The final outstanding quality of Gothic was its character system and how it tied into the game and story themselves. Sure, you could gain massive XP from monsters and quests, but once you levelled up, essentially nothing happened. You only got a bunch of skill points that required visits to specific trainers that would teach you, but only to the best of their capabilities – if they even respected you in the first place.

Furthermore, while your character started as a classless bloke, to actually acquire a specific class you needed to join one of the three very distinct factions, each of which had its own agenda and quests. Not only was this very neat because tying the levelling to the narrative was a nice throw-back to P&P RPGs, but also because it piled up many layers of choices and consequences. You might agree with one faction, but joining it will prevent you from learning something from another, or completing quests for the third, etc.

Gothic allows you to climb on ledges, offering a level of verticality and exploration that few other RPGs provide.