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JoWood recently announced their intention to expand the Gothic franchise on... mobile phones. Set more than 140 years before the adventures depicted in Gothic 1, the new mobile Gothic will be called (surprise,surprise...) The Beginning, and will put players into the shoes our pal Xardas.

This time Xardas is a novice sorcerer who receives the nightmarish visit of Bhutomar's Ghost (servant of God of Innos himself) and is sent on a mission to find "four chosen ones to bring back the sealed magic to the island of Khorinis".

The catch is that you will also have to battle (yet) unknown evil forces on your way to the banned magic rune stones. The story is deeply intertwined with the PC version of Gothic and allows the player to decide the fate ofMyrtana by using 7 magic spells, 28 types of weapons and 10 types of armor. The mobile version of the highly-acclaimed RPG will try to emulate the epic battles seen on the PC by integrating over 35 NPCs or trainers and up to 14 types of enemies "with realistic AI" (...), like the well-known wolves, orcs, trolls or scavengers. In Gothic 3-The Beginning there will be more than 50 scenarios and random battle locations, 30 character-levels, 4 attributes and 5 skills. As a bonus, JoWood will include official soundtracks from the PC version. You can indulge your eyes with some pixelated artwork here.

What we really expect from JoWood though is a new patch for the PC game. I have seen enough framerate-drop-downs on high-end computers (yeah, Quad Core and 8800 GTX...) not to start wondering who programmed Gothic 3 and how much time was allocated to the beta-testing... If you don't know what I mean, just check out these in-game bugs...

UPDATE: According to the later-arrived press release, Gothic 3 The Beginning is being crafted at HandyGames and will be available by download starting January 15th 2008.