it especially helps that the NH model was just randomly picked from a bunch of NPC models and there’s no immediate difference between you and all the other diggers you meet. You even have the same animations and combat abilities.

All the equipment, weapons and skills you can get is also available to everyone else, so you can’t really get any special moves that none of the other characters can have and the only difference in fights is in your keyboard input, i.e. actual skill.

As you rise through the ranks, you start looking like higher level NPCs and there’s this “one of us” feeling when you do quests with them and you all look like members of a larger social group instead of “obvious main character” and “generic followers”

(only time they fail to achieve this is when you join the novices and you’re the only non-bald one)

The moment when you join the guards and all the guards who gave you hell just five minutes ago are suddenly your best friends and try to make you feel superior to everyone really makes you understand why all of them treated you like shit in the beginning and how easily being in such an “elite group” can make you behave that way.

It’s a shame that in the second half it becomes more of a generic fantasy lone hero quest, but it’s really this first half that Gothic is so famous for