Just some early spoiler questions for whoever knows

I must say, after years of waiting for news on this, I was blindsided. Somebody randomly told me it was out. Not even "fixing to come out" but literally available to buy. And here I'd been looking for ways to fill a rare gaming drought. Please forgive my long-windedness but I'm pumped at finally getting my hands on this.

So, question 1: In the original Gothic, there were two facets of the gameplay that game the game a compelling edge. The first being that things to fight/kill were finite. Meaning things either did not respawn, or the circumstances that led to them respawning were themselves limited. This gave decent heft to the sense of item/money value across the board. The second facet being that if you didn't have certain tools on your person when you killed enemies, those enemies would not drop every piece of loot that they could.

Most players were pretty much guaranteed to "waste" resources by killing enemies before one was even aware those enemies could drop teeth or whatever. Maybe I'm just a sucker for 90s-era "pat myself on the back"-style mechanical rewards, but I appreciated the system, and made it a bucket list item to play the game "right" if I ever returned to it. (And I think the Risen games did sort of the same thing, too.)

I haven't really started the remake in earnest but I have a suspicion things may be, well, not entirely the same in one or both of these regards. Which would be disappointing, but eh, not crushing. It wasn't as though losing a few teeth meant the difference between being able to beat the game and not. But I'd still like to know. Fixing to follow the starting dude as he kills his way through the starting area, and didn't want to sheepishly trip over my own legs in more or less the same manner yet again.

Question 2: How much VRAM does the last texture setting actually take, in real world use? I'll use it if I can get away with it, but the game made a point of warning me off. I can put two and two together—it sounds like they're talking about 20+ GB.

Question 3: Meatbugs. This may sound silly, but I always felt bad for these things in the early games. They're just roly polies, obviously. Would I put myself in dire straits if I chose not to kill any of them? I know there may be a quest involving their meat and I'll cross that bridge when I come to it, but otherwise, whatcha think?