Gothic Playable Teaser Review – An Abysmal Demo That Kills Hype For A Beloved Franchise Reboot

Gothic Playable Teaser is a short demonstration of THQ Nordic’s ideas for a new game that suffers from too many faults to be enjoyable. It has an awful combat system akin to that of For Honor, a 2017 Ubisoft title that I had the misfortune of playing in Early Access, a user interface that can’t be navigated with a mouse, terrible performance despite capable hardware, and disappointing visuals that only rarely relinquish some of the hidden beauty in the world design. I regret to say that I would never pay for a game like this and it needs a lot of work to appeal in this new age of videogames, to a newer audience.

A Note On My Experience With The Gothic Franchise:

I should state that I have never played the older Gothic games and I know nothing about them. I got Gothic Playable Teaser for free when buying another game from THQ Nordic and played this as someone entirely new to the franchise, so this, to me, serves as a demo for a potential upcoming game, but without my judgement of it coming from a place of nostalgia about the source material it’s inspired by. This review is entirely my opinion.

Graphics:

World:

Graphical fidelity is very hit and miss in this game, but sadly, by large majority, a miss. I must credit the world design where it’s due, though. The map – though small and fairly linear – makes good use of structures and natural-looking rock formations to create a border that is immersive and doesn’t feel too oppressive by getting in the way of gameplay. I ran the game almost entirely on Ultra settings, dropping to the lowest for a short section to see if it improved performance. It didn’t.

The world is detailed with clutter, flora and fauna that all look nice, but this good work is sadly overshadowed by a very ugly colour tone that ranges from too bright to too dark because of very aggressive bloom effects. Colours look unnatural and the contrast between light and dark is uncomfortably jarring.

I think the developers intended the world to look dark, dirty, and rustic, but unfortunately this was not the result. The bloom seriously needs toning down, as it looks horrific on torches and fires too. And motion blur settings should exist because I’m sure many, including myself, would far prefer it to be turned off. A world that was otherwise quite well-designed was marred badly by a constant blurry presentation because of these two effects being on.

Characters and Creatures:

Characters and creatures in the game look fine. Wolves suffer from (I think) motion blur making their fur look very blurry rather than textured, but other characters and monsters are what you would expect. Nothing here is too high-fidelity or creative that it’s especially worth mentioning. Characters look a little old, graphically, without high-fidelity skin textures and lighting to complement it, but by no means do they look bad, and I can accept that this may well be a more artistic choice to go with the (presumably) intended darker, dirtier theme of the game.

Animations:

Animations surprised me. Ignoring the awkwardness of them at times (a cheesy thumbs up in the middle of a serious conversation, for example) they feel mostly smooth. Movement does feel stiff and awkward outside of cutscenes in many cases, but when you look as your character climbs up ladders, for example, sometimes a modicum of polish does show itself. Overall, they are average, let down by an awkward fall rather than a jump for descending ledges and the somewhat stunted manner of walking and running, but they could have been far worse.

HUD:

The HUD felt like it was designed for controllers, and nothing makes that more evident than the fact you cannot use a mouse to navigate it. This is unforgiveable on a PC game in my view. That inconvenience aside, though, the menus don’t look too bad and were, upon figuring out the keyboard controls fairly easy to navigate. The UI outside of paused menus is almost non existent save for little blips over items you can interact with in the game, if you are in relatively close proximity to them. I liked this, personally, as a balance between immersion and clarity.

Gameplay of Gothic Playable Teaser:

Camera Control:

Mouse movement is way too oversensitive by default and sends the camera spinning far further than you could ever want it to. This can be fixed in settings, but I’ve never had to do this with another game. This was a stupid default choice for sensitivity.

Quick Menu:

The quick menu in-game works a lot like in newer games such as GTA where you press tab and move the mouse to pick the item you want. I like the idea but not the execution. You must press tab again to close it. I’d much rather hold tab and let go when I’m done and have it close automatically.

Combat:

Combat was horrible. The game has different stances and things like parrying and dodging which largely require good timing. This would be fine, except animations are so unbelievably slow – and not in a way that feels realistic – and the game’s poor performance often meant that there were micro stutters, the effects of which were only exasperated in combat. The stamina drain is really aggressive too. The whole thing feels mechanically hard but in no way that immersively simulates real combat fatigue. This was without a doubt the most horrible combat system I’ve ever seen in a game. I don’t normally get frustrated by games, but this was an exception.

Achievements:

About 4 of the achievements are broken. Completionists will have a nightmare with this unless, like me, you use Steam Achievement Manager to unlock the broken achievements when you’ve met their requirements.

Audio:

Music and Ambient Sounds:

Music was fairly nice. I liked the track that played in combat especially, but ambient music for exploration, and the menu music was also good. Ambient sounds from footsteps and fires, etc., help to add immersion and make the world feel more audibly dynamic. These worked well. Creature noises were quite scary at times, combat sounds were serviceable.

Voices and Narration:

Dialogue was delivered in such an unnatural, jarring way that it was hard to overlook. Emphasis was placed on awkward words in sentences, so they came across as really stunted. Sentences were spoken at a snail’s pace, drawing dialogue out needlessly. Characters seemed to have an odd variety of accents, too, but this I don’t mind so much. It’s noticeable but, if not intended, not a major problem either.

Story [Spoiler Free]:

The story got off to a slow start that was told heavily through long cutscenes and long, awkward dialogue. I was bored from the beginning and as you play though the game it gets no more interesting. You are sent on a lot of trivial fetch missions broken up by the occasional fight that’s insufferably hard due to the awful combat system, and then you listen to a bit more dialogue.

All of the story is your effort to get out of where you and head towards a new settlement that you get a glimpse of at the end of the game. Only then, just as the credits rolled, had my interest been piqued. But not enough to want to play the finished game if it’s like this teaser.

Bullet-Point Summary & Conclusion:

✔ Good audio.
✔ Graphics sometimes look quite nice.
✔ Most animations look decent.
✔ Minimal HUD in game.
✔ Okay inventory UI.

❌ Story is empty.
❌ Diabolical combat system.
❌ No mouse control in menus.
❌ Bad performance.
❌ Awkward dialogue.
❌ Slow load times.

Overall, this game was not an enjoyable experience. I found it only mediocre to look at, the combat system was awful to the point of being frustrating, and the story was uninteresting to me. I would not pay for this. I hope the developers listen to the feedback of their community and produce something better for any final game they might make. It is painful to see potential in a dark, atmospheric RPG squandered like it was in this demo through countless poor design choices, and bad performance.