Completing quests and killing things rewards you with experience and eventually levels you up. Each level up earns you a handful of learning points which, along with gold, you can use to buff up your character's health, weapon wielding abilities, base statistics, and spells. Finding trainers is yet another aspect of the game that relies entirely on how thoroughly you explore. We learned hunting skills from a random NPC in a shack, for instance, after completing a quest for him. After visiting a few towns, these trainers seemed fairly common, so it's not like they're impossible to find. It's just a little strange to have to find all this out on your own. Magic, health, and spells are learned from shrines littered around Gothic III's vast woodlands, but nobody tells you this in the game, either.

This kind of extreme open-ended design isn't a bad thing. In fact, it's an enjoyable alternative to being forced along a pre-determined direction. The game world itself is enormous, and there are tons of ways to occupy yourself.
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Adding to the game's open-ended design is the reputation system. Completing quests for each town earns its favor, which eventually opens up new missions in some cases. In addition to gaining reputation with each town, you can curry favor with six factions: Nordmar, Orcs, Rebels, Rangers, Nomads, and Hashishin. We've yet to really see how far reaching these effects are and what kind of long-term consequences they hold for players, but it certainly makes for some varied gameplay. Completing a quest often isn't a straightforward affar, as many offer multiple paths. You could just kill the quest giver if you don't like his tone of voice, steal his stuff, and then move on. Of course you'd then miss out on a follow up quest.​