It's crazy to release a remake weeks after having dismissed the developers of the original game. In early July, Gothic creators Piranha Bytes, Reportedly closed as part of Embracer Group's mad dash to cut costs following its decade-long acquisition spree. Check out THQ Nordic's new game New gothic version The trailer below feels like watching a vivisectionist parade around in someone else's shoes. Still, the remake's developers, Alkimia Interactive, are not to blame for Embracer's failings, and I'm selfishly happy to see Gothic return as an Unreal Engine 5 production, even if I didn't play the original back in 2001.
Sin did Play the original game and in it 2016 Retrospectivepaints an absorbing portrait of a dark fantasy “microsociety” in which each community “has a reason for existing, a means of sustaining itself, a social order, and a long-term goal.” It’s a setup that reminds me of my beloved Road guardat the same time the sight of grumpy lizards slithering through the undergrowth makes me silently mutter “fus roh dah”.
Gothic is set in a magically quarantined penal colony, where human convicts mine ore for weapons to fight a losing war against the orcs. However, shortly before you enter the scene, the overseeing wizards screw up their calculations and become trapped within the valley. So, the prisoners take control of the mines and form a rebel nation consisting of three factions. One group is happy with the new status quo, trading ore with the king in exchange for the luxuries of the outside world. The second plans to escape the magical barrier, using ore as a catalyst. And the third, the swamp-dwelling “brotherhood” worships a mysterious god called the Sleeper. You are a random prisoner tasked with delivering a message to one of the factions, and things escalate from there.
Alkimia’s main goal with the remake is to reinforce Gothic’s life-sim element, in which humanoid NPCs and wildlife have distinct routines and habits, governed by a day-night cycle. As you wander around this small, wild, and desolate open world, you’ll see people rising early to repair the planks of the walkway, slaving away in the heat of the forge, stirring a pan over the kitchen fire after dark, and honing their arcane knowledge in the library.
The remake aims to build on the original’s diversity of behavior and create “a complex life simulation on a scale rarely seen before in a video game,” so busy that “it feels like all of this exists without the player,” to quote the trailer’s narrator. It’s hard to express something so elegant in an abbreviated gameplay presentation, of course. As far as I can tell, the guy with the frying pan is at it 24/7, eyes glued to the crispy grease, even as you stealthily play blackjack on his entourage. But it sounds fascinating, and the environmental expanse of city spaces and dungeons, crammed between forested mountains under a tropical membrane of sorcery, is very appealing. The original game’s mottled, torch-lit landscape has an atmosphere of its own, shaped by the technology of the time. This feels more like a lost corner of Skyrim, perhaps an undiscovered section of the Markath area.
You'll be able to explore, quest, fight, and fraternize in any direction from the start, cultivating the loyalty of individuals or groups by doing quests for them. The user interface is “minimalist,” in keeping with the first game's treatment of maps as if they were actual inventory items. Like Morrowind, you'll often navigate by way of NPC addresses, and like Morrowind, you might get lost. While details are sparse, the new developers are fleshing out some of the original game's storylines and introducing some of their own. There will also be some new areas to discover and other secrets, perhaps accessed by a new climbing system (which I haven't seen yet), but the general idea of the plot and setting are the same.
Speaking of attacks, this is a third-person action RPG built on the familiar trilogy of melee, ranged, and magic combat. Weapons include bows for shooting goblins in the head and two-handed axes that knock targets down. Spells include petulantly stomping the ground to raise a wave of icicles. Enemies range from packs of Tolkienian velociraptors to giant spiders to leather-and-horn-clad gobbos. From the looks of it, they’re trying to address one of Sin’s complaints about the original: melee combat is the most effective playstyle, most of the time. Mentioned but not shown during the presentation: “more complex crafting” and “more rewarding character progression.”
I think all this sounds fabulous, although much of it is because the original Gothic (which is currently £9 on GOG) sounds fabulous. Many RPGs feel generic because their settings don't reflect any particular story or drama at play, just the brutal compulsion to “world-build” by checking boxes like “orc,” “human,” and “mage.” Gothic's prison valley setting gives it a sense of meaning and character that gives substance to its systematic recreation of everyday life. Or at least, that's the impression I've formed, as a newcomer. I'm looking forward to playing. As for poor Piranha Bytes, let me end with a shout-out to Pitheada new studio co-founded by former Piranha developers Jennifer and Björn Pankratz to create “dark, dense action-adventures with deep storytelling and horror and RPG elements.” Hopefully they’ll ditch the unnerving edge of Embracer and continue making games of gothic stature for many years to come.
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