Well, I didn’t see this coming… Could anyone? Yeah, a free demo put out there for a “Gothic” remake. I usually don’t talk about demos or Early Access games, but in this case, I think I need to make an exception. In fact, they made this demo asking for feedback on it. So, as someone who's played the video game, I guess I’m qualified. I just have editing software, I’m like anyone else on the Steam forum. So it’s not a proper review, just some impressions of a demo. Obviously, it's a given that the visuals will be a lot better. “Gothic 1” is nearly 20 years old, and… OH! Jesus Christ, what?! Why does my torch have a lens flare? I… I can’t escape it. It’s like the whole game takes place on Venus. I mean… What’s happening? Wait, lemme… let me start over. So, the first cutscene shows a lot of promise. It’s faithful, and captures the spirit of the first game well. It’s the ride down where things get different. In “Gothic 1”, you’re just pushed into a hole, but in the remake… HERO: “Whutta…?! Ough!” HERO: “Hug-nyah… Huh… Ieagh!” HERO: “Huhg… Eagh! Egh…” HERO: “Hug-umm… Uoghh… That wus close…” HERO: “Ow, shieght!” Action, explosions, the music swells! It’s not the worst change, but for me, it was a worrying one. The Nameless Hero is doing action movie shit, and that wasn’t how the first game started off tonally. But there could still be more to this. Now, I usually trim cutscenes down, but for this next part, I’m not gonna do that. I want you to feel the character’s first impression with the full impact the game has for you. So let’s skip ahead to him landing. HERO: “Ogh, guddamit…” HERO: “Wutta hell just happened…? Nm-ugh… Ogh…” HERO: “Ug-ohh… Ohh, I’m in un piece… Ohh, thank God, no blud…” HERO: “Oh, where’s the scroll?! Ug-ahh… Oh, it’s owright. Great, ahkay…” HERO: “Ehh, le’s move on.” HERO: “Ohh… Ugh…” HERO: “OGHH… Ohh… Reight, ahkay…” HERO: “Uh… Reight…” HERO: “Uhh… Roit…” HERO: “Um-ugh-uhh… Roit… Owroit…” HERO: “Le’s light this up…” HERO: “M-ugh… Huh… Ugh… Agh…” “HERO: Oh… Goot… At’ll do… A’hope…” HERO: “Where are we?” HERO: “Wutta mess! Ot’s goin on he’eh? Owreight…” HERO: “Gotdammit! Le’s gettehelouttaheh!” This guy narrates EVERYTHING. Just completely unnecessary actions, like we’re on a children’s show. HERO: “Oh, I’ll leave it he’eh for a mument.” HERO: “You don’t moind if I take this with me, do you? I need it moah than you do at the mument.” HERO: “Hum-ehh… Coom on, my prettey!” HERO: “Egh… Coom with me!” HERO: “Huh… Oh gotdammit! Sheit! I’s broken!” I… get what they’re going for. You’re supposed to be the dastardly, wisecracking rogue, and he… he doesn’t take it too seriously – he’s a fun guy! But his constant narrating just makes him come off like a moron immediately. It’s to the point where him just being completely silent would be more likeable. You know, he could look panicked, then start padding himself, and then pull out the scroll, and go “Phew!” and put it back, and we’d get what’s happening. Instead, we have just constant noise of “Whe’s muh keys?! Oh, th-! They in muh pocket! Ugh, wuh… Got’ find a ca’ah… Uh, the’h it is!” It also doesn’t help that a lot of dialogue reminds me of “DmC”. Except, “DmC” would try to be so edgy that it was funny. This is watching someone fail to be charming. [calls him a dolt in Snapperese] HERO: “Wot- Wottehell?! Wot AH you?!” HERO: “Ahkay, easy, boy! Le’s make it easy for both of us... WHOA!” HERO: “Oh- Okaye, okaye, calm down!” HERO: “Wohst. Prison. EVAH. Definitely, I ‘ave to get out of here as soon as I can.” They took a soft-spoken character who got things done, and made him an instantly unlikeable Kmart Geralt. It feels hollow, like the game is begging you to think he’s cool. In the original, he starts dressed like a worker, because he’s a prisoner. Now he starts with armor pieces on and tattoos and things that make you wanna say “Oh, he’s a badass”. The whole charm of “Gothic” is that you EARN that status. You start from the lowest position possible, you don’t know what you’re doing, and you work your way up. This game seems afraid that it can’t hold your attention. The character should always be saying something funny, or something needs to blow up. It’s the exact opposite of tone people liked about the series. I remember seeing a wolf and being afraid of it. But now I’m massacring packs of wolves right from the start, and achievements are flying up, and it’s… it’s very different. DIEGO: “We call it… The Colony. And we produce ore for the King.” I’ve gotten ahead of myself, but my first piece of feedback is: “Less is more”. I don’t need to be reminded of “Jurassic World” while playing a “Gothic” game. You don’t need a menu that has sparks flying all over it. It’s the “We want the “Call of Duty” audience” thing all over again. I could be wrong, but I would assume the majority of people interested in this are fans of “Gothic”. I’m not saying you need to remake the same game beat-for-beat, but when you twist some things too far, then it starts to not add up. For example, the exchange zone exploding. This is how the Colony trades with the outside world, and it also gives Gomez a lot of his power. You would think all hands on deck would be there to fix it immediately, but it’s just some guy poking around. Maybe things like that will make more sense in full game, but in the demo it’s just really baffling. Now, it’s not all bad, there’s good stuff too, but first I need to talk about the visuals. I feel like I’m always looking at a terrible ENB filter. This game has horrible post-processing effects. And of course there is no way to individually toggle effects like lens flares. You just set one option lower and lower, and pray. When you do that, it changes so many other effects that it completely changes the look of the game, and now nothing is giving off light anymore. So now you have to choose between a Pitch Black Night mod for an Elder Scrolls game, or light effects covering the screen. The Bloom is so harsh that it’s hard to even tell that the sky is covered with a big magic shield. Everything is either too harsh, or too washed out. The thing is: the actual art assets are high quality. The game can look astoundingly better in some areas when this stuff is turned off. But once again, everything is tied to one post-processing option, so what works in one area will not work in another. I never found the magic set of checkboxes that made everything just click together. I tried. I tried all kinds of options, but… Never happened. The game looks needlessly worse for it. It’s not just this game either, it seems to be a trend with Unreal 4 games. Please have options for it, I don’t wanna dig around the engine for this stuff. The menus are also awkward to navigate, because they’re clearly made with the controller in mind, so it could be that PC version isn’t a priority for a… “Gothic” game. So, on a technical level, it is kind of a mess. The art direction is great though. There are a lot of details in the environment and the characters, but I’m seeing it through an oily sandwich bag. There is a good-looking game here, it’s just being drowned by gloss. Individual effect options would be wonderful. Now then, let’s talk about the gameplay. GUARD: “Thank you very much, see you around!” HERO: “Hey, we had n’agreement, remembuh? A painkillah, if you open the doh fo me.” GUARD: “First of all, an honorable and upright Old Camp guard would never let himself be bribed. Ehm.” GUARD: “And secondly, I said MAYBE I could open it. I never said I would. Well, welcome to the Colony, rookie, hah-ha!” Alright. The core of the gameplay is heading in the right direction. Little activities from the original are back, and some have been improved. You’re still able to explore around, and there are treasures and secrets to find. There’s no minimap or quest marker to blindly follow – you’re expected to use your brain, which is good news. I prefer following hints, compared to a dot on the screen. I still saw issues, mainly with the very first quest you get. You’re new to the prison, so you need to find a good shank. There’s a good one near the elevator, but the guy there won’t let you have it, unless you deal with his two old friends. When you get over there, there’s one less old friend. You face him off in combat with your own broken sword, and if you defeat him, you could either spare him or kill him. How this goes will supposedly affect your standings with them in the game, and maybe change some things later on. You can take the simple route and get the original sword, or spend a little more time on it and find a treasure room with a better sword. This may seem good, but you may have noticed this already – there’s an issue: the last of the old friends has one. Looks really shiny, too. How come I can’t just take that one when I beat him? When the quest was being written, someone likely wrote down something like: “The player comes across a two characters fighting. You defeat Sarus in combat, you etc, etc, move on from that.” But when the art team animated and modelled the fight, they gave him a sword, which is what you’re looking for. This glaringly sticks out when they’re trying to make everything look so grounded. You know, how about I just take the sword? INMATE: “What do you think you’re doing, rookie?” HERO: “Owkay, I’m sorry, my mistake, it won’t ‘appen agaen!” INMATE: “What do you think you’re doing, rookie?” HERO: “Owkay, I’m sorry, my mistake, it won’t ‘appen agaen!” You can’t even try to steal the sword and fight him for it. Muggings are a huge part of the “Gothic” experience. If this quest was in “Gothic 1”, they’d let you try. You’d probably get your ass kicked, but they’d let you try. Here, you don’t have the option at all. That’s my other big takeaway from the demo. You should be able to try things out and experiment, even if you die and learn a hard lesson from it. There are so many games that already start using wisecracking tough men. Overestimating myself and having something funny or bad happen from it are some of my best memories from “Gothic”. Take my training wheels off, I’m ready, Father. Some mechanics aren’t fully in yet, so I’m neutral on them. Having the “For Honor” combat system seems like a good idea. It’s mainly geared towards 1v1, and not very good with groups, but “Gothic 1” was also like that for the most part, so… it works. I’m curious how magic will go with it. That’s it. So, to sum up my own meager advice in a sentence, it would be: “Less over the top, more thoughtful.” I’m interested to see what other people think of the remake in the comments. Still, I figured it shouldn’t just be me doing an impressions video, so I invited a few other people to give their own thoughts on the remake. Let’s get started! GRIM BEARD: “The potential for a very fun game is here, and they modernized the gameplay in some interesting ways.” GB: “When it first throws you into that jarring combat sequence, it feels overwhelming,” GB: “but it also illustrates that this isn’t a game you can hack and slash your way through.” GB: “Unlike the original, it doesn’t make me SICK to look at it. Looks pretty good, sounds pretty good, too.” GB: “What’s immediately apparent is the developers’ appreciation for the charm of the original.” GB: “It’s very distinct, even for someone who wasn’t in love with that game. I felt it, and I appreciate… feelings.” GB: “And I appreciate not having them for most of the time also…” GB: “I don’ know if it’s too late in the game to fix the protagonist, but don’t let him narrate every mundane fucking thing that his eyes perceive,” GB: “like some kind of overly observant Jason Statham.” OOJS: “Hang on, what am I standing on? It’s like some kind of Earth! I wonder if it’s flat, or if it’s like a globe?” GB: “It’s just, like, I get it: I see you picking up a torch, you don’t have to tell me that’s what you’re doing.” GB: “I got my own eyes, I could make my own observations about things. I see the world for what it is.” GB: “A nightmare.” RAGNARROX: “The first two “Gothic” games have a lot of redeeming qualities that make them timelessly engaging.” RrR: “And to me personally, it’s the particular brand of open world design that made it into such a peerless RPG experience.” RrR: “In short: character progression is intimately connected to meticulously placed and unique (meaning, non-respawning) enemies,” RrR: “to create a web of natural progression borders.” RrR: “Borders designed to subtly nudge players in the right direction, which in turn creates a palpable sense of growth –” RrR: “both, across the game’s environment and your character sheet, in tandem.” RrR: “And while the current teaser is just an experimental demo, I get the strong sense that the developers didn’t… (sigh)…” RrR: “really understand all the nuts and bolts of what made the OG “Gothic’s” open world so compelling.” RrR: “Where in the original every enemy felt like an irreplaceable jigsaw piece in an overarching spatial progression puzzle,” RrR: “with combat designed to perfectly support this core idea,” RrR: “in this demo, enemies feel arbitrarily placed,” RrR: “and it’s already quite effortlessly possible to cheese your way through fights that should be WAY out of your league at that point.” RrR: “Where the original “Gothic” was a finely polished, rock-solid sculpture of incrementally bigger roadblocks for the player’s growth,” RrR: “the new teaser’s imitation of it feels like it’s built out of wet papier-mache in comparison.” INDIGO GAMING: “I’m always of the mind that in RPGs you should either be a kind of quiet protagonist, if you’re wanting to put the player’s choices in the forefront,” IG: “whereas, in something like “The Witcher”, you’re playing Geralt of Rivia, so Geralt should stand out as a character.” IG: “They really tried to impress you with their mocap and animation abilities during dialogue. Overall, it’s pretty good!” IG: “I did notice that the facial animations are pretty stiff, so, hopefully they can, kind of, loosen it up a bit.” IG: “Some really excellent creature and character model design. Armor and weapons look and feel really nice.” IG: “I was really impressed by particularly the armor and all its little pieces, and how leather straps connected to the cape that was flowing and had cloth physics.” IG: “One of things I really liked was that it wasn’t handed to you on a silver platter – you actually had to listen to directions, and actually pay attention” IG: “and figure out clues to be able to proceed, rather than having a quest marker system on a pre-built map.” IG: “I really like the combat – it felt really tense and energetic. Timing and animations felt a little bit off, but I really like the premise of it. Attacks felt really impactful.” IG: “I have to say that the UI when you’re running around is really nice and minimal,” IG: “but when you get into combat, the really thick bright green bars with white bars underneath could be a little bit less intrusive.” IG: “But overall, I’m really interested in what THQ Nordic brings to the table.” IG: “I love the adventure spirit of the game and the “old school hands-off design meets modern production values”.” IG: “I really appreciate what they are going for, and despite its really rough edges, hopefully, this project is greenlit.” SPICY CHICKEN GOD: “UGGH, “Gothic 2k19: The Teaser”!” SCG: “Now, I’ve never played a “Gothic” in my life, but I’ve watched enough YouTube videos about the topic to bitch about it (fuk)!” SCG: “Except, not all the videos in the world would have helped me,” SCG: “because, aside from the crippling jank, this teaser has nothing in common with the rest of the “Gothic” franchise,” SCG: “because it removed all the elements of RPG, in favor of trying to rip off “The Witcher”- “Kingdom Come: Deliverance”!” SCG: “Yeah, it’s a stance system. What’s the best way to introduce it though? A fight with bandits?” SCG: “Nah, pit of velociraptors!” SCG: “I’m just glad that what I learned in “Mordhau” applies here: just stab them until they die.” SCG: “And then for animals: just don’t lock onto them. Just whack them until they die.” SCG: “Unless they’re invincible, because what is a choice in an RPG but the illusion of choice?” SCG: “I did enjoy the treasure hunt. I enjoyed the fact that every time I passed by the tree with the Y on it my character went:” HERO: “I’ve seen this shape… somewhere…”
HERO: “Hmm, strange symbol on the tree…” SCG: “I’m an adult, you don’t have to hold my hand. I get it, I saw the note.” SCG: “I saw the Y, I know where it- At least I own “Gothic 2” now (woo-).” What else can be said? It’s a free demo. You can check it out if you want. There will be a real game next time. DIEGO: “And this is just the beginning.” [REEEEEEE] HERO: “Please! It can’t be real!” Wait, what? What does that mean?! Well, that was different… I figured I’d try something slightly different, since people have been asking about Early Access games and all that, but I’ll be back to the regular videos for a while. Onto questions! Cartheon: “Any plans to review “Gothic 2”?” Well, you may have already seen the, eh… oh… Well… eventually. I’ll review it here eventually, but I decided to do something for remake, since I made a video about “1”. 1upist: “Did you play “Supreme Commander’s” granddaddy, “Total Annihilation”?” Yeah, I played a lot of that game, and I also played a lot of the spin-off “TA: Kingdoms”, which was a lot of fun, but was horribly unbalanced when I played it. But hyperbalancing ruined RTS games, so who cares? Georgiy Rog: “Do you speak very much Russian, or do you just like the games?” I don’t speak much of it. Just by working with a translator and general osmosis looking at YouTube comments, I’ve actually learned a few phrases. Just… Well, I can read Russian a lot better than hearing it. It’s actually kind of surprising just how much I can read, or see a phrase and kind of understand what the person is saying. I probably will have to sit down and learn it properly eventually. I have to cut this short, there are coyotes fighting outside. Listen to- Listen to this. [opens the window] [audible yelping] FUCK OFF!!
