It sounds a bit complicated to emphasize that we’re talking about a remaster, but we’ll explain what it is, because it might not be what you think at first.

In 2019, THQ Nordic, a subsidiary of the Embracer Group, announced that a remake of 2001’s Gothic was in the works. The original was developed by Piranha Bytes, but they too migrated to THQ Nordic in May of that year (back then, Embracer was still acquiring companies with both hands, now they sell them off…). In December 2019, the Gothic playable teaser was released, and due to the positive reception, the publisher announced in February 2020 that a remake was coming. In March 2021, before development began, Alkimia Interactive was created (based in Barcelona, just like the THQ branch behind the teaser), and reportedly many people moved to it from Piranha Bytes, which was closed, at least temporarily, but maybe for good!

Well, that’s not the project we’re talking about. It’s a REMASTER instead of a remake, so we had to distinguish between the two. The first beta of the remaster is out. It runs on Unreal Engine 4, and if you have the original Gothic on Steam, you can access the fan project for free on Valve’s platform. On Steam, right-click on Properties, select Beta Versions, and enter this code: TheColonyisNotUnreal – once you have this, Steam will start downloading the trial version, a video of which can be seen below.

This has created a rather strange situation. Perhaps never before has there been an example of a game being remade and remastered at the same time, with the former being developed by the original studio developers! Not even The Last of Us has done this, although its PlayStation 4 remaster was released a year and a half after the PlayStation 3 original. The PlayStation 5 remake followed many years later…

Source: WCCFTech