The original Gothic is easily in my top 20 favourite games of all time. Uniquely janky and infamously unforgiving, its early hours would eat Dark Souls for breakfast. Rather than a prophecy-infused narrative where you are a chosen one plucked out of obscurity, you spend most of your time in Gothic being a literal nobody – so weak that you’ll be killed off by vermin if you so much as venture off the main path. The game’s influence has been vast, but that legacy wasn’t enough to save developer Piranha Bytes from closure last year. Gothic 1 Remake therefore serves both as an opportunity for a whole new generation to experience the world of the Colony and a tribute to the developers who originally created it.
The first thing that becomes apparent when booting up Gothic Remake is the huge graphical upgrade. The original had an early 2000’s charm but wasn’t even cutting edge at the time. The new version contains some beautiful vistas and environments that uncannily replicate the original whilst looking far better than even my most rose-tinted memories could match. This becomes a double-edged sword at times, as taking time out to look at the views often results in you being slaughtered by wandering wildlife.
The initial launch build’s performance didn’t necessarily match up to this visual finery as frame drops were frequent and upscaling utilisation was inconsistent at best, but I’m glad to report that on PC at least this has improved greatly with patches in the past fortnight and the current experience is solid. On PS5 initially the game was locked to 30fps even on a Pro console but this has also been fixed in subsequent patches.
The voice acting here is good too, with a range of accents and styles to mix things up. This is particularly welcome as the game’s cast is narratively limited to fighting age men, with only a couple of women present. This is clearly a deliberate choice rather than an oversight, however, as the prison camp of the Colony is very much a man’s world (for good and ill). The only female representation comes in the form of women traded to the Colony leaders, an aspect that isn’t celebrated but instead used as a critique of the criminal nature of the factions.
The backstory to Gothic occurs completely away from your character. The land of Myrtana has been besieged and invaded by hordes of orcs, with the only way to fight back coming from the power of a mysterious ore. Desperate to maximise the productivity of this material, the King orders his most powerful sorcerers to encase the entire mining valley in a magical shield, trapping the population within. Living beings can enter the field but not leave, but the ore is freely able to be shipped to the King. However, the fact that the population is made up of criminals and prisoners means that they form factions with which the King must negotiate and pacify.
You come into the story as a no-name convict thrown into the Valley. Before your sentence, however, you are given a letter by one of the mages and your initial motivation is to deliver this to the Fire mages at the Old Camp. You are never given a name other than ‘Hero’, but this is not some prophesied destiny but rather a protagonist with a blank slate. How you proceed and in what ways you develop your character are almost entirely open with multiple approaches being viable if you know the right paths to take.
The opening hours of the original Gothic are legendary in their difficulty. While you can wield a weapon you have no skill with it and offer only clumsy strikes. The controls for this remake have been significantly refined, but it’s a key aspect that you are unskilled to start and gain proficiency over time. Even fighting the lowliest creatures is a gamble as one mistake can see most of your health bar removed, making death a constant threat. This remains the case for much of the first eight to ten hours as you’ll be scraping by to survive and trying to gather as much currency and experience as you can. Fortunately, these can be obtained through conversation quests as well as combat and so you set out to balance risk and reward in a very satisfying fashion. You probably won’t even have armour to equip for the first ten hours as this is mostly restricted to making a choice to join one of the factions – a choice that is only available when you prove your worth to them.
The first thing that happens in the game is that you get beaten up in a cutscene and then left unconscious on the shore of a lake. You awake to the dulcet tones of Diego, an influential figure at the Old Camp, and one who offers you advice and later training to improve your base skills in strength and dexterity. These two, along with intelligence for a mage build, are the only attributes to juggle, with health and mana increasing at set rates with your level.
This feels quite basic and streamlined when compared to the options in more modern games but the real character decisions come in the form of training. As you level up you gain learning points which can be used to develop specific skills if you find the right trainer in your journey. These range from proficiency with one handed weapons to diving, climbing, and a whole range of hunting abilities. Most trainers demand ore for their services, though, so prioritising is essential. It is very easy to make bad choices at the start of the game and be unable to make progress as your hero is too weak to progress and cannot afford to develop either.
