Play Gothic 3 in German with English Subtitles

Play Gothic 3 in German with English Subtitles using the latest community patch.

The Problem

The Gothic 3 beta branch supports the latest Community Patch by default, so it's very tempting to install Gothic 3 using this method as it saves a lot of manual configuration time.

However, the beta branch does not include German audio even if you select German as your main language in the Steam game properties!

If you installed from the beta branch, inserting the correct Speech_German.pak file and changing your ini configuration will not work either!

This guide will hopefully get you on the path to experiencing Gothic 3 the proper way. The solution is to bypass installing from the beta branch and install the base game and patches yourself.

This method was tested with Steam on Arch Linux. Linux users will need to have ProtonTricks handy to use for installing the patches from Shugo's guide below.

While this method was tested using Linux, it should be compatible with Windows.

Extract Speech_German.pak from ISO

If you own a Gothic 3 disc you can easily do this. Otherwise you will need to find your own source for the Gothic 3 ISO (so this guide does not get banned I cannot list any links or refer to any websites that act like an archive of the internet to store files ^_~)

For me the easiest way to extract Speech_German.pak is to mount the ISO to your system as a drive. Then copy/paste the file to your own drive.

The file is located in MOUNTED-DRIVE/Gothic III/Speech_German.pak

Install Gothic 3 main branch (NOT beta)

Right click Game Properties for Gothic 3 and select German for your language.

Install the normal main branch for Gothic 3 on Steam. Do *not* install the beta version which comes with the Community Patch (as this is the source of our problem).

Once the game is installed, copy your Speech_German.pak file into your steamapps/common/Gothic3/Data folder.

Go to your steamapps/common/Gothic3/Ini folder and open ge3.ini, scroll to the bottom to the [Langauges] section and change Audio=English to Audio=German.

Open the game once after this!

Follow Shugo's guide from Step 2

Follow SHUGO's Ultimate Gothic 3 Guide. You can ignore Step 1 since we've already installed the base game. Follow from Step 2 exactly and you should be able to play the game with German audio, English subtitles and the latest community patch.

https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=922996693

Keep in mind that I only installed up until Shugo's guide says to stop for vanilla experience. I have not tested this with additional quest packs and consequence patches. Please also refer to the next section before starting with their guide.

IMPORTANT NOTE ABOUT COMMUNITY PATCH INSTALLER

When installing the Community Patch - keep note of what language is detected. If it says that "english" is detected then something is wrong and you should start over. If it says the detected language is "german" then you can continue with Shugo's guide until the end.

Play in German

You can now enjoy Gothic 3 in German!