The modification Laer Gjöll – Horror of Cemetery, released 14 years ago, is to receive a remake on Unreal Engine 5. As it was fourteen years ago, it is being developed by the FaWL Mod Team, which has gained experience by at least releasing its own game on the Unity engine. Work began in April this year, and was heavily influenced by a December article published on the DTF website.
It was written by one of the players who played Laer Gjöll, using graphics packages such as Real-ESGRAN, Gigapixel AI, ReShade and GD3D11 – facilities that modification authors had not previously had at their disposal. It has thus created its remaster. The original creators go much further…
Horror of cemetery
- Genre: Action Quest with third-person RPG elements
- Setting: Fantasy
- Platform: PC (Steam, EGS)
The game’s action takes place in a large, anomalous graveyard where the main character, a member of the royal archaeologists’ guild, finds himself. It is based on themes from the Laer Gjöll modification. There are plans to expand the storyline, rebuild the quests and make the gameplay more immersive – while retaining the original atmosphere.
Gameplay
The priority of the game is exploration and atmosphere. Tasks, puzzles and stories will be interspersed with combat elements. The player will have access to melee, ranged and magical weapons. Advancement, as currently planned, will take place by acquiring equipment.
The developers realised that the Gothic system used in the modification was more suitable for games of a larger size, as its reviews confirmed. Therefore, they arrived at a system with a few basic traits that the player can upgrade through menus, with limited use of teachers. Skills and magic will be linked to equipment. In this way, character development in such a small game will be easier and more visual, and will encourage the player to explore.
The developers are not chasing trends, but are trying to be less behind the current reality of video games. The fluidity and dynamics of the game will be closer to modern games than Gothic and other classic games.
Estimated game time is 8 hours.
Setting
The action of the game assumes a gothic fantasy graveyard (independent from the game “Gothic”), which genre-wise is closer to horror movies associated with the aesthetics of the graveyard and romance.
The game world is fantasy and the graveyard is anomalous, so it can mix the different eras inherent in the real world: from the Middle Ages to the Renaissance. We will try to make this mixture harmonious in the game and create a unique atmosphere. One of our main priorities when creating the locations is detailed design, so that despite the small size of the locations, the world looks rich both visually and gameplay-wise.
Plot outline
The game tells the story of an archaeologist wracked by the question of the true purpose of the archaeologists’ guild in an ancient, anomalous graveyard. Wounded, after a battle with the undead, he wakes up in the home of the strange family of a local undertaker, from where he begins his journey.
Music
In the modification, some of the soundtracks were created especially for it by Maksim Pibic (Максим Пибиц). It will be the same after 14 years – the same person recorded the music for the teaser, and it is not ruled out that he will prepare the musical setting for the whole game. And here is the teaser, with vocals performed by Wiktoria Wisznia (Виктория Вишня).
If you liked it, a longer version can be found on the musician’s channel.
Technical part
The game is developed on the latest version of the Unreal Engine 5.4. Many paid and free assets from the Unreal Marketplace, Quixel Bridge, Humble Bundle, Artstation Marketplace etc. are used. These are customised for the game by: tinting materials and textures, reducing texture resolution, remodeling high polygon models, etc. Some of the models are created by the creators, or ordered from the outsourcers.
Comparison with the original
For the purpose of the article, I played the work of Feuermagier and Wallerstein lab (hence the aforementioned abbreviation FaWL) once again. I wanted to find the already visible similarities of the remake to the original. Last time, the mod was too scary for me – and when I realised I could use the scroll of transformation into a meatbug to escape behind the graveyard wall; I did a speedrun.
The action starts in the home of a strange family running a funeral parlour. In the gameplay footage of the remake, we see a person with the same name as the character in the initial shack – Pardo:
The authors share screenshots of the next stages of the creation of the cathedral. This is most likely a new version of the temple, known from the modification, where we meet 4 Templars.
As the author of the article on DTF already pointed out, the modification includes a wide variety of tombstones, which was unusual for a mod for Gothic. This is also what the remake promises to be.
On one of the recordings, the author himself points out where to look for similarities. As he writes: a small location near the marauders, where there is a chest of builders’ essays, a coffin hanging from a dry tree and a hidden “unknown rune”, will now look like this!
The Laer Gjöll modification also implements an unusual character development system for Gothic. It is mainly based on collecting items. The game world is large and interesting enough to make you want to explore it yourself; but at the same time, this is necessary to develop the character. It is intended to be similar in the remake.
Future, credits, contact
Work on the mod Laer Gjöll started in August 2009, and by October 2010 it was ready. The written story was much longer, but the developers decided to release a shorter mod. As you can see, they measured their strength against their intentions. Perhaps, after 14 years, there will also be similarities in the pace of the game’s creation. We can support the authors by liking, commenting, sharing and, in the future, adding the game to the wishlist.
Thank you to Evgenii Shchur (Feuermagier) for permission to use all material about the remake in development published by the team.
You can contact the team via:
