Gothic's Remake is Happening! But Don't Hold Your Breath Yet

Sounds beautiful, doesn't it? I almost cried with tears when reading the above statement on the welcome screen after launching the demo version of the Gothic's remaster. Two hours later, after the fun was over, I was in danger of running out of tissues again. This time it was not tears, but sweat – sweat that came dripping down my face as I tried to imagine how in the hell I was supposed to bring to you the news: that the upcoming project seems like a complete disaster...

I know what you're thinking. "Oh, he'll mock the venerable Gothic, the miserable journalist, who played so many triple-A western RPGs and now can't bear a game that's more difficult and doesn't show every mission marker in plain; a game that doesn't hold him by the hand.” God, I wish the people of THQ Nordic hadn't played any western triple-As before they started considering the resurrection of the German legend. It takes a lot of imagination to find any trace of the heritage of Piranha Bytes' great-grandfather in the demo I played.

I won't go into details of what's exactly in the demo and what it looks like – I assume you all will be playing it soon (if you're not doing it already). I will go straight to the point and explain why, in my opinion, this tree will not bear decent, Gothic fruit.

Gothic only in the name

The main issue is the thing that I've already pointed out. THQ Nordic is trying to make Gothic an enjoyable, and as accessible game as possible (even it's still quite difficult), which will be able to sell hundreds of thousands of copies. The publisher clearly would like to cater to not only PC, but also console (sic!) players who might want to break away from games like GreedFall, The Witcher 3 or even (oh horror) Assassin's Creed: Odyssey.

Feast your eyes, that's the best view of the Old Camp we'll get for now.

Just look at the screenshots. See all the overbearing, "cutting-edge" post-processing effects? Vivid colors, bright lighting, dense shadows, clouds of particles – all the goodies provided by Unreal Engine (no, Piranha Bytes did not delegate its own technology to create the remake). It’s perfect for drawing the attention with screenshots and buying the consumer before they see the game in motion, and learn that the end result just looks bad – unless you're still impressed by the graphics of The Witcher 2.

The second thing is animation. I can't help but feel that when THQ Nordic sat down to draw out the project's main points, the first three items on the priority list looked like this:

1. motion-capture dialogues;
2. motion-capture combat;
3. cut-scenes, cut-scenes, and even more cut-scenes (of course in motion capture).

Can you still remember what it looked like in the original? We watched a short, cinematic introduction, and then immediately took full control of the Nameless. And here? First, there's the intro, then a lengthy cut-scene with explosions, then a short gameplay sequence with minimal interactivity (movement and combat tutorials), and another lengthy cut-scene... After that, probably a fifteen-minutes-long, "piece-de-résistance" dialogue with our favorite Diego, who spits words at a pace that would seem apt if he was explaining heliocentrism to a 4-year-old kid, and each phrase is accentuated by an animation directly from the motion capture studio. Truly, your majesty! To make matters worse, there's no way to skip any of these scenes, no "spare me the rest of this chatter" – the player has to watch the spectacle from beginning to end.

Only after Diego is finished with his oratory, explaining to the infant how bad the world is and just how inhospitable conditions prevail in the valley – only then can you hit the road and sink your teeth into the game's mechanics... or maybe: the game's mock-up mechanics. Here, you will finally reach the eye of darkness of this remake – the markers, constraints, and... being led by the hand. The pure horror.

If careful exploration is too hard...

Gothic was peculiar because, among other things, it didn't treat the player like an idiot. It didn't keep you on a leash, pointing it's finger like "here, this item's shining, pick it up." It didn't lecture you on the rules governing the world. It didn't tell you "It is not safe to go alone; don't go to the Old Camp until you have found a decent weapon" (and it didn't even give you an not-decent one after less than a minute of gameplay). And it certainly had no objections for the player to make mistakes, to make thousands of them, and thus learn the rules of the game.

Gothic confirms to Hitchcock's golden rule. The man would not be pleased.

All of the listed flaws are a sample of the updated Gothic. Diego no longer appears to give some advice and go his own way – here, the shadow from the Old Camp takes the Nameless under his wing, nursing him throughout the entire prologue. Markers highlight objects and containers from afar, and it's impossible to disable them. Invisible walls are protecting the player from falling down or drowning (you can't swim at all). Fortunately, you can break your bones falling from (some) cliffs.

And the simplifications don't end there. Lock picks never break, every attempt to open a chest is a guaranteed success. Restoring health during combat is no longer problematic, because a pop-up wheel menu has been added – with that, time slows down, and if that wasn't enough, the potions and food are consumed at once, without an appropriate animation. Animations were also excluded from crafting. Sitting around a bonfire, you just select the desired dish from the transparent menu, and the item is added to your inventory with a single click. How convenient! How unimmersive…

This is not a sucker backstab. Cayden has just been ignoring my challenge for a duel... I'm not even sure it's a glitch.

I know, I'm being pretty harsh – it's just an early demo, after all – but the list of cardinal mistakes is nowhere near exhausted. Gothic was also a game that encouraged you to look for unconventional solutions at all times. A treasure is guarded by a monster you can't beat? Lure it away and let the hunters in the nearby camp take care of it. A miner offers you some priceless item – say, a spiked baton – but you don't have enough money? Sneak into his cabin at night and steal what you need. Cunningness – or just thinking out-of-the-box – was definitely desirable in the Valley of Mines.

At times, the remake does look pretty good.

Unfortunately, the remake completely neglects that spirit of shrewdness. Sure, tasks can be solved in more ways than one – but it's more about moral choices that are so fashionable today (I almost lost it when a message suddenly appeared in the corner of the screen, saying: "Diego will remember this") than about the open-ended world design and gameplay mechanics. And it's not difficult to prove it.

Try to break the seal and look into the letter that the Nameless has to deliver to the Fire Mages – i.e. do the same thing that the original warned you against, but didn't prevent from doing. Not here. The letter is protected by a "quest-related item" label – you can't do anything else with it than what the game allows, you have to follow the instructions from the journal, step by step, point by point.