Gothic is a long-standing role-playing game series from Germany that still has a loyal fanbase today. Almost 20 years ago, fans even made a film about the first Gothic, receiving help from Piranha Bytes.
There is a film about Gothic? About a month ago, the YouTube channel Zly released the video Gothic Der Movie (2025) (YouTube). The film, which runs for nearly 2 hours, is essentially the AI remake of an old fan film. The film is available in English, Polish, and even German, but has also been synchronized using AI.
While it is quite impressive that the creator of the video produced such a film, it has the typical AI problems. Animations, especially those of the faces, look strange, and in action-packed scenes, what is shown often blurs with the background. Apart from that, the film largely consists of dialogues that are only staged according to the scheme cut-back-and-forth
.
Even the German dialogues from the AI do not always sound good. Sentences like Women and rotting mummies in front
or Mortal. Their time has really run out irrevocably right now
do not make sense when translated literally. Nevertheless, the film shows what is already possible with AI in the realm of video.
However, the story behind the source material is much more interesting, as it shows that fans have been willing to express their creativity and effort for their beloved franchise since 2006.
Almost 20 years ago, fans put together a charming Gothic film
What is the source material? After its release in 2001, Gothic by Piranha Bytes was able to build a loyal fanbase. The Ruhrpott charm and the quirky mechanics still have a very special flair today.
Even in the 2000s, fans loved to express their love for the game. It was not just about classic fan art. In 2006, fans released a fan film under the label T.M.T Productions that deals with the story of Gothic 1 (via worldofgothic.de). They used the original game graphics for this. T.M.T Productions was practiced from previous projects.
With dialogues from the game and a few newly recorded sentences, the charm of the series is quite well conveyed. Again, they primarily worked with cut-back-and-forth
dialogues, which fits the graphics.
According to World of Gothic, the fans did not make the film completely alone. Christian Wewerka and Bodo Henkel, who already voiced characters in the first Gothic, recorded new dialogues, and Piranha Bytes also assisted in creating the film. The story writer worked on the script, and composer Kai Rosenkranz provided soundtracks from the game series.
During the creation of the story, even the community was involved, as can be seen from a survey in a forum (Source: World of Gothic).
In 2006, GameStar reported that T.M.T Productions won a visit to Piranha Bytes in a competition. That is where the idea for the film was born.
Almost 20 years ago, fans were able to achieve quite a lot. Even though Piranha Bytes no longer exists, Gothic has a larger legacy than one might think, even outside of Germany: Makers of The Witcher rave about the German Gothic, saying they wanted to make their game just as good
