Gothic 1 Remake gets a June release date

This was right in the middle of my college years (I'm so old lol) when I wasn't playing anything single player / rpg (but was playing a ton of multiplayer party stuff) so I totally missed this one as well.

Very excited for this to release as everyone heaps so much praise on it.

I played the original three or four years ago for the first time and while controls and graphics are a bit clunky it held up surprisingly well, in my opinion better than something like Morrowind where certain mechanics are just inscrutable to modern players

Gothic is very much the opposite of the design and ideals of something like Morrowind and especially Skyrim etc. In Bethesda games the world is your oyster, it revolves around you and grants you a power fantasy of your choosing. If you happen to choose all of them - enjoy all of them. Not so much the case with "pay for protection or enjoy a tasty knuckle sandwich" Gothic 1 or "get a job and become a respectable member of the community you're trying to embed yourself in" Gothic 2. Bethesda is very The Capitalist West. Piranha was closer to Working Class Reality Check.

Another point: these games seemed slightly archaic in some ways already back when they were released. Having played them again recently they pretty much haven't aged whatsoever. You still need to get used to all the things you'd have needed to get accustomed to back in the day anyway.

I also recommend reading up on the fine art inspirations behind the original Gothic's looks and playing that version as well. It's not just low fidelity resulting purely from technical limitations, it's a style. Nothing left of it in the remake, unfortunately.

Last edited by such on 12 Feb 2026 at 3:48 pm UTC

Hyyyype!

Gothic 1 is very dear to me - the fact that one part of my nick is named after a NPC in this game I think speaks for itself. I was young, a few years into my primary school and although I was already quite good with English, I still struggled to play RPG games. I found their systems difficult to understand and kept getting my ass handed to me. So, the classics I played like the first two Fallouts or Might and Magic games were all games I *played* but never *finished*. Gothic was the first one that I actually completed. Thanks to easy systems - just two attributes! - and no shenanigans like "first-person view but you're actually 4 people" and thanks to the overall very immersive design I was finally able to just play and enjoy.

Which is funny because nowadays, the Gothic games have somewhat of a reputation for being difficult, partly due to weird controls and partly due to mercilessly difficult fights when you have a character with no learned skills and no equipment. I don't really remember having too much problems in the beginning. When I got told to watch out for the wolves in the forest, and when I immediately died to them, I simply learned to avoid the forests and to heed any further warnings :)

Gothic also killed Morrowind for me. When I finally got my hands on it later (Bethesda would never strike a deal with the gaming magazines over here, so it took years for me to get) and saw how the combat actually looked and worked, I bounced off immediately.

But to get back on the topic of the remake - I'm personally skeptical. It became more and more apparent as time went on that the first two Gothic games captured lightning in a bottle. To this day, it's still immersive in ways that most modern games do not understand. Piranha Bytes themselves struggled to capture the magic of the first two games while also utilizing modern mechanics that they thought gamers wanted for the rest of their career. They never did. So the odds are quite stacked against the remake. Thankfully, even if the remake turns out to be bad, I can look forward to the update on Archolos instead.

Last edited by LungDrago on 13 Feb 2026 at 9:42 am UTC

It's going to be janky, and certainly most youtubes won't like it. But I will enjoy it simply because I was a big Gothic fan back in the day, both gothic 1 and 2 were great. (Gothic-3 was a stretch)

Then we got Risen 1 & 2 which were quite good as well, but again Risen-3 was a bit of a flop!

I am super hyped. Not because of the Remake of Gothic 1 but because I hope it will be successful enough that they create a remake of Gothic II which is my favourite.

But yeah, I will ask my boss for vacation ^^

Piranha Bytes games are in a league of their own. IMO, you have to play them with their unique UI and controls or you're not experiencing the games fully.

I started out playing open world RPGs with Morrowind. I toyed a little with Gothic 2 when it first released but found the UI and controls just too perplexing. What can I say? I was used to the Morrowind approach, even if the third-person view was clunky at best.

I finally played through Gothic 1 a few years ago. It was an amazing experience and I didn't find the UI or controls to be all that difficult to adapt to after all.

The experience also helped me to realize that when it came to RPG feature development, including animations and such, Piranha Bytes was way ahead of the game compared to Bethesda. In fact, from what I can see, Bethesda stole most of those ideas from the Piranha Bytes games.

Oblivion's Radiant AI (daily NPC schedules)? Gothic 1 was doing that before Morrowind. Same with better combat animations. Gothic also had better animations for jumping, climbing and just walking up stairs.

Yes, the controls are a bit clunky but that is part of the experience of the game. IMO, Germans liked their RPGs on the challenging side and the nature of the controls adds to the challenge.

The remake is unlikely to run on my hardware. I watched the demo playthrough. It felt more like an interactive movie and less like the classic video game it is based on.

Liam, don't lose the premium experience you will get from playing the original. It won't work on a handheld PC though. You need a physical keyboard.

^ agree. Absolutely loved them as a studio. Was a sad day when the closure announcement came along 😫

Quoting: Jarmer^ agree. Absolutely loved them as a studio. Was a sad day when the closure announcement came along 😫

😲

This is the first I've heard of the closure. Apparently it happened quietly in June 2024. However, according to Wikipedia, two indie developers have spun out of the closure, founded by former employees of Piranha Bytes.

Quoting: Caldathras

Quoting: Jarmer^ agree. Absolutely loved them as a studio. Was a sad day when the closure announcement came along 😫

😲

This is the first I've heard of the closure. Apparently it happened quietly in June 2024. However, according to Wikipedia, two indie developers have spun out of the closure, founded by former employees of Piranha Bytes.

One of those has a demo out. Predictably, it's a rough experience:

https://store.steampowered.com/app/4293720/Cralon_Demo/

Piranha failed to adapt - they just kept going as if the market wasn't ever going to change, and as if fans of their games pleaded undying loyalty to the studio itself regardless of whether the games that studio developed were any good. Sad to see them go, but after Gothic 2 there was a sharp decline in quality. At best, their output was uneven, and that's putting it very kindly. Riding out that Gothic 1-2 "fame" could've only taken them so far. I'm amazed they lasted that long, frankly.

On the controls: I tried the modern/modded gamepad controls and cannot fathom why someone would play the games that way. It's extremely, needlessly confusing. The original keyboard controls are idiosyncratic, but they do follow an internal logic. Once you get used to those controls it's all incredibly simple. You can control Gothic with one hand, no mouse required (which is a bizarre condition to design your ARPG control scheme around if compared to modern standards, but there you go). Not to be that guy, but... it's really not bad if you just invest a few minutes into it. Interact button plus direction, attacks have more then one direction available. That's it, that's all the alleged complexity. So, looting a corpse or picking something up is ctrl+forward. Opening a chest is standing in front of it and pressing ctrl+forward... twice to account for the chest opening motion. Which feels very cool as chests aren't that common in the game. It makes it into a thing, and these days it's increasingly common for games to utilise player input in exactly this way. Talking to people is also standing in front of them and pressing ctrl+forward while not in combat mode (weapon holstered). Attacking people is drawing your weapon... and then also pressing ctrl+forward while in range to hit them (also left & right that you can chain). Inventory button, draw/holster weapon button, jump button. Inventory management isn't terribly convenient, but in terms of controls if your inventory is on the left and you're selling or moving stuff to a vendor/container to the right... you press ctrl+right on the item you want to sell/move, ctrl+left on the item you want to buy/move. Use item in inventory? Ctrl+forward. Cook meat? Ctrl+forward. Drop item from inventory? This is where things get really tough: it's ctrl+back.

There's some additional nuance to switching weapons when drawn or moving more items faster.

I highly recommend just rolling with it. If nothing else you'll earn bragging rights for "mastering" those "ridiculous" Gothic controls. Aka ctrl+direction ;)

Last edited by such on 16 Feb 2026 at 1:31 pm UTC

Quoting: suchPiranha failed to adapt - they just kept going as if the market wasn't ever going to change, and as if fans of their games pleaded undying loyalty to the studio itself regardless of whether the games that studio developed were any good. Sad to see them go, but after Gothic 2 there was a sharp decline in quality. At best, their output was uneven, and that's putting it very kindly. Riding out that Gothic 1-2 "fame" could've only taken them so far. I'm amazed they lasted that long, frankly.

I mostly agree. Elex 1 was awesome, I really loved it, but then Elex 2 came out and it was kinda just average. It was like they didn't learn from any of the elex 1 mistakes, and had a lot of the same clunkiness that absolutely should have been ironed out. It was like they just coasted from one game to another.

There was still the Piranha magic there, you could feel it, but by that time, I agree with you: that wasn't enough anymore. Still (and I agree again lol) sad to see them go.

I hope that new game you linked to with the demo can take the feedback and make some positive changes!