The Gothic Remake demo reveals an RPG powered by wheeling, dealing, and growling

I’ve never played 2001’s Gothic, developed by Piranha Bytes, but Sin has an article from 2016 about why it is “more believable than modern RPGs”. In that piece, she paints an absorbing picture of a magically quarantined penal colony, where three factions of prisoners enjoy an uneasy truce. In this crammed ocean vent of a setting, fights generally end in defeat rather than death, reputation isn’t just a points gauge, and the player character’s centrality is an accident. It sounds pretty thrilling.

I am still searching for this RPG in the Steam prologue demo for Alkimia Interactive’s Gothic reboot. There are certainly some intrigues afoot, and I’m quite enjoying the desolate quarry scenery, but I’m distracted by aspects of the presentation, not least the fact that the prologue character looks like a Funko Pop incarnation of Highlander’s Christopher Lambert.

Funko Pop Lambert is a freshly incarcerated convict, who begins his journey on the ore elevator from the outside world. He’s immediately accosted by a growling, bearded stranger and told to fuck off and find a place to sleep before nightfall. Funko Pop Lambert repays this insolence by taking some meat from the growling, bearded stranger’s house, then mopes down the path past a crystalline waterfall to a bridge, where another growling, beardless stranger tells him to fuck off and fetch me a beer.

There are a lot of snarling strangers in the Gothic reboot. The performers all act like they’re auditioning for the part of First Guy Punched in a Batman movie. I’m not sure how the original Gothic’s voice-acting compares, but Funko Pop Lambert hails from a more musical species of action cinema, and isn’t used to such uncouth treatment. Rather than fetching anybody a beer, I walk him further down the canyon, retrieve a moth-eaten bow from a mineshaft, find an emaciated sword jutting from the soil beneath a gibbet, and stumble into my first ‘proper’ quest. A man is hunched over peering at some small squawking dinosaurs. Will I go murder them in return for a spot at his campfire?

I will. I gallop in whooping and wailing like Funko Pop Clancy Brown has just be-bobble-headed Funko Pop Sean Connery. Though visibly held together by rust, my salvaged blade proves more than a match for the overblown Jurassic poultry. The only difficulty is that my new friend keeps shooting me in the bum. I think he’s trying to help but unfortunately, he is neglecting to apply the principle of aiming. Funko Pop Lambert ends the engagement with quills sticking out of both glutes like semaphore turning signals. Still, at least he’s got a bed for the night.

Oh wait, no he hasn’t. He’s got to convince his new friend’s other friend first. I think I am getting my first whiff, here, of the emphasis on interpersonal rapport over generic faction-massaging that Sin explored in her 2016 piece. Having been given a rough description – to paraphrase, “like me but with hair” – I go looking for the other person I’ve got to convince down the path, finding instead a cheerful bloke hacking away at an ore seam.

I experiment with some smilier dialogue options, and am rewarded with some intel about the convict society conveniently screened off by a rockfall for the purposes of this demo. Apparently there is a sect who worship some sleeping god. There are also hardly any women here, save for the ones kept for “amusement” by awful shitlords. The man ends the conversation by politely beating Funko Pop Lambert up a few times to show me the ropes of parrying.

There follows about 20 minutes of picturesque rambling initiated by my forgetting I have a jump button. Having remembered this mystic lore, I go rock-hopping up the canyon and discover a scooped-out wooded area with a pool, where I am set upon and devoured by mole rats. Reloading a checkpoint, I experiment with a different route to the pool and discover the very man I need to win over if I’m to rest securely after dark. He’s up here looking for yet another guy, who has gone astray in the grip of curious, whispering nightmares. Can I help? No, I can fuck off. I fuck off to the end of the forest and helpfully find the guy the guy is looking for. He is dead. The other guy, I mean. Umm.

The first guy – who is actually *checks notes* the fifth guy I’ve spoken to – is persuaded of Funko Pop Lambert’s fine intentions by the fact that I have located his chum’s body, which seems a touch naive, but the writing just about sells it. He speculates that the killer was some kind of “shadowbeast”. I’m wondering if the “shadowbeast” was the small club-wielding goblin I also met in the wood, who struck me as the friendliest Gothic NPC so far, and whom I immediately shot full of arrows because I wanted the club.

All of this Machiavellian plot-jostling finally lands Funko Pop Lambert a seat at camp. We descend with the setting sun. There is some promising fireside chat about the aforesaid sleeping god and the workings of the factions, but sadly, at this point the prologue ends. I can’t say I’m spellbound by the Gothic remake so far, but I am somewhat tantalised. It’s seldom that a fantasy RPG weaves a whole quest chain around the act of securing a bed. I’m prepared to give the full thing a go, as long as I don’t have to play Funko Pop Lambert again.