly, I was really interested in Gothic. There were times when I liked to turn on arhn.eu before going to bed and read some interviews with the developers about what to expect in their debut game. However, it wasn’t until I started creating YouTube content that I started to delve the most into the creation of the game and what changes the game was going through ‘from the inside’.
I considered it my sacred duty to share my knowledge with other fans of the game, which I am very proud of.
2. On Gothic Archive site, on which we can find the most informations about the previous versions of Gothic, or on another sites, you can read mainly about the versions like 0.56c, 0.64b, 0.94k, 1.00b and the most often about 1.12f, i.e. Sequel.
Why just those versions are so interesting? By numering convention we can deduce, that there were a lot of more of them.
That’s right. There were many more versions. The numbering of most of them can be found on the gothicarchive.org website you mentioned earlier, but the document does not contain all the known versions, only most of them. Coming back to your question – the most interesting demos, or “alpha versions” if you prefer, are the ones that were leaked to the community, so we could study and analyse them thoroughly. If we can find the holder of other ancient versions and get access to them then the interest in that particular version will increase.
To put the leaks in chronological order, the Christmas version 1.01d/e (without world.zen1) leaked first, followed by Gothic Sequel 1.12f, then 0.56c pre-alpha and 0.64b pre-alpha at the same time, and finally 0.94k alpha along with the 1.00b named developer version.
3. You’re looking closely at the early versions of Gothic 1. Will you research Gothic 2 as well? There are a bit materials about Gothic 2 Pre-Alpha on Gothic Archive; some of them appeared also because of 20th anniversary of Gothic II. But there are significantly less materials than in case of Gothic 1.
For example there is not – at least I didn’t find – the informations about the previous versions of Gothic 2, or press demos. It looks like, that the history of creating of Gothic 2 is a lot of less interesting for Gothic fans.
So here goes. The first part of the game was developed from late 1996 to 15 March 2001, not including later patches. The second part was created from 2001 to 2002, and I think that explains everything 😉 . And in all seriousness – Gothic 1 was developed over a period of less than five years, and in that time the game underwent huge technical as well as visual changes. From the working name Orpheus, Phoenix to Gothic. To the sheer finish of the world, animation, graphics or storyline.
For example, let’s look at the trailer from 2000 and then at the final version of the game from 2001. In almost every shot, you can see the difference thanks to the intensity of work the creators put in to release their dream masterpiece.
Before the second part was fully developed, it used ready-made assets from Gothic 1 or Gothic Sequel. Of course, only a small part of the implemented things in the Sequel was borrowed, such as the health bar. Most of the textures from Gothic 1 were thrown into Gothic 2, but this was more as placeholders, i.e. temporary textures that eventually changed to a more idyllic look (of course some remained original in the files). The map of the Colony was also ready, it just needed to be reworked to fit in with the dark atmosphere of the destroyed Colony from Hell.
The same was true of the animations. The developers, in order to save themselves some work, simply transferred the ready-made animations from Gothic 1 to Gothic 2, such as walking, jumping, swimming, collecting, picking up objects, and there is nothing unusual about this. Some of the animations have been reworked, but only slightly. It’s also worth mentioning the Gothic engine, which had been improved from the beginning until Gothic 2 Night of the Raven was released, so it was easier to create the game with the tools, assets and experience already gained.
I don’t think I’m going to go into too much detail on Gothic 2. There has already been some material created about what was supposed to be – and wasn’t. I still have a lot of work to do related to the first part, so I don’t rule out that I might take on Gothic 2 content at some point, if indeed something cool is found. A “tangible” one, of course 😉 .
4. The release of Gothic Sequel is called a “leak” So it is described as being done against someone’s will. Despite this, THQ Nordic did not lead to its removal from the internet. What effects has the publication of Gothic Sequel had, apart from the fact that anyone can play it?
Perhaps let’s start at the beginning. Gothic Sequel was leaked at the end of August 2017. Leaving aside the circumstances involved, as I recall, Michael Ruve was making a statement on the German forum worldofgothic.de. He claimed that they didn’t have the rights to the Gothic Sequel or that the rights weren’t entirely clear. I would only add that fans asked Björn Pankratz in 2017/2018 about the leaked unreleased add-on, and he similarly stated that Piranhas did not have the rights to them. Just a reminder that after the release of Gothic 1, the Piranha Bytes team split into two teams. One was developing Gothic Sequel, while the other was developing a shooter tentatively named “unplugged”.
Of course, the shooter was cancelled, so the second team joined the first. Unfortunately I have no knowledge of how long and if at all the now defunct team 2 helped with the production of Gothic Sequel, or if it was immediately after that that the cancellation of Sequel was announced and new work on Gothic 2 started. Then some of the staff left after the cancellation of Gothic Sequel and, as I recall, this is the reason why the rights to Gothic Sequel are not clear. As for the effects, it’s hard for me to say exactly. I would say that the developers were less willing to share the content they had for fear of legal problems or the deterioration of the relationship/trust of the German or Russian community towards our compatriots.
5. Which of your findings in researching demos/alpha versions of Gothic are you most satisfied with? Obviously I’m not asking about the ones you haven’t revealed yet : – ), but the ones we can see on your channel.
Oy tough one drew 😉. So honestly, as you’ve asked me this question, I still can’t decide which of these tidbits is the best. But I think I’ve done the best research over the last two years, writing the script for the film. The best tidbits are out there and each one holds a high standard. I think one of the coolest discoveries, was the ability for an orc to summon an orc dog, and how the dog interacted with the orc. You yourself, for the rest, helped me recreate this script from 1.00b for my film project.
6. It’s true – it’s a shame that Piranhas didn’t manage to implement all the ideas. In the demonstration version of this material, you can see that more ways of interacting with the world were to be implemented. In a previous question you mentioned that Gothic’s previous name was Phoenix, and even earlier Orpheus.
Orpheus is an obvious reference to the Dreamer; do you know why the name later changed to Phoenix? As well as eventually to Gothic?
I am already explaining. The name Orpheus comes from Greek mythology given by Stefan Nyul who is interested in the rest of the mythology. The name Orpheus is seen in the first sketches drawn by Michael Hoge. It’s hard for me to say whether it was the third quarter of 1996 or maybe the beginning of 1997, but I know that Piranha Bytes studio didn’t exist yet at that stage.
It was just the beginning of a joint agreement between the three developers (Bert Speckels, Dieter Hildebrandt, Ulf Wohlers) working on Finster at the time – and the staff at Greenwood Entertainment (Tom Putzki, Michael Hoge, Stefan Nyul, Alex Bruggemann), who were just pouring their vision and plan onto paper. Finster was the predecessor and had nothing to do with Gothic, on which further work was discontinued when the developers from Greenwood Entertainment joined.
Michael Hoge and the rest of the team at Greenwood did not want to create another copy of Ultima, but to try and create something new and fresh, where instead of an overwhelming amount of stats, the player sees the progress made in battle through in-game animations. After an agreement was reached between the students and staff from Greenwood Entertainment, the decision was made to set up Piranha Bytes studio. For this reason, the name Orpheus was changed to Phoenix, also borrowed from Greek mythology.
The name Phoenix and Gothic probably originated at a very similar time, with Phoenix being used more often in the engine and Gothic in interviews. I don’t fully understand it, but I do know that up until version 0.77 if I’m not mistaken, the name Phoenix appeared in the game window bar, as evidenced by one of the screenshots. Later on, Phoenix was completely replaced by the name Gothic and it remained that way until the end. It is possible that at first the developers liked the name Phoenix better, and over time they realised that Gothic sounded darker and would suit their dark game better.
7. I think the history of bands working on Gothic, or Finster, or “unplugged” games is not widely known in the community. The most associated are Björn Pankratz, Michael Hoge, Kai Rosenkranz, Tom Putzki and Ralf Marczinczik.
Finster was the predecessor and had nothing to do with Gothic. But was nothing from it carried over into Gothic? For some reason, the developers from the two teams decided to start working together.
Do you know at what stage of the work, Björn Pankratz joined these two combined teams? As I understand it, he was not at Greenwood Entertainment.
The best thing to do is to download Finster and see for yourself if there are any assets flipped from there that we can look for in the earliest version we have access to, which is 0.56c. It seems to me that nothing has been ported, because what Finster presented at that time and the first versions of Gothic – already at that time strongly differed in quality, so I strongly doubt it.
Björn Pankratz joined the Piranha Bytes team in November 1999, which is more or less when the version of the game was numbered 0.69 – and work on Gothic had already been going on for more than 2 years. However, I’m sure you’d get the clearest answer if you asked Björn himself, as I haven’t delved into his biography.
Summary
Psimek’s adventure with Gothic Alpha began when he pointed out the differences between the Gothic trailer and the released version. Despite the passage of many years, he is still looking for discrepancies between Gothic versions – as this article was being written, he published a recording of hidden dialogue with pests and diggers (in Polish). The alpha versions of Gothic 2 are not as interesting to him, as the development period for this part of Gothic was much shorter.
It turns out that Gothic’s previous name, Orpheus, stems from one of Piranha Bytes‘ founders’ love of Greek mythology. At the same time, in the same year that it was given, the Finster game demo was completed by Mad Scientists – later developers of the Gothic engine.
For the next interview in the series, which will appear on Gothic Up, I interviewed Flosha – creator of the aforementioned Gothic Archive project, as well as Phoenix Tales.
Post scriptum
Following the publication of the article, the comments below it on the Phoenix Tales Discord began to point out errors. In the context of the use of the name “Phoenix” until version 0.77, it was noted that the name “Phoenix” was used in the name of the game’s executable file for the last time in version 0.71c. This thesis is confirmed by the file “changes_EXE_GOTHIC.txt” from version 1.00b.
In question six, I included the erroneous presupposition that “Phoenix” was the previous name of Gothic – it was a working title.
Also disputed was the claim that the two teams had merged to work together on the Sequel for a while. As was the course of Piranha Bytes’ creation. Answers to these topics, can be found in interviews with more Gothic Alpha passionates.
- The file “world.zen” contains the entire Colony, which is where Gothic 1’s gameplay takes place – ed. note. ↩︎
- This is an edited graphic from the Gothic Archive. ↩︎
