It's a hell of a thing to showcase a remake weeks after kiboshing the developers of the original game. In early July, Gothic creators Piranha Bytes were reportedly shuttered as part of Embracer Group's mad race to trim costs, following their decade-long acquisition binge. Watching THQ Nordic's new Gothic Remake trailer, below, feels a little like watching a vivisectionist parade about in somebody else's skin. Still, the remake's developers Alkimia Interactive aren't to blame for Embracer's fuck-ups, and I am selfishly happy to see Gothic return as an Unreal Engine 5 production - even if I didn't play the original back in 2001.
Sin did play the original game, and in her 2016 retrospective, she paints an absorbing picture of a dark fantasy "microsociety" in which every community "has a reason to exist, a means of providing for itself, a social order, and a long term goal". It's a setup that reminds me of my beloved Roadwarden, even as the sight of grumpy lizards slinking through undergrowth has me silently mouthing "fus roh dah".
