After a long absence in social media, the moment has come to break the silence and present to you our position regarding the recent events, in the light of which we cannot pass by indifferently.First of all, we would like to apologize for not giving you any official information regarding the development of "The History of Khorinis" for such a long time, and express our deep appreciation for everyone who continue to discuss the project. For this reason, we understand any concerns about the state of the mod. We are grateful for all signs of genuine interest, support, and your belief in our project, as well as the uplifting messages we receive in our Facebook inbox.
Moving on to the most important topics:
1. The File Leak and What Will Happen With "The History of Khorinis"?
Many people assumed various conspiracy theories, that the whole situation was supposed to be a marketing campaign organized by us, which was supposed to stimulate the Gothic community and make them eagerly anticipate the mod's official release. Unfortunately, this leak was as surprising to our team as it was to you, and the wave of misinformation showed that it is the perfect moment to break the "hard work in silence". Sharing an unfinished game build or any modification files would not make sense from a creative perspective unless it's for the sake of curiosity about an early version of the mod, after the release itself.
The conversation between the former team leader, Piotr, known as Dark, and the "attractive tester from Epic Games" is fake, and we did not recruit anyone recently, especially a tester. Long story short, there was a security breach, and our safeguards failed, resulting in the leak of the modification files. While it is an unfortunate matter and we do not take it lightly, we have been closely observing the community, and we greatly appreciate the constructive feedback.
The unfortunate situation, however, caused those who had been waiting for the modification for many, many years to wonder if it had any impact on the team's work, and also cast doubt on whether the work of the legends of Polish dubbing (thanks to whose cordiality the project was promoted, for which we are eternally grateful to them) will not be wasted.
We hereby declare unequivocally that "The History of Khorinis" project is still being developed and will continue to be developed until it is released in a fully playable version, and the situation itself has strengthened our team like never before!!
2. Current State Of The Project.
We are aware that the contents of "The History of Khorinis", widely distributed by third parties, raise significant doubts regarding its quality and progress, considering the high expectations. Therefore, referring to specific aspects of the modification:
a) Visual layer of the modification - it was mostly up to date, with the exception of certain 3D objects or armors/outfits that have not yet been updated in the files, the same applies to animations.
The state of the world in the materials presented by us earlier was different, so while they contained more visually appealing locations, they were impractical in terms of performance and player navigation. Another issue that is often raised is "why did it look so good in the videos, but is different in the game?", which is a matter of proper framing and editing, and the "holes in the map" do not look visually pleasing, so we always showcased the main locations that we preferred, being aware of the shortcomings of the external areas, which are too large and uninteresting – it’s something we wanted to ultimately change.
The world itself is something the project has been grappling with for a long time. Initial vague ideas, non-original parts of the world "filling the terrain" that would serve as a link between the main locations, and ultimately poorly utilized energy focused on things like fixing the roof tiles (trees haven't been moved for a long time). The world was once ready, but even then, it was not fit for use. We tried half-measures and painstakingly improving individual parts, which later proved to have poor results as it would have been faster to start anew than to keep fixing it repeatedly.
Despite many talented 3D graphic designers working on the modification over the years, there has never really been anyone who wanted to help in the long run, and their rotation in the project has been significant, resulting in inconsistent stylistics in many places. There are also areas that are too large, offer nothing interesting from the player's perspective, and filling them with monsters doesn't make sense. Our intention was not to deceive the community into thinking that the world is complete and everything is fine. We simply operated under the assumption that we could create a good and satisfying exploration experience, and as the harsh truth revealed, there is still some work on our part that needs to be done.
Smaller and interesting, original and cohesive. That's the domain we want to stick to.
b) Storyline - this is something that has undergone significant changes recently, and many ready-made content that we have created over time has not yet been implemented into the game. Through the storyline, we primarily mean the reorganization of all quests in terms of quality (where they were of low quality, duplicated motifs from other quests, or simply required expansion).
This also applies to the main storyline, for which, between October and November last year, we decided on smaller or larger changes (on paper, we have not yet introduced them into the game, so it is not playable from beginning to end practically at all, despite many character and dialogue files).
We care about making the main storyline as engaging as possible, with the side quests properly complementing it in the game world rather than overshadowing it, which unfortunately is a common domain of other modifications, and from which we want to learn a lesson. However, in our opinion, we previously failed to achieve it, by holding onto dialogues and the general framework of the story from "primary school days", hence these changes are necessary.
c) Organization of work - Our activities for the sake of the mod left much to be desired for a long time. Therefore, recently, with the project's best interest in mind, we made significant changes to the team structure. Among the most important changes, we can include the replacement of the project's CEO (which happened some time ago), where the previous project coordinator, Dark, was replaced by another long-time member who has been actively involved in the mod with us - bringing a breath of fresh air to the project.
We have also opted for a smaller, more condensed team composed of the most dedicated individuals working on the mod, resulting in discussions that led to parting ways with 26 people.
3. Financial Support Issues.
"The History of Khorinis" is a non-profit project, and the initial financial matters were associated with the "Nestors" project, where without the invaluable support of the voice acting fans and the actors themselves, we wouldn't have been able to achieve this or it would have been very challenging.
We have had many discussions in recent months within the team, about whether we should continue to have a support function for the YouTube channel, considering our low activity on social media. We have decided to close such a possibility. We don't hide the fact that the prevailing atmosphere also played a significant role in making this decision. All previous donations and expenses related to the mod development have always been (and still are) documented and available for our supporters.
4. Recruitment.
Recently, we have received various inquiries from individuals willing to help in co-creating the modification but ultimately did not receive a response from us. In light of the recent events, we have also decided to keep the recruitment to our team closed. ALL previous individuals who have contacted us in the past months will receive feedback from us.
5. A few words in conclusion
We admit that many of the fragments of the mod presented by us as completed have undergone reediting. We understand any criticism regarding this aspect and see plenty of room for improvement.
The planned release in 2020 was bound to fail given the way we had been working, and time has verified that deceiving ourselves would lead to such a result. The premature announcement of the release date was evident even in the, in our opinion, dissatisfying "release trailer".
The project was never a scam or a ticket to anything; anyone who thought that way, earlier working on the project, likely encountered a harsh reality. The gratification for all of us would be the release of a cool mod that will at least partially appeal to the fans of the earlier Gothic games.
Despite not having a completely clean sheet, we don't want to transform the project into something else, create divisions, or pretend that nothing has happened, as it wouldn't change anything, and the team is still ready to take action.
Amidst all this, though in rather atypical circumstances, we have reached a happy ending. We will be gladly responding and clarifying any unclear aspects if needed.
For the power of magic!
"The History of Khorinis" Team.
