Gothic is a title that holds quite the prestige. It is commonly considered one of, if not the best, “Euro RPGs”, not to mention one of the jankiest of experiences. It launched the career of original developer Piranha Bytes, who would go on to make the Risen and Elex series. Hoping to capture lightning in a bottle twice, THQ Nordic has given new studio Alkimia Interactive the quest of remaking this stone-cold classic and bringing the world of Gothic to not only a new player base, but also to that weathered original core fanbase, via Gothic 1 Remake. Have they Risen to the task? Let’s find out!
Prisoner of Fate
The world of Gothic is a dark and repressive place. During a war with the Orcs in which humanity really isn’t doing too well, King Rhobar II of the isle of Khorinis orders a giant magical wall to be erected around the “Valley of Mines”. His objective here is for criminals and slaves to mine powerful ore to fuel the war against the Orcs. Something goes wrong with the wall, and only non-living things can move freely through it (which is ideal for the ore, but less so for those delivering it). This creates an uneasy arrangement in which the leaders of the Prison Colony send out the ore in exchange for the materials and food they require. Obviously, not everyone in the colony benefits from this agreement, and this has created several camps with different ideas about how to escape this prison and face the ever-looming Orc armageddon.
You are thrust into the world as the “Nameless Hero”, and much like your name, there is absolutely nothing inherently special about you. Fortune smiles upon you, though; just as you are about to be thrown into the Prison Colony, a mage stops you and gives you a message to pass over to the Order of the Magicians, who are protected by “The Old Camp”. This one task puts the “Nameless Hero” on the course for greater things. But make no mistake, you’re not exactly a “Chosen One” here; you’re not special, and the Prison Colony and the wildlife of Khorinis are going to make damn sure you have zero delusions of grandeur.
One of my favorite things about Gothic, both the original and the remake, is that the world doesn’t exactly care for your existence. It doesn’t owe you anything. The characters will bully you, the wildlife will steamroll you, and you are literally grinding from the very bottom of the pile just to get an audience with the mages you have been asked to send the letter to. It’s oppressive, but it really provides you with the drive to not only take on any old quest but also explore around to find any advantage whatsoever in a survival of the fittest amongst the most vile humanity has to offer.
It’s a rather basic and broad story, but it’s the nuance of the Prison Colony location that really makes the story in Gothic 1 Remake. On a grander scale, it isn’t that special with its background of Orcs vs. Humanity. But for a tale entirely localized in the Colony, it’s yours, and it hates you, actually molding you to become just as bad as the other prisoners in here. There is no room for paragons of virtue in this camp-eat-camp world.
Starting From The Bottom
The long and short of Gothic 1 Remake is that it’s a fantastic remake of one of my all-time favorite games that does a brilliant job of ironing out some quirks, but it also adds in a few more. Intentionally or not, it emulates the previous Gothic titles almost too well at points.
Gothic 1 Remake is a third-person RPG. Combat is in real time, and there is a huge focus on immersion and difficulty to match the already dark and foreboding narrative. You start the game getting punched in the face, and that pretty much sets you right up for your first 10 or so hours of the game. You start off inept at everything, where every combat scenario can easily send you back to the title screen, and don’t even think of trying to lockpick from the get-go. The immersion levels are immense, as you need to slowly pick off small mobs of monsters, take on smaller menial tasks, and earn just enough EXP to level up. This slightly raises your stats and gives you Learning Points, which, combined with a large amount of ore, lets one of the game’s many masters train you in something that allows you to be slightly more proficient.
Combat has this sense of struggle. You’ll spend the first few hours trying to find or steal a half-decent weapon that you can barely swing around. After a little bit of training and learning enemy attack patterns, you can start to take on stronger foes and use better weapons. Up until then, you’ll have to fight smarter, run from predators and other prisoners who are more than happy to raid your inventory, and just cling onto anything you can in order to survive. It isn’t the most in-depth system in general, but combat in this remake feels much easier to understand than the rhythmic swinging of the original. It’s still weighty, and your stamina will run out quickly, turning you into a training dummy. This isn’t a character action game; each combat scenario is deliberate, and if you’re throwing hands, you need to be prepared to die each and every time.
Scratching and Clawing
You can pick up just about any item in Gothic 1 Remake; anything that isn’t nailed down can be taken. This is one way of making enough ore to slowly build up your weapons and armor. Ore is hard to come by, and the dynamic currency system of the game means you can’t just keep selling the same items to the same vendors. The prices they offer will drop as you sell more of the same items to them, and they have a finite amount of ore per day. You’ll find yourself running between vendors daily, trying to maximize the amount of ore you can get, hoping to give yourself an edge when it comes to the game’s many side quests, which also thankfully offer plenty of items and ore.
Outside of running tasks for people and stealing, you can also fish, cook, skin animals, and craft items, weapons, and magic, many of which can help supplement your income as well. These are all tasks that require you to be taught how to do them. One of your earliest choices in the game is going to be , “How are you going to get enough to get by?” , and if you don’t, you’ll find yourself coming up against wall after wall. It is possible to get through the game without investing in non-combat skills, but I would highly recommend that you just get immersed in the world and realize that you aren’t a chosen one, so you’ll have to claw your way to each and every victory.
New Look, Same Gothic
The main gameplay pull is building your “Nameless Hero”, working between the three camps, and trying to find a way out of the barrier while having to inhabit a world that just doesn’t want you there. The characters all react to choices you make, and at some point, you’ll have to decide which camp’s ideals you can work with, each of which are wildly different. The tone of the game does gradually shift towards the end and becomes a little more traditional, as do the quests. For me, Gothic and the Gothic 1 Remake will always be at their strongest in the earliest hours where survival is never guaranteed and no one has any idea who you are.
Where Gothic 1 Remake excels is that it took everything that makes the original Gothic still special to this day and made it more natural to play. The original game, to put it bluntly, has one of the quirkiest control schemes around. Alkimia Interactive has done wonders to make the game feel a lot more intuitive with the controls. The already atmospheric and immersive world has now never been easier to dive into with tweaks to movement and combat. Lockpicking has become more of a puzzle instead of just figuring out which direction to press, and quests have been added or adjusted slightly.
NPCs have routines, and the world has never felt so alive. It’s more immersive than ever and it just feels like such a lovingly crafted remake where the developers truly understood and appreciated the assignment. It truly feels like how I remember playing the original Gothic game many moons ago… except it’s not; it’s a true remake, and in my opinion, this is now the definitive way to play the game. It’s tougher than the original release, but to counter that, the game has more options now to get you to victory.
On the other hand, maybe the assignment was understood a little too well, which is to say it also has some technical issues like the original. Gothic was never the most stable of games, and the Gothic 1 Remake (at least in my experience on the base PlayStation 5) had a few issues. During my time in the Colony, audio would randomly just desync or drop out completely, which happened every single time I played for a session of a few hours; while a restart would fix it, it was annoying. Worse than that was that the game crashed a fair few times over my 35 hours of playing, and I also had a quest very early on just break because the NPC pathfinding failed on them. My advice is to make multiple saves and save often!
Modern Polish, Classic Euro-Jank
Alkimia Interactive have done an amazing job with the visuals and audio for the Gothic 1 Remake when compared to the original game, despite a few minor hiccups. It does look absolutely gorgeous at times, though with occasional pop-in and minor graphical loading issues. While textures and animations have been improved and brought up to a modern standard, the budget doesn’t seem to have quite reached all corners of the Prison Colony.
Wandering around a forest in a storm looks absolutely mind-blowing and really helps draw you into the world. On the other hand, iffy character models on some of the NPCs or textures not loading remind you that despite the budget and platform, the Gothic Remake still has a healthy dose of that classic “Euro-jank” common to these European RPGs of the time that extends from the gameplay over to the graphics and audio.
The music also fits the game’s style. It’s high-fantasy sounding and ebbs and flows with the action. It’s quieter and more subdued when you’re exploring, but will build and crash when it’s time to do battle. Each of the camps also has an iconic theme which really helps drive home the fact that each of these camps is run and handled very differently. The voice acting is serviceable, but you don’t have to go far to find someone quirky-sounding. It’s an upgrade from the original game, but it doesn’t quite match up to current AAA generation standards.
Verdict
Gothic 1 Remake is a special title. It bottles all the magic of the original game and has managed to tinker with it enough to keep it authentic but accessible to an entirely new fanbase. It’s still rough as all hell, but this only helps make it captivating. And in a world of gaming where stories are often told through cutscenes, the Gothic Remake makes you tell your own story through its actions, setting, and sense of challenge and immersion. It might be a bit more on the niche side thanks to its rough parts and difficulty, but for you masochists and immersion seekers, Gothic 1 Remake is going to take you right into the Prison Colony, beat you up, steal your ore, and by the Sleeper, you are going to thank it and go back for more!
GOTHIC 1 REMAKE IS RECOMMENDED
If you are looking for another RPG, check out our review of Clair Obscur: Expedition 33.
Many thanks go to THQ Nordic for a PlayStation 5 review code for Gothic 1 Remake.
Pride of utopia & greatest thing ever, I found the One Piece, Collected the Dragon Balls & won the Mortal Kombat Tournament in one night, it was quiet for me that night! Follow me on Twitter @powahdunk
