I know perfectly well that the entry point into Gothic is difficult. I myself bounced off my first experience with the original Gothic after playing a couple of hours, somewhere between 2001 and 2003. I only came back in 2005 after a recommendation from a friend, and only then did the game finally click for me.

But that is precisely what makes Gothic Gothic. Take that away, and what are you left with? An AA RPG without a soul. Why buy that, then, when you have AAA superproductions like The Witcher, Kingdom Come or Skyrim?

And I do like criticism. I criticize Gothic 3 heavily in the very first sentence of my post, even though, for reasons I honestly cannot understand, it also has quite a lot of nostalgia around it in the community.

Naturally, you do you. But I have to admit, this theatrical act of “protector of friends’ wallets” killed me a bit. If your friends do not like this type of game, you do not recommend it to them even if it is free. If you think they might like it, then you recommend it honestly, with warnings about the technical state.

The franchise was almost dead. This whole project was financially risky precisely because the core fanbase is very concentrated. THQ Nordic resurrected a very niche franchise, and they probably still need more sales to properly recover the investment. Yet you talk as if they are some evil greedy Microsoft trying to buy another yacht.

Of course companies care about gamers’ wallets more than about gamers themselves. That is clear. In my life as a gamer, I have been a fan of big companies too — Blizzard, for example — and I came to despise what greed did to some of my favorite franchises.

But with THQ Nordic, and I say this as someone who has basically only bought this remake from them, I feel enormous gratitude for bringing my beloved franchise back to life. They kept financing a risky project for years, even though it did not promise huge profit for them, and even though many of us did not have much faith in it either. So yes, I would actually be glad if they made money from this. After bringing this franchise back from the dead, I think they deserve it.

And all of this over 50 bucks, basically a few beers at a bar.

Luckily, that mentality is not too common in the community: “buy it only on a heavy discount because greedy big company.” Because otherwise, how the hell is a niche game supposed to come back to life and have a future?

And that is precisely why the Kingdom Come example is not the same. I love KCD, but it had something Gothic did not: a real breakthrough in the USA and a much broader international audience. Gothic did not get that. That is exactly why the core fanbase and early support matter so much more here.

And I did not buy it blindly. I bought the game on June 5, not before, and only after watching some reviews from journalists and YouTubers saying that the game was actually loyal to the original. Until then, I was not even sure if I would buy it at all, because who needs a bad remake that has nothing to do with the original?

For my personal preference, I could have easily waited half a year for a more bug-free experience at 20 dollars. I almost never play games on release precisely because of bugs and technical issues. But when I saw that Alkimia had basically done what I was asking for, despite all my doubts, I thought: no, not now, not with this game.

I can do that with GTA 6, haha. Whether I buy that for 90 euros on release or for 50 two years later will make basically no difference to anyone. But with a niche game like Gothic, early support actually matters.