Hello Gothic fans, Today we wanted to take the time to talk about the combat in Gothic 1 Remake. Since we first showed the game at Gamescom and gave you the Nyras Prologue we got a lot of feedback, especially about combat. In general, the combat is mainly inspired by the original Gothic game. We chose this deliberately and didn’t want to copy a combat system from an existing game like many sword fighting games do. Even though nowadays a lot of players are familiar with such systems, we wanted to deliver a feeling that goes back to actual sword fighting where you can choose the direction of your attack. The combat in Gothic is very complex. It features a lot of different close combat weapon types and our goal is that every weapon type will look and feel a little different. Also, many combat abilities change, depending on progression, as do animations and timings based on your mastery level. That is to say that combat is a massive feature for us. Early in development we established a team of designers, animators and programmers that only work on combat. In that team, we can iterate quickly over timings and combat feel. Usually, after we are happy with a certain feeling, we make the final animation by motion capturing an actor who is good with sword fighting. But enough of the preface. In your feedback and the conversations we had in person, it became clear that certain aspects need some improvement. Some of those we knew and had on the roadmap anyhow, but some others we didn't have on the radar yet. Initially our plan was to be fully done with combat at the time of GamesCom 2025 but unfortunately that didn’t work out. So let’s go into details of changes we've done: We have shortened the buildup animation timings. Also, in the August 2025 version there was a small delay/stop when you transitioned from movement to an attack, this is now eliminated.
Combos are now only triggered when you press the correct attack button and not by just any attack button.
On levels higher than “untrained” you can now interrupt with a dodge or block during buildup or recovery from a hit.
Dodging can now be triggered while blocking.
The camera to lock on an enemy has been improved in order to be more focused and clear.
Foot sliding has been replaced with a proper animation.
Added finishing attacks that complete combo chains and can apply a knockdown on the enemy.
Specific attacks can knock down the hero.
Added a new animation set for two-handed master level (it was previously the same as two-handed “trained”).
Most of these changes were already fully implemented in the playable demo that was shown at PGA in Poznan, Poland. Additionally we are looking into which attacks can be blocked and which ones are not block-able and an ongoing effort is to further improve the AI in all phases from taunting to actual combat. We are eager to hear your thoughts and treat this always as valueable input for our designs and implementation. We are still working on further improvements and tweaks, but we hope we gave you some better insights into what’s happening in the combat area. Alles wird gut!