Hey there! You’re up and about at last – oh, wait a minute, I’m recalling that other fantasy story where you begin as a chained prisoner. Today marks the launch of Alkimia Interactive and THQ Nordic’s remake of Gothic, the 2001 first-person RPG crafted by Piranha Bytes. It will go live on Steam within a few hours, with a demo still available as of this writing.
While significantly enriched with added questlines, enhanced NPC behaviors, fresh movement abilities, and “modernized” combat, it essentially remains the same story of a group of inmates confined under a magical dome, mining ore to sell to a king who is engaged in an unending conflict against the orcs. That’s the king in the introductory cinematic, below, gazing at the orc’s head in his hand as if he can’t quite recall how it ended up there. How long has he been holding that head? Did he mistake it for his coffee mug at breakfast?