Here you go, quite a bit of background info.
- two hour interview with creative director Björn Pankratz
- idea for the game came up with planned Star Trek easter eggs for earlier Gothic games
- hero has a name (not revealed yet)
- Elex is a drug everybody in the universe is after
- Elex reached the game's planet via meteorite impact
- Intake of Elex results in continous loss of humanity (also refered to as "coolness")
- Elex causes mutations to addicts
- catastrophe on the planet caused the rise of several different groups
- some heavily rely and focus on tech, some dropped every modern technology and sort of live in the middle age
- civilisation before the catastrophe similar to our current status
- devs want to adress serious issues (acceptance of drugs in society, 'right' form of society...)
- huge world, barely scripted, exploration
- 3rd person view, skill system, join fractions, melee, magic, ranged weapons
- crafting
- streamed world, no loading screens
- in-house engine with PBR
- no outsourced inventory management, minimal HUD (GS speculation: Dead Space like)
- optional tutorial
- fans of Gothic will definitely recognize the Piranha Bytes touch
- Pankratz says Gothic 3 was "too generic", "barely any dialogue", "stories not involving", promises to alleviate these issues in Elex
- no pick-one-out-of-three ending in Elex (apparently also a huge flaw of Gothic 3? i dunno)