Honest feedback from a longtime fan.

[Sully van Richard]

As a long time Gothic fan, I am overall satisfied with this demo, although it’s far from perfect and some of the issues I have with it are pretty substantial in regard to the core identity of the franchise. It is however a huge improvement over the playable teaser from 2019.
There are few games which had such a profound impact on me in my formative years like Gothic 1&2 had. Besides Doom, Blood and Baldur’s Gate 2 Gothic 1 & 2 had the most impact on my preferences and ideas of good game design. Firstly, I will outline the most important aspects of Gothic’s game design and then I will use that framework to compare it to the design presented in this demo.
It is also important to consider that the original Gothic was far from perfect and had some major issues, which for me justifies the idea of a remake to work on the shortcomings of the original game. The goal should be to keep the overall core identity of the game while ironing out the shortcomings. For me personally, pure graphics are not as important as the art direction, which in my opinion has a much deeper impact on the atmosphere and feeling of a game. So, while I appreciate the updated graphics, it is important to remember to stick to the art style of the original as close as possible. They did a pretty good job so far, but for me it still does not hit the sweet spot yet.
Please keep in mind that this is just my opinion and there are many more perspectives to consider and that some of them might have contrary ideas. This comes from a Gothic veteran who played these games over and over again since childhood.

The Original:
In my opinion the most important pillars which form the fundament of what makes the original Gothic so unique are the following:
1. Progression
2. Exploration
3. Immersion
These three aspects are directly intertwined with one another to create the experience of Gothic. For example, in G1 (nearly) the whole gameworld is technically explorable from the very beginning of the game, but many areas are locked away by creatures which the player won’t be able to defat until they get stronger. No one is stopping you from going into the Orc territory (the guards will warn you though), but you probably will not survive that trip. So, in order to explore these areas, the player has to get stronger and the stronger the player will get the more areas open up to the player.
Progression in Gothic feels extremely satisfying, since the player can feel every new level up and piece of equipment. You will not change out your weapons constantly because of an incremental damage increase, but rather you will find a new weapons after hours and really feel the upgrade. Enemy NPCs and monsters also have a fixed level and will not scale to you, so when you come back to a creature that you had no chance of beating earlier you now may obliterate them. Also, monsters do only respawn at set points in the story, so if you cleared an area, it will stay empty until you progress into the next chapter. This means that if you want to farm, you’ll have to keep exploring.
What makes the world also very encouraging to explore is that everything is handcrafted. Every item, enemy and NPC is placed by hand and thus has a reason to be there. The world is also pretty small compared to other open worlds, but it is full of memorable landmarks. After your first playthrough you will know the ins and outs of the colony like it is your home. This is mainly because you will travel between locations multiple times and in the beginning, you will have to orient yourself without a map. Even after acquiring a map, you will probably learn the paths between the most important locations by heart. Retreading the same paths over and over again sounds boring? I replayed this game more times than any other RPG and I can safely say that that is not the case, mainly because of the aforementioned integration of the progression system. The first time you travel to the old mine through the forest you will avoid most of the wildlife and stick strictly to the road. The next time, however, you will be stronger and can explore a little bit more into the wilderness besides the road. This concept holds the relatively small world fresh and gives you the motivation to get stronger. One of the most unique aspects about Gothic’s progression is that you feel the change as your skills increase, for example if you learn higher ranks of combat your animations will change and you’ll be able to perform better combos. In the beginning your character will hold one handed weapons with both hands and you can only swing once, but later on the character will hold them accordingly and can chain multiple attacks together.
Immersion is found in every aspect of the game, from the minimalistic UI to NPC behaviour. NPCs will react to your actions: Draw your weapon near them and they will also draw their weapons, tell you to put it away and after a time attack you if you don’t. They will beat you out of their homes and become scared of you after you beat them down. You also will have to find teachers to increase your skills, and they will explain to you how it works.
This aspect is further underlined by the minimalistic UI in the game. The only bit of UI is your health bar. Other elements will be added when needed. For example, if you target an enemy, you’ll see its name above it and its health bar at the top of the screen. If you equip a spell, you’ll see your mana bar.
The game will also not pause when you go into your inventory and eating food will take time as the animation plays out, meaning you can’t just go into your inventory mid fight and eat 50 cheese wheels to heal up.

The Remake:
In this section I will try to identify the core problems I had with the demo. There are some more issues which I will not go into, such as performance and the key bindings which I think will be fixed for the final version anyway. At the end of the day this is a prerelease demo, and these kinds of problems are to be expected.
I played through the demo multiple times now. The first time with German voiceover, the second time I tried the English one and afterwards I messed around and tried out some stuff. These are the aspects which stood out to me:

Reactivity: As outlined above NPCs should react accordingly to your actions. This is not always the case in this demo. For example, Diego killed me after I called him an old man, which is extremely out of character for him. Sure, he would beat you up, but as he is responsible for recruiting for the Old Camp, killing a potential member for seemingly nothing does not compare. Also, I was robbing the place blind right in front of Diego and Whistler and they did not react to it at all. However, in some instances NPCs seem to react accordingly to your actions (Kirgo will react to you drawing your weapon) so this might just be buggy.
Also, I blocked myself from completing the Demo (this will play into some of my other criticisms). I beat up Drax and afterwards he wouldn’t talk to me anymore which made it impossible to complete the quest and ultimately the demo. But as I said, this might still be buggy.

Interactivity: Gothic 1 was really ahead of its time when it came to interacting with the world. Most objects were interactable, which helped immersion extremely. This might seem a small issue, but I feel like it is critical to the identity of Gothic. When I picked up the guitar in the demo and I was not able to play it, I was a little bit disappointed, although I was expecting as much. I hope that interactions like that will be possible in the final game and maybe even expanded upon. For example, when you start playing the guitar at a campfire other NPCs might join in? Just an idea.

Combat & movement: Combat & movement feel awkward and delayed. I know this is intentional, but I feel like this is the wrong approach. Yes, the original controls where “clunky” or “janky”, but this mostly stemmed from the awkward control scheme, where you had to press multiple keys to do an action, but after getting accustomed to that system the controls were pretty responsive and precise. Admittedly, I grew up with that system, but I still think that the control scheme in Gothic 1 is not as bad as it often is made out to be, you’ll just have to get used to it. And in the beginning, it is supposed to be slow and awkward as your character is not a trained fighter. In the remake everything feels too delayed however, even after upgrading your sword fighting skill.

UI: Huge improvement over the playable teaser here, but still not fully there yet. When you want to pick something up, there are too many symbols there. There is the pickup symbol, a prompt for which button to press to pick it up and after picking it up it shows you the name, the category symbol and the symbol of the item itself. Then the item will be marked with an exclamation mark in your inventory (please get rid of that or let us toggle it). This is too much redundant information. Just give us the name when you target something and nothing else. If I see an apple and the word apple appears above it when I target it, it is enough for me. I know how to pick it up and I will also know what I picked up and I know that it will be in my inventory afterwards. At least give us the options in the menu so that every player can set it up the way they like it. Overall, the UI looks too clean and generic. The original was also minimalistic, so I’m not sure which approach to take here, but an overall redesign might not be the worst idea. I like the fact, that the inventory does not take the whole screen, so you still can see the world.

Hopes and wishes:
Here are some things I want to see in the full version of the remake, which are not possible to judge the state of in this demo:

Multiple solutions for quests:
There were some quests in Gothic 1 which could be solved in different ways. I really want to see more of that and logical consequences depending on the players choices. It is hard to judge from the demo how this will be handled, and I think there were possibilities to incorporate that in the demo. For example, you should be able to kill Drax and Ratford and just take over their camp but then the Shadowbeast might kill you, because you are alone in the wilderness. Or the player could just sleep in the bed at the exchange zone and then get beaten up by Diego instead of Nyras just telling the player that “they will kill [Nyras] if [he] sleeps in that bed”. This also reminded me of the character in the playable teaser who would tell the player everything which is happening. In short: Show, don’t tell.

Nonlinear story:
The worst aspect of the original Gothic was the linearity of the story after chapter one. No matter which camp you join, from chapter two onward every player will have the same story. In chapter two you will be sent by the Old and New Camp to the Sect Camp to “spy on them”, but you’ll basically just play their story. There is so much potential here to increase replayabilty. For example, the main quest of the Old Camp in chapter two could be to defend a delivery of goods on the way to the mine whereas as a member of the New Camp you’ll have to attack that delivery caravan (which could also be affected by the decisions of the player during the Test of Faith). The finale of chapter two could involve negotiations between the Old Camp and the Sect Camp to attack the minecrawlers together (which would make sense for both sides), while as a member of the New Camp you’ll have to search for a secret entrance to sabotage the mine or something like that. There are so many possibilities to tell the story from different perspectives depending on the player’s choices. I think this is one aspect which could be improved upon immensely from the original. This also plays into my next point.

More side content in later chapters:
After chapter one there are basically no side quests anymore and you’ll just follow the main story. Gothic 2 did a much better job in that aspect, where you could visit earlier acquaintances to check on them and most of the time their situation was dependent on the events of the story as the world also changed accordingly (for example, Orcs invading the island later on, whereas in the beginning there were only a few scouts).

The Positives:
At last, I want to mention a few points which I was really impressed with, but I will not go into much detail here.
The music is perfect, thank you Kai Rosenkranz for bringing back these memories. It fits so well and is the perfect mix of recreating the original and adding some new tracks. Absolute highlight of the demo.
The atmosphere overall is really good and captures the tone of the original, although I feel like the world could look a bit bleaker.
Exploration also feels great; I especially like the fact that the first weapons you can find are easily missable. This makes it extremely rewarding to explore.
As far as I can judge from the short demo the progression system also feels in line with the original. After talking to Kirgo, he will teach the player some new moves, which results in new attack animations and combos. It remains to be seen, how this will be handled in the finished game, but for now this seems good so far.
NPCs will react differently to the player depending on the order of interactions the player has, so you will see new dialogues even after multiple playthroughs, which is awesome.
Thank you, Alkimia Interactive for making this demo playable for everyone and for your close cooperation with the community. I’m faithful that all of you are doing your best at making this remake the best possible game you can. I’m excited for the finished game and wish you all the best.
Also, please take your time, this might be the last chance to see this franchise reemerge :)

[T-Moor]

Hey!

Thank you so much for the feedback! It is super detailed and useful.

Could you please share it via the links?

• General feedback in this Google form[docs.google.com]
  
• Bug reports[bugreporting.thqnordic.com]
  
• Review on the Steam Page

[Sully van Richard]

Originally posted by T-Moor | ТГ канал ↓:

Hey!

Thank you so much for the feedback! It is super detailed and useful.

Could you please share it via the links?

• General feedback in this Google form[docs.google.com]
  
• Bug reports[bugreporting.thqnordic.com]
  
• Review on the Steam Page

Thank you for taking the time to look at player feedback, I really appreciate that!
I had to shorten the text a little for the steam review as it was too long.