Choose a side in Gothic III Classic

King Rhobar is holding out in Vengard, rebels are resisting the orc occupation, and the Hashishin are cooperating with the invaders. Gothic III Classic drops its Nameless Hero into a mainland whose inhabitants already have very different ideas about its future. Choosing where you stand is the attraction: Myrtana has a war under way, a great deal of country to explore and room for your hero to take his own path through it.

The console edition arrives on 24 November for PS5, Xbox Series X|S and Nintendo Switch 2. Piranha Bytes' original PC RPG dates back to 2006; this release adapts that adventure with gamepad controls, a new interface and Community Patch 1.75 included. For someone coming to the series through a console, it's a chance to reach the mainland with those changes already built in. The release covers the third game individually, following this year's console arrivals of the first two.

A mainland with sides to choose

The hero comes from Khorinis, and news of his approach inspires both hope and concern. That's an appealing position for a role-playing character: people have an interest in where his loyalties land before he arrives. The king's remaining followers, the resistance outside his stronghold and the collaborators in the south give the conflict several distinct positions. Your choices feed into the main story's objectives, with different solution paths through the adventure.

Beyond that struggle, the game offers a large, freely explorable world and side quests to pursue. Hundreds of individually voiced characters populate it. The official gallery gives that scale a more inviting face than a list of features can: a stone tower rises above fields of yellow crops, while another image gathers people around a fire in a fortified courtyard. These are places with inhabitants and work going on, as well as somewhere for an adventurer to pass through.

The other published scenes stretch from steep-roofed buildings in a snowy night to a sunlit settlement with palms and pale walls. The variety is a good invitation to explore. Myrtana's political troubles give the journey a direction, while those different landscapes give you something to look forward to beyond the next conversation. For another forthcoming RPG with travel at its centre, our Metaphor: ReFantazio preview follows a royal campaign from town to town.

Build the hero as you go

Character development is class-free, with melee weapons, ranged attacks and spells amongst the available tools. That suits the open journey: your character's development accompanies your decisions about where to go and whom to support. The published combat options include quick attacks, close-range whirlwind fighting and shooting from a distance. Anyone choosing this for the first time should expect an action RPG in which the hero participates directly in the fighting.

There's a substantial armoury behind those options. THQ Nordic lists more than 100 weapons and more than 50 spells, alongside over 50 kinds of monsters and animals and dozens of human enemies. Those numbers describe the breadth of the adventure, rather than a shopping list you have to complete. The more interesting invitation is having several approaches available while building a character without selecting a fixed class at the outset.

The console changes come included

Community Patch 1.75 is integrated into this edition, alongside further gameplay improvements. Gamepad controls and the interface have been designed for controllers, putting the adaptation of an older PC game at the centre of this release. On PS5, the store also lists offline single-player play and support for DualSense vibration and trigger effects. It's a solo journey through the occupied mainland, with the console's controller handling both exploration and combat.

THQ Nordic is also promising optimisation, although final frame-rate and resolution details remain unconfirmed. The concrete offer for November is already easy to understand: the third Gothic adventure, its patch included, and controls made for a console. It is particularly inviting if you enjoy following a fantasy world's factions as closely as developing your own fighter. Rhobar has his last followers and the rebels have their resistance. Your hero arrives with a choice about whom to help.