Gothic Nyras Prologue Preview
There are many RPG fans — including myself — with a warm spot for 2001’s Gothic. It was a little like the Elder Scrolls: Morrowind, and a lot different, too. Aside from the game’s considerable jank and lack of polish, it began the player character as hopelessly inept and apt to die. Progression into a skilled fighter was slow, but by the end the player was a god-like warrior and/or mage. Still, there was something about the game’s hardcore fantasy world that a segment of gamers really loved. As the long-awaited Gothic remake approaches, developer Alkimia Interactive has released a teaser. This brief, standalone demo takes place before the main game. It introduces the world, fiction and some basic game play systems.
Prepare to Die isn’t Just a FromSoft Slogan
In the prologue, you don’t create a character, but play as Nyras. He’s a recently freed prisoner, who arrives at a mining colony with the task of survival and learning to fit in. He soon learns that he’s not welcome anywhere and that there are a couple of factions competing for his membership. Well, that’s not really true. No one cares if he lives or dies. He does manage to insinuate himself with a few helpful NPCs by doing them favors. The NPCs steer him in a few directions, like towards some basic weapons and items for crafting and survival.
In the original Gothic, the player moved awkwardly and fought poorly until they learned skills and leveled up weapons and armor. Nyras is likewise pretty clumsy and hard to control. Whether this is a game in need of polish or intentionally imprecise is a little hard to parse. In the course of the prologue, Nyras gathers a basic sword and bow and definitely progresses in expertise. Still, he can die very easily, either from monsters or other humans.
The hardcore approach to RPG mechanics has been pretty widely copied in games like Dark Souls and recently, Kingdom Come: Deliverance II. However difficult those games might be, they also have polish and accessibility features that escaped the early Gothic trilogy. It remains to be seen how closely the Gothic remake resembles the original in terms of challenge.
Looking Unreal
It’s no shocker that the Unreal engine-powered Gothic remake looks infinitely better than the 2001 game. Likewise, the world and its environments have been remade to contemporary standards. Overall, the Nyras prologue is graphically pretty impressive, but there’s still some polishing to do when it comes to facial animations, lip sync and overall smoothness of movement. The voice work and writing are ok. They certainly do a good job of communicating Nyras’ unwanted and untrusted stature in the Colony.
We’ve been hearing about the Gothic remake for many years, and there was an encouraging playable teaser demo in 2019. By all indications, Gothic will be released in 2025 and the Nyras prologue is a great motivation to keep excitement building towards playing the full game.
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