Before theElder Scrollsseries became the all-conquering mainstream RPG that it is today, there was Gothic. Released in 2001, over a year beforeMorrowindcame along, the original Gothic was, arguably, the first great 3D RPG, throwing you into a highly charged prison colony environment. You’d have to choose which faction to align with, each with its own intrigue and politics, which would drastically alter your path through the game, while NPCs had advanced AI behaviours that gave them daily routines and had them reacting dynamically to the things happening around them.
Piss an NPC off? They’d beat you up, knock you out, but usuallynotkill you, instead going through your pockets and taking what they deemed valuable. You could then track that NPC down to get your stuff back, but beware that the NPC might have friends who’ll come to their defence, sooner or later.
Gothic was a game before its time, overshadowed by its flashier Bethesda-made rival. With later games from developer Piranha Bytes not quite building on the potential showcased in the original or its 2002 sequel, the series faded into something of a niche—known and adored by a small but passionate community. In 2018, Spanish developer Alkimia Interactive (formerly THQ Barcelona) was tasked with remaking this PC classic. The remake’s been in development for over five years, and has gone through a drastic directional change since its ‘Playable Teaser’ came out four years ago.
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Now, alongside our resident Gothic guru Jason Moth, I got an exclusive look at the first 20 minutes of the revamped remake, and got to speak with its Game Director, Reinhard Pollice, about how they’re reviving the venerable RPG.
The Gothic Remake’s current direction, which opts for a gritty no-nonsense graphical style and a close observance of the world design and story beats of the original, was largely shaped by the strong, though not strictly positive, feedback to the Gothic Playable Teaser in 2019. The Teaser,which is still available on Steam, was heavily combat-oriented and quite divergent from the original game. But Pollice tells me that the teaser was always designed to gauge the fanbase’s feelings, rather than as a blueprint for what the game would eventually look like.
“We intentionally went in a direction we knew like ‘OK, we don’t think they will like this,’” Pollice begins. “But I think you cannot go on something where you are like ‘yeah, maybe that’s OK,’ because then you don’t get a strong reaction and for us it really worked out because we got a strong sentiment about what people liked about the original.”
I suggested that it was a bold strategy, to present something to a passionate, long-suffering that they felt wouldn’t be well received by said community, especially in times when people tend to make swift judgements and take what they play at face value. “I agree, and at times I was doubting that this would give us a good result, I was afraid that people would take only the negatives and say ‘Oh, they don’t know what they’re doing,’” admits Pollice. “So one of our core missions was to tell people that what we’re doing now has nothing really to do with the teaser, this really is a complete reboot.” With the Teaser continuing to get mixed reviews on Steam to this day, with players clearly concerned with the direction, it seems that not everyone’s got the message yet.
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But the gameplay presentation I saw definitelyisfaithful to the original game, closely replicating its early segments as you wake up at the bottom of a waterfall and meet Diego, who shows you the ropes. Made in Unreal Engine 5, the remake boasts some nice lighting, fog effects, and a cold colour palette befitting of the gritty world you find yourself in. I’d describe the art style as ‘no-nonsense,’ and Pollice says this is the intention. “We could have created a very artsy and unique look, but in the end I feel like the topic screams for something realistic.”
And while the visuals are certainly grounded, even I was overcome with a wave of nostalgia when I soaked in the view from the cliffsides down over the valley, where the mist-shrouded Old Camp was visible in the distance. I’m pretty sure I heard Jason gasp audibly.
But Gothic was never really a game about graphical prowess, and was always defined far more by the storytelling, the factions, and the robust AI. Pollice emphasises that the story will very much remain the same, as will the areas you’re able to visit, barring the occasional extra cave or other bits off to the side. Instead, it’s more about what’s already there becoming more detailed. “Some areas are just bigger and filled with more detail and more depth to give the world more soul and character,” Pollice tells us. “In general our world is about 20% bigger than in the original, and we use this space not to add to completely new stuff but to give more character, more depth, more detail and make a more believable world.”
Beyond seeing an exponential increase in the wholesome medieval clutter you’d expect to find in a world like this—tongs, tools, baskets of veggies—I also noticed that there’s a more elaborate cooking system this time round, which lets you cook fancier meals for stat buffs, and that famous AI system has been ramped up too, with more complex NPC behaviours creating a greater possibility of emergent scenarios.
Pollice is pleased that I grill him about this, proudly pointing out the easter egg in the studio’s name that ‘Alkimia Interactive’ abbreviates to ‘AI.’ “I can fully confirm AI is one of our core focuses,” he begins. “We definitely want to lean into that and expand on it, giving everyone more in-depth behaviours and reactions from the NPCs, but also from creatures.”
Pollice provides an example, talking about the dino-ostrich-like Scavengers, which he says will migrate to different parts of the game world depending on the availability of food and water. “They sometimes travel quite a long way, and it will create some interesting situations because there could be other creatures that they don’t like, and then they’ll fight.”
Combat was, infamously, never a strong suit of Gothic, and even around the time of release was one of the most criticised parts of the game. As we watch the protagonist in the Remake (who, in the presentation, is a character fans might recognise from the original game called Nyras, though you’ll be playing as the Nameless Hero in the full game) haphazardly swing a pickaxe at some Scavengers, Pollice says that the animations will change as you progress in a given skill, so Nyras’ clumsiness is very much intentional as he oafishly picks off the Scavengers.
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Mechanically, combat will feature directional attacks, in the ballpark of Kingdom Come: Deliverance or Chivalry, but simpler. “Our combat should be easy to pick up,” Pollice tells us. “It should not feel like a ‘dance’ where you basically have to just wait for the perfect moment before striking. It should still have a certain speed to it.” As per the original game, there are no shields to hide behind in the Gothic Remake, nor will you have to deal with the complexity of directional blocking.
Some areas of the world are being more heavily redesigned than others. Certain puzzles (in particular those in the Sleeper Temple near the end of the game) have been reworked for modern sensibilities, and Pollice confirms that the voice talent working on the game is all-new (he also mollifiedour Jason’s concerns about the prevalence of Cockneys in the trailer, confirming that there will in fact be a nice range of international accents across the game world, reflecting the diverse nature of the camps). While Alkimia isn’t collaborating with fellow THQ studio Piranha Bytes on the remake, they have taken on some of the original’s developers, most notably Audio Director Kai Rosenkranz, who composed music for the first three Gothic games.
Pollice appreciates the importance of modding to the Gothic community, having attempted to make a massive mod for Gothic himself 20-odd years ago. “The mod ended up bigger than Skyrim, and then we we realised, ‘oh, fuck, this is just so big, and now we have to fill it with content,’” he recounts. “We did something like a closed beta, we had people running around to make sure everything is traversable, we ended up doing like 11 bigger locations that were kind of OK gameplay-wise, but when we realised how much more work and people we would need, we gave up.”
For the remake however, Pollice points out that modding on Unreal Engine is a challenge “because there comes a constraint that you have to follow their rules on how to make modding possible, and this is especially relevant for level editing and assembling… it’s something we cannot promise for launch, but is on our radar because we know the mod community very well.”
It’s been a long journey for the Gothic Remake, and especially for Pollice who’s graduated from overambitious Gothic mods 20 years ago to overseeing a remake of the beloved game. There’s not that long to go now in the scheme of things, with Pollice saying that they “are targeting 2024, and will announce a date in the next couple of months,” but certainly the studio seems determined to abide by the particular principles that made the original game so special, adding depth and detail in areas where the tech of 2001 simply wouldn’t have been able to, while keeping those sacred foundations intact.
Gothic: Remake
WHERE TO PLAY
Head back to the mining colony as the Nameless One. In a hostile land filled with factions vying for control and overrun by prisoners, you’ll be thrown into the midst of a brewing conflict, where your decisions can change everything.
