An unplanned quicky seeing as I've been gone longer than anticipated. Don't worry, I'll be back with a proper review soon, but for now I got around trying out that newfangled Gothic Playable Teaser which was released free for owners of anything Gothic from what I've gathered. As a massive Gothic fan I suppose my reactions may be somewhat predictable and I didn't go into any serious depth. After all, this is a teaser and game may end up changed drastically.
There are times when you question the desire to remake something and this is one of those cases. Not that I would necessarily object to bringing an underrated classic like Gothic to wider awareness via remake, but you have to be conscious of what exactly you're recreating and getting those priorities right. I am not one of those people happy to support anything to see a thing I like revived. Sometimes the best course of action is to stay dead and be venerated.
If you're unfamiliar with Gothic as such you assume the role of a Nameless hero, or rather you have a name but everyone constantly interjects and says they don't care, who gets thrown into a prison colony surrounded by a magical barrier preventing people from leaving said interment. Why you're thrown in is never disclosed, but considering newcomers pretty much throw away their past it doesn't matter either. Teaser stays true to this, although I would argue for all the additional and commendable work that was put into what amounted to ten minutes in the original, new team's approach is misguided. While your hand was definitely not held in the original and you were basically given a “good luck, kid” talk from Diego now he will assume the role of your mentor and the first hour or so revolves around being introduced to systems in traditional modern day fashion. If you ask me this is anti-Gothic where you were left to your own devices as designers respected your intelligence to leave it up to you. Now, story and all that is up in the air seeing as it this is basically just a [unfinished] prologue, but there are other issues we CAN talk about.
Even if we ignore blatant streamlined consolization at work here present at every facet bringing the entire experience down, which is amusing seeing as original incarnation had problems of its own with user interface and clunky control scheme that took a while to get used to, if I had to summarize the new take by a single phrase it would most likely be “designed by committee”. It's almost unreal to me how you manage to so utterly misinterpret Gothic's atmosphere, progression and combat – three vital vitals game was built on. I haven't played For Honor so I can't comment on similarities present there, but how these new developers went from what was a responsive and quick system to this protracted mess of staring more at attack direction indicators than enemies themselves is beyond me. This is not even taking into account Nameless hero's piss poor combat skills because that's how it was in the series so far as well until you trained up, and we don't get access to that in the teaser. What I am rather talking about is the overall pace of combat and what a chore it all is. Ignoring that three wolves should rightfully tear you apart until you have a decent weapon and know your way around turning group fights into 1v1, sheer amount of time it takes to get through combat encounters almost discouraged me from finishing this offering. All participants slow down to a crawl and entire affair turns into tediously maneuvering around seeing as there's a stamina bar now for some reason. Combat was shifted from rushing your enemies to, what is I presume supposed to be, methodical encounters where you're supposed to dodge and parry while being mindful of your exhaustion, but it never clicks together and deviates too much from what is familiar. End result plays like awkwardly managing the character's forward momentum and fighting exceedingly zoomed in camera.
So is there anything positive, you may ask. I'd be hard pressed to find something because even what I liked on its own merits is still marred in conjunction with other things. For examples, visuals are not half bad, but lighting and shaders used are totally out of whack with some crazy bloom action going on at all times. Not to mention the overall visual identity game presents to the player screams “generic fantasy RPG” with none of that grim Gothic atmosphere. I won't even comment on protagonist's intolerable yapping and dubious VA all around. Hopefully things can and will change, but without some major reworks and ditching some modern ideas present I don't see this one appealing to me.
Amusingly enough you can just rush past the “slow walk exposition” bits. Also, NPCs don't wait for you.
We needed the Nameless hero hogging our inventory in a series known for rarely replacing gear because it's such a milestone event when you do.
How do you go in what is seemingly an evolved direction with combat changes and still somehow make it not work?
I haven’t played Gothic at its time and when I tried to play it a few years ago, it was just too old to easily get into…Now, I’m not saying that I won’t play it, but now that I know what I’d get myself into, I consider it a bigger project. I’d have to set plenty of time aside for preparation and research before venturing into Gothic again. Not something I want to do at the moment, but definitely something for the future.
So I cannot speak to the Teaser…but the underlying issue, the rise of remasters, is something I see with mixed feeling as well. Or as you put it aptly:
There are several games which illustrate that they do not necessarily get better, just because they were remade with more modern engines/graphics/etc … See the AoE 1 remaster e.g., which does not seem to be that good. I get that game studios make the decision to remake something, because we seem to have hit a spot, where a lot of older gamers get remasters just for nostalgic reasons. But I think some titles should be left alone. Personnaly, I don’t want to see a remaster of my favourite games out of sheer fear that they’ll butcher the remaster ;)
Sorry for late response.
There are for sure some obstacles when playing Gothic unless you experienced it around release. Hell, even back THEN its control scheme was considered obtuse and plain weird. I would argue against actually reading up about the game before going into it, though. There are some technical patches/fixes to not make it run in sub-30s framerate, but as far as far as gearing for content it would defeat the purpose in my opinion. Gothic 1 and 2 are, to this day, probably the best paced RPGs in terms of meaningful player progression in more than just “bigger numbers = better” sense you see in modern games. You learn stuff and it sticks with you.
My opinion on remakes is basically split: you either do a faithful 1:1 remake, like Crash games you mentioned I loved on PS1, or do your own thing that still stays true to original’s ethos. Problem with this teaser is they’re kinda stuck in the middle AND they missed the general design philosophy of the original Gothic. Why? Because it clashes with modern game design where player is king without earning it first.
Is AoE1 so bad? I saw some videos and it looks like they just smoothed out unit sprites in the most bland way possible.
Oh, I should have been more precise: By readiung up on the game I meant purely technical information, like improving its runability on newer systems, a widescreen mod, and such things. I did not mean reading guides :) Well, it sounds like I should definitely give it a go!
I never played the AoE 1 remake myself, but I’ve heard several people complaining about it. I do however not exactly remember their exact grievances with the remake.
I’d give it a look simply because games, especially RPGs, simply aren’t designed that way anymore. It’s the same reason why every gear upgrade in Gothic is so major. Armor sets especially are faction progression milestones, for example. Maybe they’ll turns remake around and surprise the old fans. Pleasantly surprise, I mean.
Problem with me and AoE1 is it’s been ages since I played the original so my mind was definitely paying tricks on me from the visual perspective. DE is way more than filtered sprites. A lot of complaining in these cases tends to come from established multiplayer scenes.