I just played Nyras Prologue, the demo for the upcoming Gothic 1 remake.
So far this actually looks mostly really nice. If they continue in that direction with the actual game, I’ll definitely buy it.
The one thing that I’m so far really not a fan of are the popup-UIs: Gothic 1 was extremely minimalist with those, whereas the remake looks more like a modern console game (to be clear: That’s an insult!), but thankfully this is only in menus; The actual in-game UI by default contains no UI-elements whatsoever, which is exactly how it should be!
(I’m not quite certain about enemy healthbars being on top of the enemy instead of on top of the screen: In gothic 1 this really made you focus on the enemy, but since you no longer have to focus an enemy to attack him/it, that might still be a change that may work in the remake.)
Also: I like that they seem to maintain the same level of diversity as the original: You have significant ethnic diversity with a pretty large amount of black characters (definitely by central European standards), which fits with the overall lore of the world, but they maintain that it’s pretty much just men (again: fitting with the setting), with the few women that are there being essentially the pleasure-slaves of the absolute top (as in the original), though with a hint that some might have run of, indicating that there might be more in the main game. I assert that for this specific setting with this specific game series that is how it should be!
I guess the backlash against the first playable teaser coming across as someone just wanting to exploit the name of the series really achieved what it set out to do and moved them towards sticking very close with the original, focusing on merely adding to it and updating controls and graphics of a game that is now almost a quarter century old and still superior to almost every single RPG that came out afterwards…
Could it be that the series that showed the world how to create a perfect RPG now goes on to show the world how to create a perfect remake? It would definitely be nice! (And hopefully this time that lesson is learned by others and not mostly ignored like last time.)
#Gothic #GothicRemake #Gothic1