A word on Gothic, the game.
I had a brief exchange with @feletida on whether tw*tter could accommodate such literary genre as "giant schizo post" on merits of Gothic as an RPG. So here it goes…
Of course no discussion of the game would be scholarly without first addressing the elephant in the room: the Big Bad of the series is not some malignant deity, nor dragons, not even orcs—it's narcotic swamp-weed. For now, take it as you will.
Ok, what then, of the game's villains?
By the word's etymology, a villain is but a low-born rustic. Not an evil-doer per se, being inherently devoid of chivalry he's corralled into systematic moral failings by his own vices (which he himself cannot quite put the lid on).
By this definition, our five main heroes (PC, Diego, Gorn, Lester, Milten) are too—villains, for each has an unbridled vice salient within him.
Lester is slothful. He prefers never to take an active role in whatever happens to and around him. He spends most of the second game sitting by the fire roasting weenies, before settling into a routine of complaining about his migraines, caused most likely by excessive smoking. Of course he presents this as being forced into the habit by evil pull of hidden. At the start of Gothic 3 he's relegated to guarding the ship—a task he spectacularly fails at by letting it be stolen by pirate-vagabonds. A spell-speaker like Lester (supposedly is) shouldn't have had problems with dispersing a low-level rabble of mooks and yet.
Milton is excessively deferential towards authority and thus often finds himself stringed along into some disaster of altogether not his doing.
Diego's vice is pride, believe it or not. He may pose himself as a man with plans and shrewd ambition, but when Diego finally comes into good fortunes—he finds no gratification and readily discards it all in favour of adventure. The wealth and prestige have never mattered much to him, I reckon—it's been a pretext all along to ply his guile. This is the essence of self-adoration—to feel obliged to give regular libations to one's virtues.
Gorn alone resolves to reign in his vice (gluttony) for the sake of others. For a time at least—specifically when they all go on a sea voyage at the end of second game. All the while the others just continue wallowing in their vices.
Indeed Milten gets to have an authority above him, Lester—to further shirk all responsibility, Diego—to exercise his skills.
As for the PC: do I even have to list everything that's wrong with this beastly character. After all, you—being the player—have the perfect recollection of yourself running around beating friendlies unconscious to steal their weapons, ore and whatnot. The second game has a whole spell-scroll infrastructure to support that kind of play, made canon by Night of The Raven expansion's stringent allocation of learning points.
