Gothic Remake

Many years ago, I was looking for a role-playing game in the style of The Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion, but naturally there weren't nearly as many large open-world RPGs to choose from back then as there are now. Through various magazines and the then somewhat more primitive internet, I came across Gothic 3, which I ordered by post. Back then, you couldn't just pop down to the shop and pick up a game in a quarter of an hour, so I had to wait several days for it to arrive, and when the parcel finally landed, I was naturally absolutely buzzing at the prospect of experiencing this mysterious series I'd never heard of before.

I popped Gothic 3 into my CD-ROM drive and was introduced to a world filled with humans, orcs and a fair amount of Euro-jank. The combat system was clunky, the animations were stiff, and the whole thing felt like a game with a lot of good ideas that hadn't always been executed quite elegantly. Yes, if you haven't already picked up on it, this is a jab, and not a subtle one at that.

When I then received Gothic Remake to review, I thought I might give the series another go. Perhaps modern graphics, more accessible controls and around 25 years of additional technological development were exactly what was needed before I could finally get properly into the universe?

The game begins with the protagonist, who is aptly known simply as 'the nameless hero', being sentenced and thrown into the mining colony beneath the enormous magical barrier that cuts off everyone inside from the rest of the world. He has been tasked with delivering a letter to someone in the colony, but after a rather long flight down through the barrier, he is almost immediately attacked and robbed of all his belongings. It's a very effective way of telling the player where they stand in the hierarchy. You are nothing, own nothing and can do almost nothing.

Fortunately, Diego comes to the rescue and quickly explains how life works inside the colony. There are three different camps: the old camp, the new camp and the somewhat more religious community in the marshes, and if you want to survive, it's a good idea to figure out who you want to work with. Diego also makes it very clear that you should stick to the paths and avoid sticking your nose too far out in any direction, because pretty much everything outside the camps can kill you. It's not just a little dramatic warning that games often give, before you mow down thirty enemies five minutes later. Diego means every single word.

I have rarely experienced a game where you should listen so carefully to the person you meet at the start. Wolves, giant rats and strange lizards can tear you to pieces with just a few attacks, and some enemies barely need to give you an annoyed look before you're lying dead on the ground. You have no proper weapon, no armour and not even a map of the colony. When I reached the old camp, I discovered that a map cost ore nuggets, which is the game's currency, but at that point I couldn't even afford anything resembling a folded piece of parchment. Unlike most modern role-playing games, you get neither a free map, a magic compass nor a little GPS arrow to guide you by the hand. Gothic Remake expects you to find your way using roads, buildings and the landscape, or to pay your way out of the problem once you've earned the necessary nuggets.

That might sound like a complaint, and initially that's certainly how I experienced it, but it's also a very central part of Gothic Remake's philosophy. You start from the very bottom and have to work your way up the hierarchy. If you want to enter the castle in the centre of the old camp and deliver your letter to the fire mages, you can't just walk up to the guard and explain that you're the protagonist. You must first prove your worth by helping people in the camp, forging connections and getting the right people to put in a good word for you.

It sounds good, and it is - some of the time. But for the first few hours, I felt I lacked a bit of agency, that is, a greater overarching motivation to tackle all these little tasks. I knew full well that I had to deliver the letter and, ideally, find a way to get out of the colony, but it took a long time before I felt that the game gave me an actual narrative to latch onto. It could have done with a little spice sprinkled over the rather standard mission structure, so that the many small errands felt connected to something bigger. The combination of a main story that remains hidden and a world where virtually anything can kill you made the start feel rather limited and, at times, downright frustrating.

On the other hand, you're rewarded if you have enough patience to get 10 or 15 hours into Gothic 1 Remake. Once you've got a map, some better gear and a few skills that mean you no longer drop dead every time an animal sneezes in your direction, the world slowly begins to open up. Suddenly, you dare to venture further away from the camps, explore paths and caves, and find out what is actually going on beyond the barrier. It was here that Gothic Remake began to show me why the original game has achieved the status it has, for the world is truly exciting to explore once you feel you have even a small chance of survival.

Progression isn't just about levelling up and getting better stats on your gear. You have to seek out specific people to learn skills and improve your attributes, and this costs learning points and often ore nuggets as well. If, for example, you want to be a hunter, you need to find someone who can teach you how to skin animals and extract teeth or other valuable parts from the animals you kill. I would strongly recommend investing in this early on, because it gives you far more items to sell, and thus a more stable income. The game actually tried to tell me this quite early on, but I had my Skyrim blinders firmly in place and just ran about haphazardly, ignoring the advice people gave me. One of the first hunters explained very clearly how important it was to be able to make use of the animals you killed, but I obviously thought I knew better. I didn't.

Once all these elements fell into place, the Gothic 1 Remake blossomed like a flower in full bloom. I started running around, exploring the vast and incredibly beautiful areas, and actually had a lot of fun with it. As the biggest bonus, the main story also started to take hold, and I finally got the motivation I'd been lacking at the start. It was a really cool experience, but I also have some concerns on behalf of new players who do exactly the same as I did, simply venturing out into the world without realising how important it is to listen to the people you meet.

That is, in fact, one of the most interesting aspects of Gothic 1 Remake. The game has tutorials, but they are hidden within the world and in conversations with its characters. You don't just get a big box on the screen telling you to go and find a hunter and learn how to skin a wolf. Instead, you meet a person who talks about their own experiences and explains that you are new, weak and should learn to make use of the animals you kill. It feels more natural and fits the universe really well, but it also requires you to actually listen.

It serves as a rather elegant piece of world-building, because the world feels populated without making every single person a central character in your story. Most are simply people who work, sleep, eat and try to survive in the colony. They aren't necessarily standing around waiting for the protagonist to come by so they can give him fifteen ore nuggets for picking three flowers. Gothic Remake attempts to create a world that exists independently of the player, and when it succeeds, it is one of the strongest aspects of the experience. The handcrafted world and the distinct social hierarchies of the various camps are also a central part of the faithful modernisation that Alkimia Interactive has sought to create in Unreal Engine 5.

The combat system, the magic system and the game's various survival elements are a bit of a mixed bag. The melee combat isn't necessarily very advanced at the start. You swing your sword, hit something and hope it dies, which it mostly does later in the game once you've got better gear and more abilities. Gradually, you can chain together multiple attacks and learn new techniques, but the controls still feel a bit loose, and the combat is certainly not the main reason I would recommend Gothic Remake. The magic works in much the same way. You acquire various spells, cast them at enemies and keep an eye on your mana until it runs out.

There's a surprisingly good cooking system, and later on you learn alchemy and gain access to potions, which of course heal far more effectively, but that also requires investment and the right teachers. I really like the fact that food isn't just a gimmick that you pick up and then forget all about, but an important system, especially in the brutal early stages. You can even choose to play with permadeath.

As you might guess, Gothic Remake is no easy ride, and there will be some who love it and others who hate it. But everyone can agree that glitches, bugs, technical hiccups and elements that just don't fit together are distracting. And that brings us to so-called "Euro jank". The Gothic series is one of the games that practically coined the term. Gothic Remake was developed by a different studio, but still suffers from some of the same jank, which perhaps makes sense given that it's trying to stay very true to the original.

If you run into a house and get too close to a table, the protagonist doesn't always stop neatly in front of it. Instead, he might suddenly run up onto the table, as if furniture were just alternative staircases. I've also encountered enemies whose artificial intelligence had clearly crashed, so they just stood there staring blankly at me whilst I shot them from a distance, and I could almost see the drool running down the corners of their mouths. Other times I got stuck in textures or geometry and had to wiggle the protagonist free like a shopping trolley with a faulty wheel.

So, would I recommend Gothic Remake to you, my dear readers? Yes, I actually would, but with one very important caveat. Gothic Remake is a truly exciting role-playing game if you manage to crack its code, and I hope my review can help a little with that. The world is beautiful, the characters are interesting, and as you dig your way through the many small missions and social hierarchies, you'll also find a really good main story, which I've deliberately not said much about, because it deserves to be experienced without spoilers.

If you have the patience to listen to the NPCs, follow the advice you're given and accept that your character starts out as the colony's answer to a wet paper bag, then Gothic 1 Remake slowly opens up and offers a challenging yet satisfying role-playing experience. If you're more impatient and just want to go out and start killing from level one, you'll be punished severely, and the game will likely feel like something that's actively trying to make you stop.

Personally, however, I would recommend Gothic 1 Remake. It is very faithful to the original, for better or worse, and the surface is still rough, prickly and full of Euro-jank. But if you scratch beneath it long enough, a rather fine gem emerges. A slightly grubby and uneven gem, to be sure, but still a gem.