As RPG fans eagerly await the Gothic 1 Remake, we feel like now is a good time to reflect on the series and how it’s served as inspiration for so many other games. The original Gothic came out in 2001 and often doesn’t get the recognition it deserves. While Gothic is considered a legendary game, it didn’t become a household name in quite the same way as some of the titles it inspired did.
So today, we’re going to give Gothic 1 its flowers and go over a few of the games it inspired, either directly or simply by showing other developers what was possible. RPGs tended to be noblebright fantasy experiences before games like Gothic came along and brought the grimdark – and adventure games are all the cooler for it.
Kingdom Come: Deliverance
While Kingdom Come: Deliverance isn’t set in a fantasy world, rather it’s a realistic portrayal of 15th-century Bohemia, you can still make out the Gothic DNA in the experience. Like Gothic, Kingdom Come doesn’t hold your hand and forces you to either engage with its uncompromising mechanics or suffer for it.
The game isn’t especially gimdark, in fact, it can be very funny in places, but it still manages to be so realistic that it’s punishing. It’s early hours, and the open world heavily reminds us of playing Gothic for the first time, and it seems clear to us that the 2001 adventure game left a lasting impression on the developers of Kingdom Come: Deliverance.
Dragon’s Dogma
Dragon’s Dogma mirrors Gothic in one key way; it’s adored by hardcore RPG fans but largely went unnoticed by the wider gaming community. Unlike Gothic, Dragon’s Dogma is quite noblebright in tone, but its open world and gameplay feel eerily familiar.
While Capcom has never come out and said it was inspired by Gothic, the game feels more like a throwback to older RPGs at times, rather than a triple-A experience designed to compete with the likes of The Witcher 3 and Skyrim. The same can even be said of its PS5/Xbox Series X|S sequel.
Dragon’s Dogma threw many conventional modern-day gaming mechanics out of the window and instead encouraged players to use their brains and get creative. The open world was dangerous, and players couldn’t just fast-travel to safety anytime. They needed to obtain certain stones and use them sparingly. Now, where have we seen that system before?
Demon’s/Dark Souls
FromSoftware’s Demon’s Souls is the progenitor of the entire Souls series, but it was also the lovechild of From’s earlier King’s Field and Shadow Tower games. However, these weren’t the only games that inspired it. While the original Demon’s Souls and its stellar 2019 remake aren’t open-world experiences, its gritty, grimdark medieval world felt very similar to Gothic at times.
This could often be felt in the game’s design, architecture, bleak world, and enemies. FromSoftware would double down on this with the Dark Souls trilogy, the spiritual successor of Demon’s Souls, where things got even more gothic and grimdark. We wonder, would Demon’s Souls exist without Gothic 1? We doubt it.
Bloodborne
Like Dark Souls, Bloodborne was also a spiritual successor to Demon’s Souls, and it dialled up the grimdark and gothic themes more than any other FromSoftware experience. Bloodborne wasn’t set in a medieval world; it was more like an 18th-century nightmare, one where disease rips through the population, and monsters roam the streets – and wow, did it remind us of Gothic 1.
This was more in tone than anything else. FromSoftware’s medieval games were more similar in terms of gameplay, but we’d argue that Bloodborne was one of the most gothic games ever made that didn’t contain the word Gothic in it’s title.
Elden Ring
We weren’t going to mention Demon’s Souls and Bloodborne in a conversation about Gothic and not also mention Elden Ring, were we? After all, Elden Ring was the first game in the Souls series to truly embrace the open-world design – something Gothic helped pioneer when it came to medieval dark fantasy adventures.
In truth, Bloodborne and Dark Souls were far more gothic than Elden Ring, but the game nailed the grimdark vibe, being set in a desolate world that was stuck in purgatory and desperately needed to be reset. Elden Ring borrowed and recycled many ideas from earlier Souls games, as well as coming up with lots of new ones. But like with all of FromSoftware’s dark fantasy games, you don’t need to look far to see the Gothic influence.
Crimson Desert
Crimson Desert has far more in common with Dragon’s Dogma than any of FromSoftware’s bleak but superb adventures, and is far from a grimdark experience. However, Crimson Desert has that distinctive Gothic feel when it comes to exploring the world and completing quests.
The game is vast, almost overwhelmingly so, and despite its gorgeous visuals and triple-A credentials, there’s something decidedly retro about Crimson Desert. It doesn’t feel like it was made to appeal to the Assassin’s Creed crowd, but to the same people who bought Dragon’s Dogma, and before that, the Gothic games.
Risen
We were never going to be able to discuss games inspired by Gothic and not mention Risen. After all, Risen is the genuine spiritual successor to Gothic, and this is no secret. In fact, Risen could be considered the Dark Souls to Gothic’s Demon’s Souls.
Risen took the baton that Gothic passed to it and ran even further. While the series isn’t quite as beloved as Gothic, it nailed the Piranha Bytes RPG style and felt like the evolution that Gothic fans had been waiting for.
Two sequels would be developed, but neither would touch the first when it came to fan response and critical reception. Even still, now that Gothic 1 is being remade, this makes us excited for the possibility of a Risen remake one day.
The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt
This is the big one. While all three Witcher games were inspired by Gothic, it was the Witcher 3 that truly encapsulated it by going open-world for the first time in the series. The Witcher games aren’t especially gothic or grimdark; they’re closer to gritty high-fantasy, just like the books by Andrzej Sapkowski that they’re based on, but they mirror Gothic in other ways.
It was actually CD Projekt RED that localized and published the first two Gothic games in the country of Poland, and these games served as inspiration for what CD Projekt wanted to create with its Witcher games.
Adam Badowski, the Head of Studio at CD Projekt RED, even cited Gothic directly in an interview with the German gaming magazine GameStar, saying, “Our dream and goal was to take what we know from Gothic. It is a legendary series, at least for us.”
When you consider that so many open-world games have been inspired by The Witcher 3 since its release in 2015 – including games like Assassin’s Creed Origins – it becomes clear to see that the influence of Gothic 1, and its sequels, lives on.
