Gothic Gothic 1 Remake from THQ Nordic - Demo Available

[soulburner]

So... any idea how to:

1 - invert Y mouse axis?

2 - kill the damn vignette effect?

 

[sosmoflux]

I tried it for around 25 minutes. They did improve a lot compared to the previous demo. On the technical side, it did drop frames every now and then. The lighting is messed up. Darkness is too dark. You can't see anything. I had to upp the gamma meter by quite a lot.

Is it shit? No. Am I convinced? Not yet. Combat was okay, and voice acting was not bad, but I skipped a lot of dialog.

A little less pessimistic, but still on the negative cautious side.

Darkness is too dark
In a Gothic game


Where do you think you are right now?

 

[notpl]

I just attacked Kirgo without warning, then looted him. All he got to say was "Good job" and then:

Now nigga is just standing there cause his pick axe is in my pocket.

Not a best presentation of reactivity, for a 20 minutes long demo with 4 NPCS.

Overall it looks like an amateurs put much effort into this, but it's still amateurish. Like a work of someone who is learning how to do things. And that's probably how it's being made, by a guys without any experience.

Kirgo was hispanic with BIG UGLY NOSE. What they did to him? He was asshole, but he was at most mestico.

He used to be Castillan, now he's Basque. Not the biggest change in the world tbh

 

[Roguey]

Gave this a spin, had to turn the resolution up to make it not-blurry then settings down to get an acceptable framerate, found the way the character controlled insufferably laggy, died very quickly on lizard hunt, uninstalled. More Spaniard obnoxiousness.

 

[Outlander]

Just completed the prologue. Overall I liked it.

Music is spot on, but that is to be expected since Kai Rosenkranz (OG composer) did it.

Art direction is great, lots of rubble, rubbish and overgrowth everywhere.

Dialogue maintains the tone of the original, which is something good in my book.

Fighting system is... too early to tell without testing more improved moves.

Performance. I have an old i7 4790k with an RTX 4060 and in 2k I was anywhere between 35 and 60 FPS ("Gothic" settings, blur and bloom set to zero).

 

[Junmarko]

Music is spot on, but that is to be expected since Kai Rosenkranz (OG composer) did it.

Cool they were able to get him to come back for this.

 

[Tuco Benedicto Pacifico]

I tried the demo myself.

Random though in no particular hierarchic order:

- Way too short. There's hardly anything to do as basis to judge the foundation of the game.
- One of the first options I changed was the camera setting to make your character centered on the screen, because the default de-centered one was insufferable.
- While it's not top of the line anymore, I have a fairly beefy PC (5800x, 3080ti, NVMe, 32GB of ram, etc) and I had to fiddle with settings to get acceptable performances. Setting everything to the max ("Alkimia something") was unbearable and tanked performances almost down to a single-digit framerate.
- I was forced to play with a controller -which I really didn't want to, ideally- because I'm left-handed and the demo did not include options to rebind the keyboard. That basically made the M&KB a non-option for me.
- ...With that in mind, controls felt a bit too sluggish for my taste. Not particularly responsive and with a lot of inertia. The character felt almost as if was moving through mud.
- The combat is... Hard to judge at this stage? It doesn't feel satisfying (and I'm not entirely sure that's just "by design" because you are supposed to be a newbie) but at the same time your initial strength is if anything even a bit too effective. I had no particular trouble killing everything in just a couple of hits. Then again balance could be entirely different from the final game as you are playing another character here.
- Visuals are overall nice enough, but it's a bit too soon to say if I'm sold on the overall production value. Faces are detailed but they have a plastic-like stiffness in them that doesn't make for great eye candy.
- Nothing of particular relevance to say on the writing or the voice acting. It didn't feel either remarkably good nor offensively bad. Serviceable and decent enough to not be too distracting, I guess, and it kinda feel like Gothic all things considered.

I have some perplexities, but despise the front of having the devs asking for feedback I'd be incline to guess that whatever is in this demo at this point is set in stone and won't change for the release.

 

[fizzelopeguss]

thoughts... They're trying

 

[Junmarko]

There's hardly anything to do as basis to judge the foundation of the game.

It is strange they've tried to sell the game to anyone interested, with this.

"Gothic 1 Remake – Nyras Prologue Demo"

That is a mouthful. Why not just release a half-hour demo of the actual game.

 

[HoboForEternity]

The demo is great.

Between "unreedemable abomination" and

" fuck yeah, we are so back babaaaay"

It's around 7 - 8. My main complaint is how long it take to do anything really. Talk to people, opening chest, climbing ladder all takes like 10 seconds before the prompt even start

 

[sosmoflux]

First impressions
Also fuck you Roguey give the game a chance damn

• Need option to read dialogue without skipping the VO line completely, so annoying
• Combat felt imba, 2-shot from Scavengers out the gate lol, most people gonna run in headfirst and die instantly (I didn't though), no way you can beat that by actually fighting- you gotta let the guy shoot them, which is fine but weird
• Items are really hard to see on the ground due to the modern graphics, which is... cool... I guess... and there is an option for highlighting but... it's a tough one, I'd probably go for a very soft highlight when you're near items
• The UI feels modern / console which really ruins the immersion, need a better typeface and icons, they're trashy as
• The super closeups in dialogue is whack like damn get this guys face off my face
• Music was nice
• Animations for doing stuff take too long / are annoying
• Tooltip saying don't complain about Nyras lmao

Decent/10

 

[tsr]

Hi, just made an account so I could screech into the void about this game. I played through the demo and here are just a couple of thoughts on it:
- Music is pretty good as far as remakes go. I honestly thought that they simply reused some tracks from the original but apparently, that isn't the case.
- Dialogue writing is fairly decent. It even acknowledges future games (Both Gothic 2 & 3).
- Graphically it looks good. Nothing amazing but nothing to sneeze at either.
- The combat is decent enough (Melee behaves vaguely similarly to the older titles but with overhead blows thrown into the mix. Bows behave like every charged weapon in a TPS, no idea about magic though) but why is there Last of Us magnetism melee combat? As in, why the fuck do both the player and enemies magnetize towards each other when taking a swing?
- On the topic of combat, there is a dodge. Both to the sides and back. There only seem to be a few I-frames on it though in comparison to most modern-day games. Nothing too game-breaking. Blocks didn't seem to do anything, both against animals and humans, when I tested.
- How is this game this hideously unoptimized? I know it is running on UE 5 but damn this is bad. Stuttering is noticeable as the game streams in data.
- Mantling seems to be reserved for certain surfaces. All others you simply awkwardly jump up then slide down 'em.
- The waiting for animations to finish is rather annoying. If you go to talk and an NPC is animating then you have to wait for them. If you are not in the right position for an interactable then you must wait until you move, turn and face that object till you are able to use it (Also, there is no recovering health by sitting down).
- This just might be a me thing but in the original Gothic, you could draw your weapon while speaking. In this one, you cannot and this fucked me over when trying to fight Ratford because once the cutscene ended, I would immediately get smacked with no way to defend myself.
- I had the game lockup during the camp scene because the PC got stuck and couldn't move to position for the cutscene to begin.
- Not sure if this was me being retarded but I found no way to holster torches once they were in my hands. This wouldn't be a problem if it is supposed to be like that but if you step into deep water you auto holster torches which leaves me confused on whether that is intended or not.
- I minor pet peeve I have but I wish, like the original, the game displayed the name of the object you were staring at. Right now, an outline pops up and that is it.
All in all. The demo left an OK impression on me. I will remain cautiously cynical until the full release can prove otherwise. I hope to god that can do some optimisation passes because as is, the performance is unacceptable.

 

[Joni Odin von Hassenstein]

Here's the PC requirements for the demo:

Minimum:

Requires a 64-bit processor and operating system
OS: Windows 10 64bit / Windows 11 64bit
Processor: Intel Core i7-7700K / AMD Ryzen 5 1600X
Memory: 16 GB RAM
Graphics: 8 GB VRAM, AMD RX 6700 XT or NVIDIA GeForce RTX 2070
DirectX: Version 12
Storage: 10 GB available space
Sound Card: DirectX compatible
Additional Notes: tbd

I checked on my old PC and the demo is playable on minimum settings 1280x800 with about 25-30 FPS on
i3-4350
8 GB RAM
GTX 1060 3GB

The only problem is that VRAM is lacking so it looks terrible, but it's still playable.

Hmm, I have an
i5-4670,
8 GB RAM
GTX 770
and the demo always crashes right after the last loading screen before the start of the gaem (right after "Click any button to continue").

Spoiler

When I start the demo, I get this notification that my graphics driver is known for causing issues. It says I should download the latest one. I do have the latest one installed though. Strange.

Anyone any idea on how to solve this for dummies?

In the window that pops up after the game crashes it says at the end of the line: "Shader compilation failures are Fatal."

 

[GamerCat_]

These people spent six years making a game that already exists and they're still not done? And it looks like this?

 

[Necrensha]

Anyone any idea on how to solve this for dummies?

Bro, I don't know how to tell you this... your gpu is like a decomposing zombie. Grab the shovel and put it out of it's misery.

 

[sebas]

These people spent six years making a game that already exists and they're still not done? And it looks like this?

dream. job.

 

[cvv]

Game just hard switched off my PC. Just stone dead. Probably some safety measure when my GPU starts overheating, fuck if I know, this has never ever happened to me.

Yea this is a pass until the full version comes out. And if it's just as "optimized" as this garbage demo then it doesn't matter how good the combat, visuals or writing is, it's gonna explode worse than a compromised Hamas hideout.

 

[soulburner]

First impressions while being rather sleepy, so I didn't finish the demo, but here goes:

- UE5, so performance is what it is. Ryzen 5800X3D, 32 GB RAM, RTX 4070 @ 1440p. "Gothic" preset runs at 50-60 fps with resolution scaling at 90%. Dropping the preset to "high" didn't give much, but reduced the terrible vignette. Hopefully the final release will have proper DLSS upscaling and frame generation. FSR FG would be welcome, too. TSR becomes a blurry shitshow with lower scaling

- When compared with Avowed, another recent UE5 title, the UI is very slow and unresponsive; Avowed shows you can make it snappy, which makes the feeling of "I need like 5 fps more for comfort" go away

- no "invert mouse" setting within the game and I have not found a way by tinkering with .ini files to enforce it. It's a crime against humanity. While searching the web, I found this wonderful tool, though. It's almost black magic

- there is some traversal stuttering but nothing game breaking. Could be tuned for the final version

- either the shadows detail was changing in the distance while walking forward or there was some slight geometry pop in. Does the game use Nanite? And does it use Lumen? If so, is it only the software mode or hardware mode?

- the player character movement is much too slow. The character should react to movement much faster. Picking up herbs and items from corpses is also taking too long

- combat, though, felt alright. Also pretty slow but as long as we get faster while levelling up it's fine. Using the bow felt satisfying

- the items in the world are easy to miss, I know there's an option to draw an outline around them all the time, but I think a better option would be to show a tooltip with what we are looking at, because it's not always obvious. Too much detailed graphics cause new types of issues, I guess.


edit - added complaint about no "invert mouse" setting

 

[HoboForEternity]

First impressions while being rather sleepy, so I didn't finish the demo, but here goes:

- UE5, so performance is what it is. Ryzen 5800X3D, 32 GB RAM, RTX 4070 @ 1440p. "Gothic" preset runs at 50-60 fps with resolution scaling at 90%. Dropping the preset to "high" didn't give much, but reduced the terrible vignette. Hopefully the final release will have proper DLSS upscaling and frame generation. FSR FG would be welcome, too. TSR becomes a blurry shitshow with lower scaling

- When compared with Avowed, another recent UE5 title, the UI is very slow and unresponsive; Avowed shows you can make it snappy, which makes the feeling of "I need like 5 fps more for comfort" go away

- no "invert mouse" setting within the game and I have not found a way by tinkering with .ini files to enforce it. It's a crime against humanity. While searching the web, I found this wonderful tool, though. It's almost black magic

- there is some traversal stuttering but nothing game breaking. Could be tuned for the final version

- either the shadows detail was changing in the distance while walking forward or there was some slight geometry pop in. Does the game use Nanite? And does it use Lumen? If so, is it only the software mode or hardware mode?

- the player character movement is much too slow. The character should react to movement much faster. Picking up herbs and items from corpses is also taking too long

- combat, though, felt alright. Also pretty slow but as long as we get faster while levelling up it's fine. Using the bow felt satisfying

- the items in the world are easy to miss, I know there's an option to draw an outline around them all the time, but I think a better option would be to show a tooltip with what we are looking at, because it's not always obvious. Too much detailed graphics cause new types of issues, I guess.


edit - added complaint about no "invert mouse" setting

Weird, i have worse pc than you and gothic settings give more or less similar performance, but when i set it to high (at 1440p) it never dip below 55, but 99% it ran at 60 fps

 

[soulburner]

Weird, i have worse pc than you and gothic settings give more or less similar performance, but when i set it to high (at 1440p) it never dip below 55, but 99% it ran at 60 fps

The 50-60 figure is a highly unscientifically counted average I did see the fps go above 70 on a few occasions and drop to 54 in others. Didn't watch the fps counter all the time, so it may have reached both lower and higher numbers. I also moved the resolution scaling slider to 90%, it's lower in the presets.

 

[PrK]

- Mantling seems to be reserved for certain surfaces. All others you simply awkwardly jump up then slide down 'em.

Unredeemable garbage it is then, got it.

 

[SlightlyRadioactive]

I finished the demo, I made some notes and shared with the devs on the survey and on discord. I'll also share it here.

Compliments:
-The game looks very pretty.
-There is dialogue talking about the outside world, which makes the game world feel more authentic. This is something the original game lacked.
-The music in the demo is as great as the original was.

Critiques:
-Inventory/Journal/Stats screens feels "too modern" and it clashes with the series aesthetics as a whole.
-Mantling feels too limited. The places you can mantle are too obvious. The original game had some places that weren't so, and it was rewarding to find them.
-No option to use keyboard to choose dialogue options.
-Player dialogue subtitles shouldn't be shown on a speech bubble but on the bottom of the screen.
-Khorinis pronunciation has changed from Khor-ee-nis to Khor-ai-nis. Which to me is annoying.
-The game world still runs while paused. Why? Gothic isn't Dark Souls.
-Loading times are pretty long. This is specially irritating because Gothic is a hard game and as such you'll die a lot.
-While the performance is not terrible, I think it could be better. There were a lot of stuttering while I played.
-Moving around feels very stiff. Nyras felt more like a war tank than a human. Hopefully this changes on the final product.

Mixed:
-Weapons now bounce off walls which is cool. The problem is that their collision box is terrible, you'll be getting punished for just attacking while being slightly close to solid objects.

Small issues:
-I automatically failed the "find a weapon" objectives because I already had one. Why?
-The demo doesn't seem to have quicksave and quickload keys. I hope the final game does.
-Can't run while holding a torch. Why?
-Can't pick torch when holding a weapon . Why?
-Can't jump while holding a weapon. Why?
-Pick up animations speed seems slow, it might become annoying fast on the full game. I would recommend either speeding it up or giving an option to just skip them altogether.
-The way torches are placed on the ground seems weird, it would look better if it worked how it was in the original (torches are just dropped on the ground)
-Sprinting looks weird. Your character seems to be running really fast but the in-game speed is just slightly faster than running speed.

Feedback:
-It would be nice if there was an option to help fallen NPCs to get back up, having to wait them get up always was kind of annoying.
-I kind of miss the option of throwing meat to attract mobs that was presente in the playable teaser. It was an interesting mechanic, so it is sad that it isn't presente here.
-You still sit on chairs/benches with just a press of a button. It would be nice if you had to held the interaction key to do this to prevent acidental inputs.
-Having a "load last save" option when you die would be nice.

Nitpicks:
-There are some hammers used as decoration in some places, it's kind of annoying that you can't pick them up and use them as a weapons.
-I think meatbugs should die if you run over them.

 

[tsr]

Got a little autistic and decided to test out a bunch of stuff.
- After getting the One-Handed level up from Kirgo, I tested how well you fought compared to the untrained rank. Combos are faster and way easier to pull off (And they behave the same as the original, press attack as your current move ends) but slightly more worrying is that parries feel way too overpowered. There is no drawback going for a parry as you can perform them instantly and with no recovery frames which makes the dodge borderline worthless and it feels like that as long as you go for a parry while the enemy is in an attack animation even if they just begun swinging, you will always parry the blow which opens them up for at least one safe strike. You can also parry animals now btw. There is also no parry for unarmed (and the unarmed block seems to be completely worthless).
- Fighting AI with a bow is incredibly easy due to how awfully the AI handles the situation. If the AI decides to return arrows with their own bow then you can just duck in and out of any type of cover and the AI will not readjust their position to land their blows leading to you getting easy kills. If the AI decides to draw its melee weapon then it turns into backing up until their AI tweaks out. Animals will simply charge you.
- Found out you could dodge forward while fighting Kirgo when I accidentally evaded and i-framed through his strike. Not exactly new information but I was nevertheless reminded of how of my hatred of i-frames on dodges.
- Discovered a typo. Learning Points are called Skill Points. Alkimia, please fix immediately.
- You can cook all your meat at once which is a nice QoL.
- Once the PC sits down, it takes around 5 seconds before you can get off your ass again.
- Not sure if this is just a demo thing but all characters, except Kirgo during his sparring match, will not loot you once knocked down but will instead execute you even if you both are fighting barehanded (Also, Kirgo is the only NPC who you can loot and kill in the demo). The only time they don't execute you is when you draw a weapon near them and don't stow it. They still don't loot you afterwards though. In fact, this causes a bug where the NPCs will repeatedly knock you down but refuse to finish you so you can find yourself repeatedly getting knocked down and getting back up before getting knocked again.
- When you knock down certain characters or complete certain quests you are awarded 0 exp.
- An alternate ending to the hunting mission has you refuse to go hunting with Drax and instead kill the Scavengers by yourself. Normally, he would join the fight and after say you aren't one for plans with the quest completing like normal. For some reason, one time I did this quest and fought the Scavs by myself afterwards, Drax says someone must have got by him and killed the Scavs while he wasn't looking and it certainly couldn't be the PC. This results in the hunting mission failing immediately. I have no clue what caused this to happen (And regardless if you help Drax or not, he will still say you helped him when you go to camp with Ratford).
- I noticed that AI has a tendency to lock up. I fought Kirgo once and he just froze, never striking back. Drax also on the hunting mission once killed a single Scavenger and stopped helping and another time he killed all of the Scavs but then locked up afterwards which I could only fix by smacking him down.
- Human NPCs sometimes become indifferent towards wildlife and vice versa.
- I smacked Ratford with a torch to which he drew his weapon but then holstered it shortly after. I smack him again and he repeats the prior action. I am able to down him thanks to this weird bug.
- Targeting someone with a torch equipped hides their health bar for some reason.
- Not sure how I caused this but I was fighting Drax and went to parry. The attack was deflected but the PC didn't animate. I tried to then move and swing but found that I was frozen in place with the only action I could take was to parry. Just like with the AI, getting smacked down fixes this (then gets you killed). I also had an instance where I ate food then couldn't perform and combat actions including dodging or pulling my weapon out. I had to have a Scav hit me to fix that.
- Tested mantling some more by hopping around the edge of a cliff. It seems fairly inconsistent on what is and isn't a climbable object. I initially thought it was just perfectly flat surfaces but I started jumping around on a cliff face and mantling jagged rocks. I have no idea what constitutes a climbable object in this game.
- On the topic of mantling, I noticed you auto-mantle small objects like tables, wagons, etc... While not a problem right now, I could absolutely see an Assassin's Creed situation where your character just keeps auto-mantling in tighter spaces.
- You no longer have that Tomb Raider-esque slide down steep slopes. You either are able to walk on them or just kind of awkwardly fall down them.
- If you are close to drowning then a red overlay will flash over the screen. Seems unnecessary as you already have an oxygen gauge.
- Dropping objects with no physics attached to them causes them to simply appear before you and hover above the ground (The Amphora in this case).
- Loading a game causes all dead NPCs to fire off their death rattles again.
- Saw that there is a keybind for a roll. Presumably, this is to buff Acrobatics and make it more useful but I can't help but think this is more Souls shit wriggling its way into stuff it really shouldn't be in. Hopefully, there aren't i-frames attached to it.
- The pause menu labelled a pause menu in-game does not pause. This extends to the load and save screens as well.
- You can jump or sneak with a torch out (No sprinting though) but you cannot jump or sneak with a weapon out.
- Critical hit chance is no longer displayed in the stats screen. They still exist but I have no idea if the remake follows the same formula for them.
- You can no longer release from ladders. You must climb all the way up or down.
- After placing a torch on the ground you can wait till it burns out and then pick it back up, acquiring another fresh torch.
After finding so many bugs in the demo it honestly feels like the full release is also gonna be bugged up the ass. It might be a good idea to give it a few days after release to see if it is a complete technical mess.

 

[Necrensha]

edit:
Bitch-ass Asmon took down his Gothic take.

 

[cvv]

edit:
Bitch-ass Asmon took down his Gothic take.

No shot. He never does that. What did he say? Don't answer, he hated it, obviously. He would've hated it even without the sluggishness and bugs, it's just not for him. He hated KCD2 too.

It's weird, he mains his PC and keeps mocking modern gamers but in reality he's the epitome of a modern consoletard.