I played the Gothic Remake hoping for an RPG with a bit more grit than usual, and what I got was almost pure sand. The progression system really does make you feel like you properly earn every inch of improvement, with more fluid combat animations as you learn to hold your weapons properly, but it’s the lockpicking system is like math homework.
The issue’s a dealbreaker for enough players that developer Alkimia Interactive says it’s “monitoring the sentiment” and reminding everyone “We cannot stress enough how much easier this gets when you start adding skill points into it.” But as someone who paid for mastery in lockpicking, just because you’re allowed to make more errors doesn’t make it any more fun. It’s still boring either way.
Which is why it’s no surprise that, as Nexus Mods opens its doors to mods for the Gothic 1 Remake, the number one most popular by both downloads and endorsements is Unlock All Chests and Doors. If that’s too extreme a solution, Lockpick Settings simply adds hints, a connection viewer, and makes picks less fragile.
After all these years downloading mods to make Oblivion and Skyrim more challenging, here I am downloading a mod to make an open world RPG less of a hassle. I just want a middle ground between frictionless ultraconvenience and so much friction it abrades all the skin off my hands, you know?
Other popular mods so far include one that promises to improve performance, and one that adds icons for interactable objects so you can separate useful items from visual clutter at a distance. With most of these mods you’ll be able to install them by downloading the files into your install directory, and launching the game via G1R-Win64-Shipping.exe with admin privileges.
