Introduction

It's been a year since the announcement that our modification is being developed. We have decided to publish materials, in which we describe our plans and how the work went through the whole year. Today, I’ll try to summarize for you the material that has been uploaded to our YouTube channel.

Our Beginnings

After publishing the first video material on February 6, 2023, to begin with, we initially decided to focus mainly on recruitment. We were keen to get more people to work on the modification. Entire February and March were committed to completing the team and adjusting the working conditions so everyone felt comfortable with the project. Currently, 14 people are working on the modification. After the stage of getting introduced and dividing the team into departments, we could start working on the individual modules of our project. We got to know and like each other, so much that we recently had a team-building meeting in Cracow. We took the opportunity and signed confidentiality agreements to formalize our work. 

The Plot

We had to make many plot-wise decisions that varied from what we presented in the first modification announcement video. The first major change is the division of the gameplay into five, extensive chapters. Previously, we had planned to be three, but the scripting team felt that introducing more chapters would be more beneficial to the consistency and pace of the story. In addition, we also decided to change the appearance of our protagonist. The previous face assigned to Nek was used by many other characters making our guard not stand out from the crowd.  An important part of our hero's life will be relationships with his friends, whose fate he will directly influence. It may turn out that we will be able to count on their support at crucial moments in the storyline. We will undertake a greater amount of activity with them, as opposed to how it was with the Nameless, who had very few such tasks. We also want to visualize how the guards and shadows functioned at that time, showing their daily duties, as well as the relationships between other people in the hierarchy. From such purely numerical information, we can reveal that the player can complete more than 100 tasks with us, find a lot of new weapons, and meet many vivid characters. Many people ask us whether we have provided any development path for Nek. Of course, we have. We plan to introduce two factions, which the player can choose depending on his preferences. The Ring of Hunters and The Warriors Circle are groups that do not report directly to the Old Camp but bring together people from all over the Colony. We plan to add micro-campaigns to them, which may be a bit similar to the ones we know from The Elder Scrolls games. Of course, we are trying to remain consistent with the game's canon, but as you probably know - Gothic in its design has a lot of unexpanded threads by which we had to add or develop certain aspects so that the gameplay is smoother. We mean such things as the appearance of new structures on the map or the just-mentioned Circles allowing further development of the protagonist.

Technical aspects

As for the technical aspects, we can brag about some of the mechanics we plan to introduce. Let's start with the ‘Dice Poker’ we mentioned during our Community Meeting. The whole system visually and technically will be strongly similar to the one from the 2007 game The Witcher 1. We showed you what such a sample dice table could look like, and again you can see it below:

In addition to this mechanic, we plan to introduce a fist-fighting system. We want there to be a use for it for various quests and dialogues that will require beating someone's face in. We are constantly focusing on expanding the world and introducing better immersion by adding different routines for characters and several new animations.

We can also boast that we have created our music system for Gothic called zBassMusic, which replaces the archaic Direct Music system. This allows our sound engineers to compose tracks using modern and familiar programs and allows us more freedom and liberty in sound direction. The system has been published as an open-source project and can be used by other modders completely free of charge. Finally noteworthy is the implementation of a Free Aim system for ranged weapons, which will not be obligatory to use, since there is an option to disable it in the game options.

Graphics

The modification will feature a variety of new weapon models for both melee and ranged combat. Worthy of special attention here is a texture pack addition, which will significantly enliven our world. You can see below an example of what it looks like in the original version of the game, and how it looks in our modification:

We are also adding a lot of new objects created by our team. By this, we mean such objects as new trees, plants, house equipment, and at least the previously mentioned weapons. We also want to refresh the groups of individual items to the standards of the sequel (amulets, food, and much more). In our video material, you can see new textures for the guards' and shadows' armors. We want there to be several options to give variety.

Map

Moving on to things related to the map, we want to make the world more interesting and detailed. In particular, we want to expand the areas outside the Old Camp so that rediscovering the Colony will be an interesting experience for you. An example is the expansion of the forests so that the player can feel a much better atmosphere of the area in contrast to the basic version of the game. In addition to this, we would like to fill those empty places that were bland in the original installment. We mean by this the areas around the Old Mine and the Exchange Square and much more. As far as the map work is concerned, right now, we have 1/3 of the planned content done, so everything is moving forward. Also worth mentioning here is the creation of new worlds, or zen. The Royal Mine, for example, which in the original game was the Abandoned Mine.

Music

Responsible for our soundtrack is composer - Adam Dzieżyk. As for our plans, we mainly want to refresh the original songs composed by Kai Rosenkranz and create other variants depending on the time of day. In addition to refreshing, we want to create songs made and composed from scratch, which will keep the original atmosphere. We will use them in new places on the map and in key events for the plot.

Dubbing

As previously communicated, we intend to work with a group or groups that do professional dubbing. However, with so many characters to cast, we have decided to organize a casting call where each of you can try your best to impersonate one or one of the characters of our modification. You can use our recruitment form for this, which can be found at this link.

Website

At the end of the video, we mention that we have opened a website where we want to publish a lot of information regarding actual ego projects and plans for the future. The website is under development all the time. There will also be an opportunity to apply to the team via a recruitment form, a chance to sign up for the newsletter to stay up to date with the news, and a chance to contact us.

When is the premiere?

As for the release date, you will have to be patient, because at this point we cannot specify when you can expect our modification. It will not happen this year, nor probably next year because there is much work ahead of us.

Ending 

If you haven’t seen our video where we discuss the above things yet, we leave you the link below. The next such video will be expected in not less than two years. It costs us a lot of work to prepare such material, so we want to focus strictly on the project now. We thank you for your patience and invite you to visit our other social media.