Gothic III Preview

The guys over at ActionTrip have put together a two-page preview of Gothic III, Piranha Bytes' highly anticipated RPG sequel. Here's a bit to get you started:
The game features a new graphics engine called the Genome Engine. Apparently, this new technology has done wonders for the in-game surroundings. When compared to Gothic 2, things have improved immensely. Every area has been meticulously designed and furnished with plenty of details in the backdrop. Piranha is constantly working to create a realistic world, so a lot of hard work was invested into making areas such as forests, deserts and snowy regions. Sadly, we'll have to wait a bit more to see how some of these sections look and feel like in practice. Character models and creature models appear to have received a radical make over. To illustrate: models in Gothic 2 were supplied with about 1,200 polygons, whereas in Gothic 3 each character includes 12,000 polys. We've learnt that motion capture was also used to bring some of these characters to life. When all is said and done, the visuals will clearly be one of the game's strong points.