Shortly after having kicked off pre-orders for its remake of classic RPG Gothic, developer Alkimia Interactive has now spoken about the studio’s dedication to maintaining the immersive experience of the original. In an interview with PCGamer, game director Reinhard Pollice said that, much like the original, Gothic Remake won’t even include a minimap.
“You don’t have a minimap,” explained Pollice, “we very strictly kept that. We were thinking about making it optional, but we felt like even that doesn’t feel right. If you want to know where you are, just open your map. You will find out.”
He went on to reveal that the studio thought about adding its own new content to Gothic Remake, like minigames that would help make the world feel more dense. However, Alkimia Interactive ultimately decided against the idea, since the world would have felt too padded out otherwise.
We were debating about doing some minigames to fill it up more,” he said. “Having a card minigame, or maybe some fishing minigame. Who knows what the future holds for Gothic, maybe we’ll do them one day. But we didn’t see them as a priority thing. We felt like they’re not really needed for the core experience.”
These decisions ultimately came down to the fact that the original Gothic was a grounded game in terms of its storytelling and world, and Alkimia Interactive wants to continue that feeling with Gothic Remake. This has, however, meant that the studio had to do extensive rewrites of the original’s English version, since it suffered from stilted dialogue when compared to its German language release.
“It had this down-to-earth, grounded type of writing,” Pollice explained. “At least, the original German version. When we set out, we also realized that maybe one of the reasons why it wasn’t so popular in English-speaking territories was that the writing was a little bit hit and miss in the English version. That was one of the things we started very early on, that we did a rewrite of the original English version, and we decided to get this distinct working-class feeling and tone into it.”
The studio has also tried to make Gothic Remake more approachable than the original, namely by providing players with more guidance through a more immersive diary-styled quest log. Through this, Alkimia also ended up avoiding making Gothic Remake too easy with objective markers cluttering the UI.
“We felt that maybe the way Gothic handled guidance back then just wasn’t enough,” he said. “I mean, it had a very bare-bone quest log, so we extended that. You now have the option instead—you have a diary-style quest log, but you also have an objective view where you can see, OK, what does it boil down to? What do I have to do? But it’s always written in this immersive context of being what would the hero know.”
Crafting is also getting expanded in Gothic Remake, with a full-fledged new alchemy and scroll-inscription systems to accompany the in-game forge. Cooking has been made more elaborate as well. However, among the things the studio had originally planned but decided against was character customization.
“We had everything on the table,” Pollice said, “but we quickly discarded that as being a very important thing. We felt like the Nameless Hero is known for a specific type of look, and it’s a hero’s journey in a way. We didn’t really lean into character customization. You can customize the armor set you’re using.”
Gothic Remake is coming to PC, PS5, and Xbox Series X/S on June 5th.
