Gothic - Possible Remake?

THQ has made a playable teaser of what a possible Gothic remake could look like to find out what the fans think of it. It will show up in your Steam library if you own a Piranha Bytes product.

Surprise, Surprise! Here's a playable Teaser for a Possible Remake of Gothic!

Is it a Gothic remake? Not yet, but it can become one: THQ Nordic releases playable prototype on Steam, asks for the players opinion.​

Barcelona, Spain / Vienna, Austria, December 13th, 2019: „Welcome to the colony!" - how is it possible that 18 years have passed since we first heard that phrase at the beginning of Gothic, the game that set a milestone in the history of German fantasy RPGs, such as Risen and Elex? Since then, we all have grown older, acquired some wrinkles, and are laughing at how we look in pictures from the early 2000s - or how games looked back then.​

But, what if we could turn back time, take everything that was great almost 20 years ago, and put it in a beautiful modern look (let's say powered by Unreal Engine 4) along with improving some things that were not that great, like the combat system, for example?

To find out what the true Gothic fanbase thinks of a modern remake of the cult classic RPG, THQ Nordic and it's new Spanish development team, THQ Nordic Barcelona, will start an experiment. Today, a free playable prototype (Gothic Playable Teaser) of what a new Gothic could look and feel like will appear in the Steam Library of everyone who owns a game from Piranha Bytes, be it Gothic 1-3, Risen 1-3, or ELEX. They can play the yet-untitled Gothic Remake project and roam around the Mining Colony of Khorinis. After that, THQ Nordic is eager to learn from the players through a survey following the completion of the prototype, whether and how it should proceed with the production of a full Gothic Remake, or leave the heritage and the great memories associated with it untouched.

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Here is the teaser video:



And a comparison video:



More information.

I've searched for it in my steam library and I can't find anything. Does anybody have it in their library? Post a screenshot of how it looks? Also, the link to its steam page (from the youtube video description) seems to be broken, and just redirects to the root steam domain.

As far as the "remake" is concerned, it does not look very good. It looks way too early to be shown. Looks more like a fan effort, and not a professional remake.

But I doubt you could remake it and keep all of the things that made it awesome. But I'd like to be proven wrong. I'm afraid so much of that game, and what made it awesome for me, is very much tied to my memory of it. And this looks kinda bad compared. And I did replay it fully this year, and after getting over the outdated graphics, I still found the same level of enjoyment I originally did.

private videos

porcozaur said:

private videos

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Yeah, seems the early access was a mistake. They've been made private. It's something they probably plan on making public later on.

"....along with improving some things that were not that great, like the combat system, for example?"

This would inspire more confidence if any of their games had good combat to this day.

You can see one of the video on Reddit.

Little bit excited but I would prefer a new Gothic game instead.

Looks like they are using the Elex game engine. Wonder if it will be Piranha Bytes or a smaller unknown developer of THQ Nordic? Fingers crossed it will be Piranha Bytes.

I must admit, seeing the 1H gameplay video, I'm a lot more impressed than I was with the 1min one. Looking pretty good. I must say I'd be curious to try it out. But of course, I'd just see it as a different vision on the original. Not a replacement. You cannot replace the original.

Downloading..!

i am now beyond happy !

Seems hard to play. Designed for gamepads. Very zoomed in view. Diego talks so... sloooow...

Ok, I downloaded and spent around 15 mins with the demo. And I don't like it. I understand it's an early sample, but the look and feel of the game is gone. Gothic 1's world felt very prehistoric and primitive. Very low-fantasy, aside from the magic. So that's gone. It's very much generic fantasy now, from the looks of it.

And the lighting is sometimes decent, sometimes awful. But the constant abuse of lens flare is really annoying. If I'm carrying a torch I get lens flare from that. And light source seems to cause lens flare. But anyways, that's minor stuff.

Another thing I dislike is if they intend to use the For Honor combat system. It's similar in spirit to how it was in G1, but it's way too much like For Honor. And it's janky, but again, that could be fixed given enough time and polish.

I think, now that I've tried and thought about it more, I'm not sure who this game is for. And what are they trying to capitalize on by reusing the Gothic lore and story and a little of the world-building elements, but none of the actual atmosphere and thing that actually made Gothic what it was.

I think I would very much prefer a full remake of the original, in every conceivable way, except graphics and maybe fine-tune the combat system. But everything else, world design, character voices/dialogue, etc etc must be the same. Sort of like how they're doing the FF7 remake. This re-imagining of Gothic, seems to lose all the elements that made Gothic special. So then, why do it at all?

danutz_plusplus said:

So then, why do it at all?

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Money that's why and I'll be one to buy it.

Also if I want to play the original Gothic in all its Janky form I still can for the 25th time.

So for me I don't care if it has new audio and a new story-line.

Update: At this point I don't see anyway to salvage the old story-line due to the last few poor games mangling the story. You would either have to retcon them or start over.

Couchpotato said:

Money that's why and I'll be one to buy it.

Also if I want to play the original Gothic in all its Janky form I still can for the 25th time.

So for me I don't care if it has new audio and a new story-line.

Update: At this point I don't see anyway to salvage the old story-line due to the last few poor games mangling the story. You would either have to retcon them or start over.

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It's funny, Gothic 1 was such a lighting-in-a-bottle game. It worked great both in gameplay and the story/characters. Gothic 2 improved a lot on gameplay, but the story went downhill in my opinion. The last chapters are so forgettable that I constantly have an issue remembering how it ended. Gothic 1 ended beautifully. The whole design of gradually hearing about the Sleeper, as this mythological being that you initially think is just lore for lore's sake, and then it turns out the creature is integral to what happened with the Colony, and the key to getting out. So perfect.

Yeah, I have no hope of a good story being told after Gothic 2. It's obvious that Gothic 1 was such an amazing accident storywise, that it turned out as good as it did.

That's what's confusing me about this project. They say they want to pay homage to the original Gothic. But in what way? Which of the great elements of Gothic 1 do they plan to try and recreate or make a spiritual successor to? Because I'm not seeing it. Tides of Numenera was a proper spiritual sequel. I'm not sure what this is. It's a mismash of old story elements, but told in a different way, in a different world, but with the same world rules.

Maybe I'm just being too negative. But even the fact that the publishers will decide whether to do this project or not, based on feedback from the community, seems really weird to me. Like they don't have a vision that they believe in, are unsure about what they're doing, so they want to give an early taste to see if we'd like it. I'd love the project to be made by someone who really believes in this project.

As I said, I'd love it if they did a remake that is a close to the original as possible. Just remake all the 3D art/assets/animations as close to the original vision. Remaster the music and dialogue, but leave then exactly the same as far as recordings (there are some bad voice-overs, true, but I think those are endearing in this sort of title, but maybe redo the worst ones? But absolutely do not touch the main cast). Basically, just do a graphical upgrade and leave everything else the same. That's probably the only way I'd love and accept it.

Oh, and someone said it's using the ELEX engine? Did ELEX use Unreal Engine, because this uses UE4.

It won't have any new content, correct? I mean, I'm ok with how Gothic looks now, so if it's simply update graphics, I'll do without. However, if there is new content, that might be quite different.

danutz_plusplus said:

Oh, and someone said it's using the ELEX engine? Did ELEX use Unreal Engine, because this uses UE4.

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Well that was my guess before I watched the longer video and read more info.

Actually, scratch my negativity.

If they won't do anything else with the Gothic franchise, I'll take this remake. But make the combat better. The way it is now, I like it a lot more in Gothic 1 than in this demo.

Gothic 1 still feels BETTER!!!!!!