Old-timey German RPG Gothic had a few spiritual successors, but most were offshoots from the same studio. Thanks to pre-digital distribution limits of 2001, it was obscure in North America, which of course means it never existed. It didn't even have Mario in.
But Gothic was also special. Gothic 1 Remake (whose refreshingly honest, direct name honours us) chose a path made of tightropes: to be neither a perfect recreation or a wholly new entity wearing its skin, but to modernise and improve while still bringing that distinct and contrary design into an era preoccupied with the safe, infinite, frictionless paste of Content.
The result is a huge vindication for everyone who took on that challenge (minus the bloodsuckers who canned them), and a game that reuses a map I've played through several times, but still got repeatedly lost in. And I want to get lost in it again.