Demo's still available if you fancy trying out the convict life
Hey you! You're finally awake – oh, hang on, I'm thinking of the other fantasy yarn in which you start out as a shackled prisoner. Today is release day for Alkimia Interactive and THQ Nordic's remake of Gothic, the 2001 first-person RPG from Piranha Bytes. It'll be live on Steam in a matter of hours, with a demo still available as of writing.
While much plumped up with expanded questlines, more NPC routines, new traversal abilities and "modernized" combat, it's still broadly the same tale of a bunch of convicts trapped beneath a magic dome, quarrying ore to sell to a king who is waging an endless war against the orcs. That's the king in the intro cinematic, below, looking down at the orc's head in his fist like he can't quite remember how it got there. How long has he been carrying that head? Did he confuse it with his coffee mug at breakfast?
We don't have a review because, amongst other things, today happens to be the day of Summer Game Fest Live – the day in which we craven hacks are locked in a dome of diminishing returns and obliged to mine headlines from the slumbering, chthonic anatomy of Geoff Keighley.
I do admire THQ Nordic's chutzpah in arguing that, no, you do not want to hear about a bunch of sparkling new videogames today. You don't want to relax and watch some trailers. What you really want is 50 hours of penury and slashed throats. What you really want is to be thrust into a pocket dimension of vicious, rubble-shovelling bastards divided into warring factions, to say nothing of the local wildlife and the arcane secrets that haunt the blighted soil.
I wrote some brief impressions of the Gothic demo way back when. I don't think they were particularly useful to either returning or new players, but here they are again anyway. Yeah, screw you too. Maybe try the demo, before they yank it? These things tend to evaporate on release. Alternatively, check out Sin's longer, better piece on the original game.