THQ's Gothic 1 remake arrives in June, and I think it might prove a more valuable overhaul than Oblivion Remastered

(Image credit: THQ Nordic)

Over five years since it was announced, the remake of Gothic 1 finally has a release date. The overhaul of Piranha Bytes' lovably janky RPG—which boasts a 'complex life simulation on a scale hardly ever seen before'—will land on players' virtual doorsteps on June 5 this year.

Publisher THQ revealed the release date in a new trailer (which you can watch below) that also showed more of the RPG in action. It certainly looks like developer Alkimia Interactive has carried the feedback from last year's demo—which received so much scrutiny from players that the studio provided a hefty update for it—into the final game.

Personally, I'm more interested in a Gothic 1 remake than I was in Oblivion Remastered—which simply transposed an already-great game into a snazzier engine. Not only is Gothic 1 much harder to return to these days (despite the two games releasing only six years apart—game development in the '90s and '00s was wild), but it's also a game with genuine untapped potential.

This is especially the case for the latter parts of Gothic 1, which are famously nowhere near as fleshed out as the early game. In a developer diary released last year, Alkimia Interactive revealed its plans to address the latter stages of Gothic. These include elaborating upon underused locations, adding extra side quests, and expanding upon the story and status of the game's orcs, even developing a whole new language for them.

Gothic 1 Remake - Release Date Trailer | PS5 Games - YouTube

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More broadly, publisher THQ also claims Gothic 1 will feature ambitious quest design where the game will react dynamically to player choices, NPCs with daily routines (which was very much a part of the original game) and ambient wildlife with natural behaviours.

It sounds promising, though we should bear in mind that this is Alkimia's first game, and such overambition was what led to Gothic being a flawed gem in the first instance. Indeed, it's still a little weird that THQ owners Embracer Group killed Piranha Bytes—Gothic's original developers—while also bankrolling this lavish remake by another studio.

Fortunately, Alkimia Interactive does have veteran Gothic talent involved, including Mattias Filler, who worked as a writer on both Gothic 2 and Gothic 3. Piranha Bytes' original founder, meanwhile, went off and formed a new company, Pithead Studio. That team is currently working on an Ultima Underworld-style dungeon crawler called Cralon, which you can download the demo for now.

Rick has been fascinated by PC gaming since he was seven years old, when he used to sneak into his dad's home office for covert sessions of Doom. He grew up on a diet of similarly unsuitable games, with favourites including Quake, Thief, Half-Life and Deus Ex. Between 2013 and 2022, Rick was games editor of Custom PC magazine and associated website bit-tech.net. But he's always kept one foot in freelance games journalism, writing for publications like Edge, Eurogamer, the Guardian and, naturally, PC Gamer. While he'll play anything that can be controlled with a keyboard and mouse, he has a particular passion for first-person shooters and immersive sims.

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