Gothic 1 Remake Interview: THQ Nordic on Challenges, Feedback, and What’s Next

THQ Nordic: We made the transition to Unreal 5 about midway through the development of the Gothic Remake. We were always keeping a close eye on what was being announced because we were particularly interested in the global illumination feature. We really wanted to have that in our game, and we weren’t satisfied with the solutions available at the time. When we switched to UE5, some of the new features were a bit rough around the edges, but fortunately, Epic keeps improving things regularly.

Unreal does have a reputation for some performance issues. It’s a technology designed to render very high-quality, realistic graphics. That naturally comes at a cost, and if you don’t know how to optimize or don’t have a proper optimization strategy, you end up with a game that doesn’t perform well. Also, the way Epic ships the engine isn’t tailored for any specific game—it’s designed to look incredible out of the box, which might work perfectly for one project but not for many others without significant additional work.

We’ve been working hard on optimizing everything for quite some time now, so it’s not a rush job, and we’re confident we’ll hit our targets.

THQ Nordic: First of all, we don’t call it an action-adventure. While action elements like combat are a big part of the game, depending on how you play, they’re more or less significant, of course. The Gothic Remake is an immersive open-world RPG. The key thing about Gothic is that many aspects are simulated—how animals and monsters behave, how NPCs act, and so on.

The world isn’t simply a big stage that changes only when the player arrives or whenever it’s needed for main missions. Nor is it a gated experience where players are blocked from reaching certain parts of the world. Everything is open, and progress is limited only by your skill—you can go anywhere if you’re able to overcome the challenges waiting for you there.

THQ Nordic: The original was so feature-rich that it really holds up well to modern expectations. But we’ve improved and expanded almost all the mechanics. The biggest thing that sets the Gothic Remake apart is the ungated progression and the inclusion of many elements of a truly immersive fantasy-world simulation.

All our NPCs and creatures have detailed daily routines that help create a living, believable world for players to explore.

THQ Nordic: I’d like to clarify that we didn’t specifically focus on unfinished areas. There are some included where it made sense, like, for example, the Abandoned Mine, which is accessible in the Gothic Remake and an interesting site to explore, but our main approach was to look at places where certain elements weren’t fully developed, or where things didn’t quite make sense or weren’t well explained or integrated.

As we started implementing this new content, it became clear that the world needed to be larger to make room for all the extra detail modern environments demand. I’m particularly excited to see how fans respond to some of the story tweaks we’ve made, the additional side quests we’ve added, and our new treatment of Orc culture.

THQ Nordic: Well, never say never again. While we’d certainly love to go there, first we have to succeed with step one: delivering a faithful yet modern remake of Gothic 1 that lives up to fans’ expectations and appeals to new players. That’s our complete focus at the moment. Only once that job is done will we look at where the Gothic franchise might go next.

THQ Nordic: We’re using Angelscript, which is integrated in such a way that almost everything possible via Unreal Blueprint is also possible via Angelscript. We’re already using it extensively for a lot of gameplay mechanics. Unreal isn’t ideal for modding because it maintains a strict separation between the data that gets shipped and the data that can be edited.

THQ Nordic: We will soon say something about that, stay tuned!

THQ Nordic: Not at all. The Gothic 1 Remake goes right back to the very beginning of the franchise—everything starts fresh and is explained. It features the same story, the same world, and the same setting as the original game. That said, if you don’t mind the dated graphics and enjoy older games, definitely check out Gothic Classic—it’s now available on Nintendo Switch!

THQ Nordic: Absolutely. We started creating the demo about a year ago, and since then, a lot of improvements have been made. We’ve categorised characters into Tiers, with only Tier A having the highest level of detail. These are the main story NPCs, and among the demo characters, only Diego belonged to that Tier. We’re also continuing to work on lots of smaller visual tweaks.

THQ Nordic: You’re absolutely right—this is definitely the fine line we’re walking: transforming the game into a modern experience while keeping its spirit and atmosphere intact. You can already see how carefully we’re approaching this in the demo—we’ve collected plenty of player feedback and updated the demo a few weeks ago to reflect those demands. That’s our core philosophy: we want to make sure fans are heard. We value their feedback and listen wherever possible.

As for specific options—the field of view is customisable, and so is the camera position, whether centred behind the player or slightly offset to the right. Regarding general controls, we’ll offer one standard approach but allow players to customise their personal experience with controls, settings, and different game difficulty options.

THQ Nordic: At the moment, the entire team is fully focused on finishing the Gothic 1 Remake and ensuring it’s the experience fans are waiting for and deserve. Once that’s done—and by “done” we don’t just mean hitting the release date, because of course we’ll keep listening to player feedback after launch and address any issues—we’ll start thinking about the next steps for the Gothic franchise. Naturally, we’d love to work on Gothic 2, and we already have lots of ideas. Fortunately, with Gothic 2 there’s far less that needs changing or refining mechanically, as it’s already a pretty solid package in my opinion, and it has fewer plot holes or story gaps that need filling. But as I said, first we need to finish the Gothic 1 Remake and make sure players love it.