RockPaperShotgun looks back at Gothic and finds that in many ways it is unparalled today.
[...]The game itself is set within a microsociety built entirely on the situation its inhabitants find themselves in. A succinct introduction describes a war between humans and orcs, because of course it does. But instead of the war itself, Gothic is about some of its consequences. The humans need weapons, so seal off a prison mine behind a one-way magical barrier, and begin shoving convicts in. The idiot mages get their sums wrong and trap themselves too, and more poetically, the prisoners revolt and take over, and rationally extract demands from the King in return for his precious ore. The result is a sensible arrangement in which the prisoners continue to mine and export in exchange for their choice of goods from the outside world.
Even mentioning that here's where the player comes in feels like an afterthought. You're a convict booted across the barrier who happens to become relevant by chance. You're no Chosen One, merely The One Who Happened To Be Standing There.
All this setup demonstrates an ongoing thoughtfulness that's key to Gothic's appeal. After the revolt, the prisoners split into three camps - one honouring the agreement with the King, the others working on separate escape plans. It'd be easy to set these camps up as novelty playgrounds, extreme poles of Good, Bad, and Stupid Wizard Hat, but Piranha Bytes were smarter. The Old Camp devotes everything to maintaining ore exports, and protecting the resulting imports from the rebellious New Camp, whose theft and raids supplement their rice crops. Meanwhile, the third Sect camp pray to a dormant god in hope of liberation, and trade off the excess of their holy drug, along with plants and tinctures.
The camps feel not like interchangeable markers to swap loot for new tasks, but like societies. Each has a reason to exist, a means of providing for itself, a social order, and a long term goal. They're visually and culturally distinct despite the limitations of geography, but the distinctions aren't exaggerated. The New Camp are the nasty faction on paper, but in practice just want independence from the King and his toadies, and only cause as much trouble as is needed to keep their escape plan in motion. Given the opportunity, they wouldn't wipe out or even wage war on the others because, well, needlessly murdering dozens of people crosses a lot of lines, y'know? Rivalry doesn't have to mean total destruction. Besides, the other camps provide useful goods.
More information.It'd be easy to depict an overthrown penal colony as a hellhole full of bloodthirsty maniacs, but the prevailing attitude is that everyone's stuck there together. The communities and their inhabitants, both en masse and individually, act in ways that make sense given their circumstances.
In a word, Gothic is sensible.
There are few saints or pointlessly evil monsters. More common is pragmatic robbery or limited kindness - more people will help you out a little and few will screw you over for the hell of it. Think about it: if you were trapped in a village and went round stabbing people for larks, how long would the rest of your peers put up with you? Fights with humans are seldom unprompted, and even less commonly lethal - losing leaves you prone while the winner rifles through your pockets, or you theirs. Most NPCs won't hold a grudge afterwards, and accept loss with admirable grace. You're free to do likewise, although I can never resist the temptation to bully and rob a particular pair of miners every time I pass by. Some have friends who'll enact swift reprisals, but there are many opportunities to brawl, and some situations require a beating to get your point across. I lost my patience with one self-important cultist who tried to foist an odd job onto me before handing over something I wanted, so gave him a solid whack with a hammer and took it instead.
It's an interesting contrast to most games, where casual murder is the norm, and even those with a "pacifist run" tend to hand wring or fall over themselves admiring us for the enormously noble act of not massacring people. In Gothic, fights are fights, not murder-offs, and once someone's beaten, the matter is considered settled. It takes a deliberate, conscious decision to kill, and doing so triggers an unequivocal animation where you carefully crouch astride a helpless person and slay them. Even then, you're not irrevocably changed from NOT_MURDERER to MURDERER status, and not everyone will care, but it's remarkable how your perceptions and behaviour change when killing a nameless mook has social consequences. Even the hateful Rice Lord left a perennial stain on my conscience when I snuck past his goons and mercilessly skewered him in his sleep. Seeing peasants change from cheering on your fight to backing off in horror isn't the power trip it might sound like.