Before the Elder Scrolls series became the all-conquering mainstream RPG that it is today, there was Gothic. Released in 2001, over a year before Morrowind came 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 usually not kill 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.
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.
A view of the camp in the original Gothic
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.