It’s a hell of a thing to showcase a remake weeks after kiboshing the developers of the original game. In early July, Gothic creators Piranha Bytes were reportedly shuttered as part of Embracer Group’s mad race to trim costs, following their decade-long acquisition binge. Watching THQ Nordic’s new Gothic Remake trailer, below, feels a little like watching a vivisectionist parade about in somebody else’s skin. Still, the remake’s developers Alkimia Interactive aren’t to blame for Embracer’s fuck-ups, and I am 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 her 2016 retrospective, she paints an absorbing picture of a dark fantasy “microsociety” in which every community “has a reason to exist, a means of providing for itself, a social order, and a long term goal”. It’s a setup that reminds me of my beloved Roadwarden, even as the sight of grumpy lizards slinking through undergrowth has me silently mouthing “fus roh dah”.
Gothic unfolds in a magically quarantined penal colony, where human convicts mine ore for weapons with which to fight a losing war against the Orcs. Shortly before you enter the picture, however, the overseer wizards screw up their calculations, trapping themselves inside the valley. Then, the prisoners seize control of the mines and form a rogue nation consisting of three factions. One group are happy with the new status quo, trading ore to the king in return for the luxuries of the wider world. The second plot to escape the magical barrier, using the ore as a catalyst. And the third, swamp-dwelling “brotherhood” worship a mysterious god called the Sleeper. You are a random prisoner who is tasked with delivering a message to one of the factions, and things escalate from there.
Alkimia’s principle aim with the remake is layering up Gothic’s life simulation element, whereby humanoid NPCs and the wildlife have distinct routines and habits, governed by a day-night cycle. As you wander this smallish, wild and desolate open world, you’ll see people rising bright and early to mend the walkway planks, slaving in the heat of the forge, wafting a frying pan over cookfires after dark, and polishing up their arcane lore in the library.
The remake wants to build on the original’s diversity of behaviour and create “a complex life simulation on a scale hardly ever seen before in a video game” – so bustling as to “give the impression that all this exists without the player”, to quote the trailer narrator. It’s difficult to express something that fancy in an abbreviated gameplay presentation, of course. For all I know, the guy with the frying pan is at it 24/7, eyes riveted to the crackling fat, even as you stealthily blackjack his entourage. But it sounds engrossing, and the setting’s spread of town and dungeon spaces, crammed in amongst forested mountains under a tropical membrane of sorcery, is very enticing. The original game’s mottled, torchlit landscape has an atmosphere all of its own, shaped by the technology of the day. This feels more like a stray pocket of Skyrim, perhaps an undiscovered section of the Markath area.
You’ll be able to explore, quest, fight and fraternise in any direction from the outset, cultivating the loyalty of individuals or groups by doing quests for them. The UI is “minimalistic”, in keeping with the first game’s treating maps as actual inventory items. As in Morrowind, you’ll often navigate by means of NPC directions, and as in Morrowind, you might get lost. While details are again scarce, the new developers are fleshing out some of the original game’s stories, and introducing a few of their own. There will also be a few new areas to discover and other secrets, perhaps accessed using a new climbing system (which I haven’t laid eyes on), but the overall thrust of the plot and setting are the same.
Speaking of thrusting, this is a third-person action role-player built around the familiar trifecta of melee, ranged and magic. Weapons include bows for goblin headshoots, and double-handed axes that bowl targets over. Spells include stamping your foot petulantly to kick up a wave of icicles. Enemies range from packs of Tolkien velociraptors to giant spiders and gobbos decked in leather and horn. From the looks of things, they’re trying to address one of Sin’s complaints about the original – melee being the more effective playstyle, much of the time. Mentioned but not shown during the presentation: “more complex crafting” and “more rewarding character progression”.
I think all this sounds fabulous, albeit largely because the original Gothic (which is currently £9 on GOG) sounds fabulous. Many RPGs feel generic because their settings do not reflect any particular history or dramatic stakes, just the brute compulsion to “build a world” by ticking boxes such as “Orc”, “human” and “wizard”. Gothic’s prison valley setup gives it a point and a character which lends substance to its systematic recreation of the day-to-day. Or at least, that’s the impression I’ve formed, as a newcomer. I’m keen to play. As for poor old Piranha Bytes – let me end with a shout-out for Pithead, a new studio co-founded by former Piranha devs Jennifer and Björn Pankratz to create “dense and dark action-adventures with a deep storyline and horror and RPG elements”. Here’s hoping they shrug off Embracer’s enervating touch and make games of Gothic stature for many years to come.
