Gothic 1 Remake explained before you start

Gothic 1 Remake came out on 5 June 2026, a rebuild of a role-playing game first released in 2001. THQ Nordic, which publishes it, says the game "has been fully rebuilt in Unreal Engine 5 while staying faithful to the atmosphere, story, and brutal charm of the original classic." Three months and five numbered patches later, this page is for someone deciding whether to start it now. It covers what the publisher and the developer say changed, what the game asks of a new player, the price on each storefront on 15 September 2026, what the patches have fixed and what is still promised, the PC requirements, the age ratings, and the things we could not pin down. Everything below comes from a page in the Sources list, read today, most of it from the stores and from THQ Nordic's and Alkimia Interactive's own posts.

The key art in the Artwork folder of THQ Nordic's asset server, with the logo reading Gothic Remake. Image: THQ Nordic press kit, provided for editorial use; fetched 2026-09-15.

Who makes it, and where it shipped

Steam's entry for app 1297900 names Alkimia Interactive as developer and lists both Alkimia Interactive and THQ Nordic as publishers. THQ Nordic's launch release is more direct: "Gothic 1 Remake is being developed by Alkimia Interactive and published by THQ Nordic." The legal line on Steam reads "© 2026 THQ Nordic AB, Sweden. Developed by Alkimia Interactive, Spain." Alkimia's own home page describes it as "a new game development studio based in the heart of Barcelona, Spain", and still describes the remake as work in progress.

The release lists three platforms: PC, PlayStation 5 and Xbox Series X|S. Every storefront we read agrees on the day.

Platform	Date on that store's listing	Source
Windows PC, Steam	5 June 2026	Steam appdetails
Windows PC, GOG	5 June 2026, 18:59 CEST in the page data	GOG store page
PlayStation 5	5 June 2026, shown as 6/5/2026	PlayStation US game page
Xbox Series X and S	5 June 2026, 17:00 UTC in the page data	Xbox US store listing

PEGI's database prints 05/06/2026 for PC, Xbox Series X|S and PlayStation 5, which matches. No Nintendo version appears in the release or in any store we checked.

The original is still on sale. Steam's page for Gothic 1, the 2001 game, names Piranha Bytes as developer and THQ Nordic as publisher, and lists a US price of $19.99. Its release-date field reads Mar 15, 2001. That is a field on a store that did not exist in 2001, so we are treating it as Steam's record rather than a verified launch date, and we have not added regional 2001 dates. THQ Nordic's own release says only "Originally released in 2001". Its 7 August showcase recap also lists console versions of the older games: Gothic Classic "Available now", Gothic II Complete Classic on 29 September 2026 and Gothic III Classic on 24 November 2026, each at 29.99 €.

What the publisher says changed

The store copy is the fullest statement. Steam's About text says the remake "remains faithful to the original experience, rebuilding the game from the ground up while preserving its distinctive sense of unrestricted exploration and satisfying progression." The next paragraph is the list of changes: "While the core pillars of the game remain intact, the remake enhances the experience with expanded and more detailed questlines, additional NPC routines and reactions, new traversal abilities, and a fully modernized combat system." The feature list describes that combat as "a modernized combat system that updates the core mechanics of the original, offering a more fluid and dynamic experience while staying true to its deliberate and tactical roots", and puts the length at "over 50 hours of gameplay". This is a rebuild, not a re-release of the old code, which is the opposite approach to the Joe & Mac Retro Collection and its original cartridge games.

What THQ Nordic says was kept matters as much. The launch release keeps the premise: the player is the Nameless Hero, "a prisoner thrown into the Valley of Mines: a ruthless penal colony surrounded by a magical barrier", where three rival camps compete for power. It also promises the old game's refusal to guide you: "There are no glowing trails leading you through the world. No enemies magically scaling to your level. Nothing stopping you from wandering somewhere dangerous far too early."

Neither text says which questlines were expanded or what the new traversal abilities are. The patch notes fill some of that in by naming the systems they fix. There is wall climbing (1.0.1), diving with an oxygen limit and a rideable creature called the scavenger (1.0.5), custom difficulty settings with a combat slider (1.0.4), and a performance or quality preset on consoles (1.0.2). The only one Alkimia calls new in so many words is lockpicking: its 1.0.1 post refers to "the new lockpicking system". We have not played the 2001 game against the remake, so read that list as the systems the patches touch, not as a checked list of additions.

A walled fort in Gothic 1 Remake: a stone keep with a tall spired tower behind a wooden palisade hung with red cloth, a stone bridge with torches and wooden posts in the foreground, dark trees on either side, and misty snow-capped mountains under a cloudy sky streaked with pale blue light — The Old Camp, going by the file name in the kit. Image: THQ Nordic press kit, provided for editorial use; fetched 2026-09-15.

What the game asks of a new player

It is a single-player game on every listing: Steam's categories give Single-player, the Xbox listing says Single player, and the PlayStation page says 1 player. Steam also lists adjustable difficulty, save anytime and full controller support. The launch release frames the first big choice as a question: "Will you earn your place in the Old Camp, join the rebels of the New Camp, or follow the strange beliefs of the Swamp Camp?" The store says the faction you pick shapes how your abilities and playstyle develop. The quest sections of the 1.0.3 notes run from Chapter 1 to Chapter 6, which gives a sense of the story's structure.

Lockpicking is the system new players complained about first. The day after launch, Alkimia wrote that "the sentiment about lockpicking" was "very mixed" and that "we cannot stress enough how much easier this gets when you start adding skill points into it." Patch 1.0.1 added a lock difficulty indicator, and 1.0.2 made solving a lock give "a little bit of XP to feel more rewarding."

Anyone who played in launch week will find a different balance now. Patch 1.0.2 increased damage for many creatures and "Increased health and armor for all humans other than lower tiers like diggers, scrapers, peasants and novices", with some named characters raised further. It also raised the damage of several spells and replaced some weapons that were too strong for early areas. In its words, two Chapter 1 areas "previously contained easily accessible Chapter 4 weapons." Patch 1.0.4 went on to change the costs of armour upgrades by faction and to give caster robes more physical protection.

An underground settlement in Gothic 1 Remake: rows of small flat-roofed stone houses lit by torches, built into the terraced walls of a vast dark cavern around a deep central pit that glows purple and blue — The New Camp, going by the file name in the kit. Image: THQ Nordic press kit, provided for editorial use; fetched 2026-09-15.

What it costs

Storefront	Region	Price on 15 September 2026
Steam	United States	$49.99
Steam	United Kingdom	£41.99
Steam	Germany	49,99€
GOG	United States	$44.99 against a $49.99 base amount, page title "10% off", offer ends 18 September 2026, 09:59 EEST
PlayStation Store, PS5	United States	$59.99
Xbox store	United States	$59.99, no discount in the offer data

The number to notice is the gap between platforms. In the US the PC versions list at $49.99 and both console versions at $59.99. Discounts have come and gone already: THQ Nordic's showcase recap put the game at 10% off on Steam from 7 to 14 August and 20% off on Xbox from 4 to 10 August.

The business model is a single purchase. Steam lists one add-on, the soundtrack, at $9.99, and its page credits the music to Kai Rosenkranz. The Xbox listing's data flags neither first-party nor third-party in-app purchases, and the ESRB certificate lists no interactive elements, so there is no in-game purchase notice. PEGI's database does carry two separate "Gothic 1 Remake Pre-Order Bonus" entries, for PlayStation 5 and Xbox Series X|S, dated 07/04/2026. Nothing we read today says what that bonus contained or whether it can still be obtained. The official site also links a physical Standard Edition and a PC Collector's Edition on THQ Nordic's EU store, whose prices we did not read.

The patches so far, and what is promised

Alkimia posts each version on Steam with a build number to check in the game's settings.

Version	Steam post	What the post or notes lead with
1.0.1	12 June	Lock difficulty indicator, crash fixes with DLSS and FSR, economy exploits, many quest fixes
Hotfix	18 June	FSR initialisation and muffled voice audio
1.0.2	19 June, hotfix 22 June	Console performance and quality presets, the balance pass, savegame profile recovery
1.0.3	2 July, hotfixes 10 and 14 July	Quest blockers by chapter, a changelog screen, then an audio fix after a hotfix broke sound
1.0.4	31 July, hotfix 6 August	Crossbow, XP and ring-bonus bugs, armour and robe balancing
1.0.5	27 August, hotfix 14 September	Boss and quest fixes, an item duplication bug, crashes; the hotfix targets hitching and GPU hangs

The 1.0.3 cycle is the one to know about if you read old forum threads. On 12 July Alkimia wrote that the "Last hotfix unfortunately introduced some audio issues on all platforms", offered a Steam beta branch with fixes, and shipped the repair for all platforms on 14 July. The latest hotfix, posted yesterday, lists a fix for a crash "when someone wakes us for sleeping in their bed", less hitching "on HDDs and slow SSDs", and a fix for "a Nanite related GPU Hang". The version to check for is CL 173255.

The promised additions come from Alkimia's 7 August message, repeated in THQ Nordic's showcase recap. They are a photo mode; Marvin Mode, which the Steam post calls "the Gothic equivalent of a developer mode, think spawning creatures or items, teleporting around the map"; "A mod kit to let you, the players, get creative with the game"; and "Alternative progression mechanics". The stated timing was "in the next couple of months". The 1.0.5 post on 27 August said the team was "working hard on the new features that we announced during the THQ Nordic Showcase". None of the four appears in the 1.0.5 notes or in yesterday's hotfix.

On reception, the numbers we can give come with their sources. THQ Nordic said on 12 June that the game had "surpassed 500,000 units sold across PC, PlayStation 5, and Xbox Series X|S" in its first week, and that it reached "a peak of almost 78,000 concurrent players on Steam" on 7 June. Those are the publisher's figures. Today Steam's own endpoints show 40,932 reviews, 36,402 of them positive, with the summary "Very Positive", and 1,813 players in game at 14:06 UTC. That is about 89 percent positive by our arithmetic. Steam's data carries no Metacritic figure for this game.

Running it

Steam's minimum PC specification requires Windows 10 or 11 64-bit, an Intel Core i7-7700K or AMD Ryzen 5 1600X, 16 GB of RAM, a graphics card with 8 GB of VRAM at the level of an AMD RX 6700 XT or NVIDIA GeForce RTX 2070, DirectX 12 and 60 GB of storage, with the note "Needs an SSD or better NVMe disk". The recommended specification keeps the i7-7700K, lists a Ryzen 5 3600X, and raises the rest to 32 GB of RAM and 12 GB of VRAM, naming an NVIDIA GeForce RTX 3070 Ti or AMD Radeon RX 6800 XT, with "NVMe disk recommended". Those are heavy numbers for a game of this age, and yesterday's hotfix note about hitching on "HDDs and slow SSDs" suggests storage speed is a real factor. Steam's compatibility report places the game in its Unsupported category for Steam Deck, with a graphics performance test result. On Xbox the listing gives a maximum install size of 38,226,554,880 bytes, about 38 GB, and marks the game Optimized for Xbox Series X|S.

Full voice acting is in English, German, Polish and Russian. Steam lists interface and subtitles in ten languages in total, adding French, Italian, Spanish, Simplified Chinese, Japanese and Brazilian Portuguese, and the PlayStation page gives the same voice languages.

Age ratings

This is an adult game by both major boards' measure. The ESRB rates it Mature 17+ for Blood and Gore, Strong Language, Suggestive Themes, Use of Drugs and Alcohol, and Violence, with no interactive elements. Its summary describes melee, bow and magic combat against inmates and creatures, and says "Large blood-splatter effects occur during combat". It also describes gory cutscenes, suggestive dialogue, a fictional drug called Swamp Weed that resembles a cannabis cigarette, drinkable alcohol, and the f-word. PEGI rates it 18: "This rating has been given because it features use of strong language and graphic violence." PEGI's notes add dismemberment of human characters and that alcohol grants the player health buffs. The developer's own content note on Steam begins "The game is set in a prison colony where inmates treat each other rough." Steam's data also shows USK 16 for Germany and MA15+ for Australia, which we did not check against those boards' own databases.

Before you start

Expect to be lost and outmatched early. That is the design THQ Nordic describes, and the release's own advice is that "If a creature looks terrifying, that probably means it can kill you."
Put skill points into lockpicking if locked chests matter to you. The developer's advice and two patches point the same way.
Check the storage: the PC minimum asks for an SSD, the latest hotfix addresses hitching on slower drives, and the Steam listing asks for 60 GB.
Compare prices across platforms. In the US, PC costs $10 less than console, and the GOG discount ends on 18 September.
Do not buy it for the promised photo mode, Marvin Mode, mod kit or alternative progression. They were announced for "the next couple of months" on 7 August and have not shipped as of 15 September.
Steam Deck owners should note the Unsupported rating before buying on Steam.

What we could not confirm

The regional launch dates of the 2001 original; which questlines the remake expanded and which traversal abilities are new, beyond the systems named in patch notes; what the PEGI-listed pre-order bonus contained; the prices of the physical and Collector's editions; whether patch 1.0.5 and yesterday's hotfix are live on PlayStation 5 and Xbox, since those two posts do not name platforms; prices outside the US on PlayStation, Xbox and GOG; and a release date for any of the four promised features. Each is left open rather than filled in.

The row in the dataset

The dataset records Gothic 1 Remake with Alkimia Interactive as developer and THQ Nordic as publisher, a first release of 5 June 2026 from the Steam listing, the platforms Windows PC, PlayStation 5 and Xbox Series X|S, the genre RPG, and the era current. It is the first remake in the set: the row carries the 2026 date, and the 2001 original would be a separate row if it is ever covered on its own.