THQ Nordic have announced that a Gothic remake will head into full production, setting up a new Barcelona studio to handle the project. The announcement comes with a new trailer, following “unambiguous feedback” from fans who tried a playable teaser that was released at the end of 2019.
The Gothic playable teaser was released on 13th December, being made available to owners of any game by Piranha Bytes, whether Gothic 1-3, Risen 1-3, or ELEX. You can see a comparison between the modern visuals of the teaser and the 2001 German RPG original here:
Over 180,000 people played the teaser, with a survey unlocking for anyone that played for a certain amount of time spent in the game. 43,111 people then answered the survey by the time it was taken offline (alongside over 9,000 Steam reviews!), and the overwhelming majority of those (I’m talking a 94.8% majority, not something stupid and ambiguous like 52%) were in favour of a full remake of the classic RPG. That’s just one step shy of throwing bundles of cash at their computer screens.
Now there is an element of preaching to the choir here, as the teaser was only distributed to owners of the games, who would almost certainly be fans of the series. In fact, of the 43,110, over 40,000 had played Gothic and Gothic 2, with Gothic 3 not far behind.
Still, there’s some good feedback for the new Barcelona team to take on board. The animations could be refined further, the English voice over was similarly good, and their attempt to reinterpret the original game’s plot was “OK, but could be better” for 58.8%. That said, the decision to remake as opposed to continue the series was the right one in the eyes of fans.
If you’re curious about the survey, you can check out the graphs generated from it here, while the teaser is still available on Steam to owners of Piranha Bytes’ games. It’s likely that’s all we’ll really see of the game for quite some time, as THQ Nordic Barcelona build up, settle on target platforms, and get stuck into what will likely be a couple years of development.
Source: press release
