After 30 hours of playing Gothic 1 Remake, I think I can finally say I made something for myself. The basic wolves, which would maul me even as far as 12 hours into the game, finally stopped dealing damage thanks to all my resistances. Phew, I survived the infamous Gothic early game. It feels just like it did back in the day or… perhaps even better?
Not to jump the gun, because the other infamous part of Gothic is just how much it falls off for most players after this point, but it has been incredible to experience just how far Alkimia Interactive is willing to go to keep what I love about Piranha Bytes games alive. When the project was announced, and I saw the demo’s quippy protagonist bumble through the 2019 playable teaser, I never would have thought I’d be thinking of whether the full game is maybe better than the original.
I feel like Gothic has really made the rounds in the internet era, let alone since its 2001 debut, but for those unaware, it’s a hardcore third-person RPG from Germany. Hardcore both in the sense that it is quite difficult if you don’t know what you’re doing, and in the sense that most people cannot pick up the first item they find on the ground due to its controls on their first go around.
I’ve always gone to bat for both of these features, and felt that, if Gothic really was to be remade, depriving modern audiences of those experiences in favor of letting more people experience the main story, which was actually a lowlight of the original, would be a futile effort. Sure, the story of a man who unveils the secrets of a divided prison colony filled with criminals, magic, and demons is an okay enough hook, but it’s not what would ever make it stand out.
If you have heard of Gothic, it’s probably when searching for a specific RPG. Something that’s very immersive or perhaps hostile. As someone intricately familiar with the original, I jumped right into the hard difficulty and proceeded to die five times to the first enemy: the vicious mole rat. Don’t laugh at me; they have new moves! They do! They burrow underground and jump out at insane speeds.
Every enemy has a new trick up their sleeve. The wolves have a huge leap attack, scavengers delay some charges, bloodflies do so even more while also tracking you heavily. Most annoying are definitely the goblins, which now have a stone throw in their repertoire that seems impossible to dodge if you’re too close. Combine this with the newfound focus on the heft of your own attacks, and you have a new combat system that actually emulates the frustrations of the original incredibly well while sticking to what a lot of modern players are more familiar with.
That’s one of the great successes of the Gothic 1 Remake. There always was a strong foundation there, what with the really modern-feeling NPC AI, night and day system, and flexibility in dealing with a lot of situations, and it feels like they pushed it further. Old-school, immersive sim-style further. The silly kind. You’ll now be able to learn both climbing and diving, and jumping can become a way more reliable tool in getting to places you’re not supposed to. Haven’t seen an upgradeable swimming skill since Deus Ex, though it’s very likely I missed a few in-between.
Exploration is the one area that feels, well, it feels great, but you’re going up against arguably the greatest to ever do it. Piranha Bytes, who were the original developers of Gothic, created open worlds that were absolutely impeccable. Hand-placed items in all the hard-to-reach corners, incredibly rewarding moments of getting past a particularly difficult path. Progression was gated not by story, but by increasingly difficult encounters the further you deviate from the safe paths. The play area expanded as you got stronger, rather than by unlocking gates, but if you snuck into some spots you could get some amazing loot early on.
In comparison, in Gothic 1 Remake I very often found a dead body with nothing laying around it, which is just not something that I’d ever expect from the series. If it’s there, it’s meant to have at least a few ore nuggets lying around, some weapon, even a bad one, a magic scroll, or at least a few arrows. I understand that the extra graphical detail comes with some extra clutter, but this was a core part of this small-world design that sometimes feels missing.
Despite this, and the new art style making it harder to spot items and plants on the ground sometimes, Gothic 1 Remake looks fantastic. Even running it with a relatively low-end setup by modern standards, I can enjoy the many awesome details the team brought to the table. One thing that stood out to me in particular was the different bugs in each new area: scorpions in the desert, green spiders in the Swamp Camp. You’ll see them crawling around on objects very realistically; it’s such a weird detail to have that it ends up really fitting into Gothic perfectly.
I already have so many stories from Gothic 1 Remake that I never had in the original. Sneaking into the New Camp’s lake bar and getting chased around the base each time I wanted to get in. Scrounging up ore for a defense ring for an hour only to find it in the next dungeon. Getting actually punished for stealing from people was also new to me, with merchants declining to trade. This hurts big-time with the difficulty changing the economy, which is already quite different from the original. I am still scrounging for ore.
I should be entering Chapter 4 soon, which is where the original game’s story really picks up speed. I’ve already seen chapters be expanded and changed significantly, so finishing the game might still take longer than anticipated, which is exciting! So far I would say the story changes have been very beneficial, but the biggest twists are yet to come. I will leave that and much else for the full review, coming soon!
Mateusz is playing Gothic 1 Remake on PC with a provided review code. This review is based on the version of the game available at the time of writing.
