THQ Nordic confirms a promising Gothic remake is going into full production

Following hugely positive reception from gamers, THQ Nordic plans to open a Barcelona-based studio to produce a remake of cult classic RPG, Gothic.

Gameplay footage and stills are already all over the web, following a playable teaser section being made available by THQ Nordic. Now, the devs say the overwhelmingly positive response to the teaser means the game will go into full production.

The survey revealed that most gamers who had tried the playable teaser were PC gamers and already fans of the Gothic series. 84% of them said they finished the entire playable teaser and 94.8% said they wanted to see THQ Nordic develop a full follow-up game.

Almost all the other metrics THQ Nordic questioned gamers on returned positive results too. However, the one early chink in the armour seems to be combat. With around 6000 gamers saying it was “not good”. That was still a minority though, take a look at the graph below.

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However, overall it seems fair to say that gamers’ responses were consistently positive. The most common rating for the whole experience was 80%, as you can see below, and only a small proportion of players rated the game badly.

Reinhard Pollice, Business and Product Development Director at THQ Nordic, said: “We are up for the challenge to develop a full Gothic Remake which will stay as faithfully as possible to the original experience and transport the atmospheric world of Gothic into a high quality look and carefully modernising certain gameplay mechanics.”

While Pollice says the studio will stay true to the original release, a statement on the THQ Nordic site says it will be “re-imagining the whole thing” so expect some changes.

Publishing the survey results following a demo release like this is an unusual move from THQ Nordic. However, we can now clearly see that there is interest in the game’s release.

One question that remains pertinent – with 85% of survey respondents saying they were “die hard Gothic fans” – is whether the game will attract new users from outside the existing fanbase. It may need to do so, in order to be a real success, and it seems a shame THQ Nordic didn’t cast the net a little wider in inviting people to the play test.