Revision 5

Gothic 1 Remake is an upcoming action role-playing game developed by Alkimia Interactive and published by THQ Nordic. It is a ground-up rebuild of the original 2001 Gothic, rebuilt in Unreal Engine 5 while preserving the story, structure, and tone of the source material. The game releases on June 5, 2026 for PlayStation 5, Xbox Series X|S, and PC (Steam).

Setting

The game takes place on the island of Khorinis, inside a massive penal colony known as the Valley of Mines. The colony is sealed by a magical Barrier originally raised by twelve mages on the orders of King Rhobar II, who desperately needs magical ore to forge weapons against the invading Orcs. The player takes the role of the Nameless Hero, a convict thrown into the Colony for an unspecified crime and tasked with delivering a sealed letter to the High Magicians of Fire. What begins as a simple errand pulls the Hero into the power struggle between the Colony's three rival camps and the looming threat of an ancient evil beneath the earth.

Core Features

• Unreal Engine 5.4 rebuild. Alkimia began the project on Unreal Engine 4, migrated to UE5, and has settled on UE5.4 as the production engine. The team has backported the PSO precaching system from UE 5.7 to reduce shader-compilation stutter, plus a custom Lightweight Actor Cache to handle the open world's large NPC and creature counts.

• Expanded world. The game world is roughly 10 to 30 percent larger than the 2001 original, filling in areas the first team had planned but could not fully develop.

• Living NPC routines. NPC behaviour is driven by motion-capture recordings split into categorised sequences, so characters follow believable daily schedules of working, sleeping, eating, socialising, gathering at campfires, and playing instruments inside the Colony.

• Around 600 unique NPC faces. Character faces were generated with a deep-learning morphing pipeline to give the Colony a dense, non-repeating population. Alkimia has also cited more than 227 named NPCs in the Colony, each with persistent state that changes when they die.

• Reworked combat. A modernised combat system keeps the deliberate, tactical pace of the original while adding a lock-on camera, parry and riposte, dodge cancels, and three tiers of weapon-skill progression. There is no stamina bar: fights are built around timing and positioning. See Combat System.

• New traversal. Free climbing and underwater diving are new systems that did not exist in the 2001 original. Transformation spells into wolf, lurker, and harpy forms give additional movement and stealth options.

• Melee, ranged, and arcane magic. Players can lean into any of three combat pillars, with a dedicated magic path built around runes and scrolls. See Magic and Runes.

• A full Orcish language. Alkimia worked with a professional linguist to design a full Orcish language. The Hero can learn it as a progression path, which opens new dialogue and quests with Orc NPCs. See Orcish Language.

• Preserved story. The three-camp structure, the major characters, and the core narrative arc from the 2001 Gothic are preserved, with new quests and deeper dialogue layered in. Alkimia has described roughly 30 hours of additional camp-specific content on top of the original campaign.

• Data-driven design. Systems, AI, missions, and setups are built on top of the AngelScript scripting language. The Gamescom 2025 press demo was itself constructed as a mod of the full game, and the studio plans to expose the same scripting tools to the community after launch.

What's New Compared to 2001

• No stamina bar. Combat pressure comes from enemy telegraphs and spacing rather than a resource meter.

• Free climbing and underwater diving. Both are new remake mechanics that open up optional shortcuts and hidden caches.

• Transformation spells. Wolf, lurker, and harpy forms provide movement and stealth, building on the original's transformation spell tradition.

• Expanded magic effects. Spell list now includes telekinesis, mind control, sleep, fear, protection, and heal, with environmental interactions (rain dampens fire, freezing amplifies blunt damage) on top of the base effect.

• Expanded female characters. Female NPCs now have meaningful dialogue, quest involvement, and permanent world state, addressing a commonly noted gap in the 2001 release.

• Reworked lockpicking. The original's lockpicking system is preserved in spirit but presented as a new layered-pin mechanic.

Development Diary

Alkimia Interactive and THQ Nordic have released a public "Making Of" video series documenting the rebuild. Confirmed episodes:

Music

The soundtrack is composed by Kai Rosenkranz, the composer of the 2001 original, who is reinterpreting his earlier themes and writing new material for the expanded world. The audio middleware in use is FMOD.

Release Information

Demo

A free demo titled Nyras Prologue is available on PC (Steam, GOG), PlayStation 5, and Xbox Series X|S. The demo has a separate protagonist, Nyras, rather than the Nameless Hero, and is intended as a self-contained glimpse at the Colony rather than the opening of the main campaign. The PC build has been patched since its February 2025 release with faster combat animations and improved hit registration based on player feedback.

Editions

See the Editions and Pre-Order Bonuses article for Standard and Collector's Edition contents and platform-specific pre-order extras. The Collector's Edition is limited to 7,500 units globally.