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KickStarter Kingdom Come: Deliverance - Dan Vavra's medieval chad simulator

SlamDunk

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Khorinis
I'm starving for news about Warhorse's next game...

Yeah, COVID-19 is slowing things down for them but I'd guess they are also waiting for Cyberpunk 2077 to release and the buzz about it to die down before making an announcement.
 
Glory to Ukraine
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Messages
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Strap Yourselves In Codex Year of the Donut Codex+ Now Streaming!
From what I have seen in the Czech press the people from Warhorse gave a few interviews in summer in which they said that they are working on a new game, but didn´t want to confirm if it was KCD2 or an entirely new title.
 
Self-Ejected

aweigh

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someone make a meme image contrasting excitement over KCD 2 coming out and anxiety over the FPS counter dropping when torches come out at night
 

deuxhero

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Joined
Jul 30, 2007
Messages
11,328
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Flowery Land
Are there any mods that add mail sleeves? They were newish around 1403, but not at all unheard of. I spent most of the game with the mail slot empty because it was far too much weight for the defense gain.
 

SoupNazi

Guest
So, I slept on this game since release and almost completely ignored it other than wishing Dan and his team all the best. I didn't have a computer that could handle it reasonably, and then when I got one, I completely forgot about this game.

Decided to give it a try now, and other than being happy that I delayed it (seeing it's still buggy even today), I am so sad I missed this before. Because wow, it really is a rough diamond, but mostly diamond. It mostly reminds me of my experience playing Gothic and Gothic 2 as a child, that sense of awe and adventure is completely back. I haven't felt that way for years. It has many similarities actually, from being a non-blank character that you can shape (and sometimes it feels out of place), difficult (at the time) combat, skill trainers, and pretty interesting, memorable characters (some).

I was super scared of it being another Oblivion engine wise but boy was Cryengine the right choice here. The character feels mostly responsive, you can see the arms and legs when you look down, and again other than some jankiness (running down stairs will sometimes result in falling down and grunting, but no health loss fortunately) it does not suffer from the "fridge with a gun" syndrome that a lot of games do when they're first-person. Few other things are rough in the gameplay, like horse controls, targeting / lock-on system, and then some controls (like I don't understand why I have to press X to mount up on my horse instead of E, and E is some stupid comparison screen that you use 4 times in the entire game). But other than that, it feels weighty, hefty, but flows well and keeps you connected to the world. The combat is great in my opinion, hard to understand at first (skills or no skills), but eventually it clicks. I'm not yet at a stage where I could even 1v2 unless I get lucky, but I like the process of learning at more or less the same pace as Henry does.

Graphically, it still looks excellent, I'd say it looks better than the recently released Valhalla, at least in the environment. Characters, stuff like hair and clothes etc, look better in modern games for sure. More importantly, it's very atmospheric, but not artificially so. It's been mentioned here before, but it completely dodges the theme park problem, so you don't walk into a ruined town that suddenly has fog in it and the screen goes grayscale - it's a ruined town and it's black and gray because it burned down, not because the game decides to alter the color balance and adds fog that wasn't there. If you come there during a cloudless sky weather, at noon, it'll look lot less depressive than at night during heavy rain. But it will not alter itself to make you think it's bleak. The visual storytelling doesn't seem to rely on too many clutches, other than the pre-determined scenarios which ask for rain or bleakness but again those are done by the weather and time of day, and you can have the same atmosphere by coming later during the same conditions.
All that said, it doesn't run very well even on pretty good hardware, but I still get 50-60 FPS on high/very high, only in the bigger battles I have to turn it down a bit because the combat depends on FPS quite a bit.

Soundwise I'm OK with the ambient sounds, nature and towns sound great. Music is completely forgettable. English VO is just OK, there's again some bad moments and Sir Hanush' voice actor is just off the charts ridiculous sounding, but then he's based on Vavra, so maybe that's intended. :lol:

I'm not too far into the story (just finished Viper's nest yesterday) but so far it's intriguing, very well follows Henry's advancement (though I think it could slow down a bit, I turned into what is essentially Radek's right-hand-man way too quickly) and like I said, I enjoy the characters. I feel a lot of the reactivity that the quests and story has is being overlooked, and then even if you look at the first layer of C&C then a second one might be missed. The handholding C&C is not that good (like sabotaging the bandit/Cuman camp) but the emergent choices are excellent. I love how some of the detective quests can be solved with 3 interviews and a bit of luck (or hard work if you decide to check all 3 suggested locations), or you can do 6 interviews and a miniquest and then get the final location straight away. So a dilligent detective who interrogates all the witnesses etc. gets rewarded with an easier way through the rest of the "case". Also, the simple act of waiting/sleeping changes so much about the game and how you can approach combat or stealing or infiltration. In the Hans Capon rescue, if you don't have a horse and don't go into combat automatically, you end up finding the camp and can run in and try to beat the two Cumans, or you can wait until night, kill them sneakily, or just rescue Hans while they're asleep, or poison their food, come back in the morning and see them go down poisoned and THEN rescue Hans... etc. Hell, I haven't tried, but I wouldn't be surprised if you could run back to the castle, ask for help and lead a bunch of soldiers back to the location to rescue him... eh, maybe the quest just fails if you go too far, but there are hints of great reactivity like that.
In fact in several quests you can either go at it alone or go back and ask for backup. And the backup part isn't even suggested by the game, sometimes.

This is the sort of thing that I can only remember happening in the original Deus Ex, where the developers counted on the player "misbehaving" and programmed the game to respond in a certain way, or didn't even expect it but the game is so system-based that it finds a solution by itself. It's not the new Hitman, where you have 40 options, but all of them have been scripted and are sort of suggested or kind of obvious. You're never expecting the game to "break" - it doesn't let you. And KCD isn't great at it (you can't wipe the camp at the beginning out yourself and therefore skip the next mission, which would be great), but it's very good and the best among any other RPG I can think of.

Also, is it just me or does this game have the best-written flirting/romance relationships? As bland as Henry sometimes might be, I feel like the chemistry between both him and Stephanie, AND him and Theresa, are great, natural, kind of cute, more or less realistic. In fact it's the only tolerable romance I have ever seen in an RPG and especially the fact that it's very much optional (or it seems so, so far anyway) makes me surprised that I engage in it and actually look forward to the dates with Theresa. Normally in any other game I skip the romances if they are completely optional.

All in all, I am extremely surprised by this game, in terms of my own enjoyment and how much "into it" I am (thinking about it even when not playing, actively harassing my friends to try it etc), it's on par with Wasteland 3 and maybe, maybe even slightly better. I'll have to see once I finish it because I've heard not so positive things about the game conclusion. Either way, I'm already in the camp of others who are looking towards a more polished sequel. I'll be fine if it's more of the same just with even more systems, more responsivity and better performance.

I know this review is pointless since everyone's probably already played it, but I really needed to get my thoughts down.
 

SlamDunk

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Few other things are rough in the gameplay, like horse controls
"Rough", in what way?

I found the horse controls very good as (if needed) I can be extremely nimble controlling a well-behaved horse. No complaints at all. I'm using mouse and keyboard.
 

SoupNazi

Guest
I found the turning to be too digital (0 or 1) on the keyboard. It's good for quick turns, but bad for small adjustments on the road. RDR2 has the best horses in gaming so I don't want to compare it that and I'm spoiled for there, but even AC:Valhalla has smoother horse controls in my opinion. Plus slowing down is annoying, at least I didn't figure out how to go from galloping to canter - have to go down to walk and then canter.
 

SlamDunk

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I found the turning to be too digital (0 or 1) on the keyboard. It's good for quick turns, but bad for small adjustments on the road.
With digital you need to learn the art of tap-tap-tapping.

As a side note, I'm baffled as to why pressure-sensitive keyboards have STILL not gained ground.
 

SoupNazi

Guest
Well that's the thing, I didn't need to do it in AC:Valhalla or RDR2 because I could do the small adjustments with the mouse and hard turns with the keyboard. If I wanted free look there was a button for that, which I prefer to permanent free look in exchange to janky controls. It's not that I need to learn, I know how to control the horse and manage OK, I just think a better way to do it is the way I experienced it in other games. Saying that somebody needs to learn tapping is like saying people should learn to play with 25FPS when a game is unoptimized.
 

Paul_cz

Arcane
Joined
Jan 26, 2014
Messages
1,996
I am 120 hours into Valhalla and eventhough I am having "fun", it is really a videogame junkfood, compared to Warhorse's (and CD Projekt's and Rockstar's) fine medium rare steak.

And it's funny, I am watching (right now, at 2AM) 2 hour long interview about game design with Viktor Bocan (lead designer on KCD), listening to him it is very clear why KCD is as good as it is compared to "lemonade games" (as he called it) like Assassin's Creeds or Call of Dutys.

(cz only)

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Zdu-eo1egTc
 

SlamDunk

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Interview with Warhorse's Human Resources manager (at 1:11:33). I don't speak the language, so is there anything worth mentioning?

 
Last edited:

Aeschylus

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Divinity: Original Sin Project: Eternity Wasteland 2 Divinity: Original Sin 2
I'm a couple years late to the party as well (maybe that was a good choice for this game), but god damn, this game is fucking amazing. Seriously, who knew. I had no idea how much I'd missed obnoxiously grognardy levels of simulationism until it was gone. Going to the bathhouse for a scrub and a handy to look my peasant-ly best to try to convince the guards to let me off for bull-rushing that random lady is a truly magical experience.

It's not a completely perfect game, and there's a lot of jank there. Fortunately it is mostly lovable and well-intentioned, and ends up still being fun. If I were to level a criticism it's that it actually winds up being a bit too easy to get rich quick via the millers. Exploring the world is pretty fantastic though, and though it's not an open world on the level of, say, Gothic 2, it's still a lot more engaging than most OW games these days. I also kind of love the combat, even if it doesn't quite live up to the grandiose promises of the KS campaign. They've managed to hit a pretty good level of complexity, although one-on-one duels can get a bit rhythm-gamey.

Anyway, thank you degenerates for your constant praise of this game which finally convinced me to get off my ass and try it. Top-5 game of the last ten years, easy.
 

Tacgnol

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Codex 2016 - The Age of Grimoire Grab the Codex by the pussy RPG Wokedex Strap Yourselves In Codex Year of the Donut Shadorwun: Hong Kong Divinity: Original Sin 2 Steve gets a Kidney but I don't even get a tag. Pathfinder: Wrath I helped put crap in Monomyth
I'm a couple years late to the party as well (maybe that was a good choice for this game), but god damn, this game is fucking amazing. Seriously, who knew. I had no idea how much I'd missed obnoxiously grognardy levels of simulationism until it was gone. Going to the bathhouse for a scrub and a handy to look my peasant-ly best to try to convince the guards to let me off for bull-rushing that random lady is a truly magical experience.

It's not a completely perfect game, and there's a lot of jank there. Fortunately it is mostly lovable and well-intentioned, and ends up still being fun. If I were to level a criticism it's that it actually winds up being a bit too easy to get rich quick via the millers. Exploring the world is pretty fantastic though, and though it's not an open world on the level of, say, Gothic 2, it's still a lot more engaging than most OW games these days. I also kind of love the combat, even if it doesn't quite live up to the grandiose promises of the KS campaign. They've managed to hit a pretty good level of complexity, although one-on-one duels can get a bit rhythm-gamey.

Anyway, thank you degenerates for your constant praise of this game which finally convinced me to get off my ass and try it. Top-5 game of the last ten years, easy.

If you replay in the future, I find playing on hardcore with the XP reduction trait helps slow down the ascension to godhood a little bit (though you still end up getting there pretty quick).
 
Glory to Ukraine
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Messages
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Strap Yourselves In Codex Year of the Donut Codex+ Now Streaming!
Interview with Warhorse's Human Resources manager (at 1:11:33). I don't speak the language, so is there anything worth mentioning?



TLDR: No

The only remotely relevant bit of info is that Warhorse currently has about 170 employees and they want to keep the studio more or less at that size.
 

Aeschylus

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Divinity: Original Sin Project: Eternity Wasteland 2 Divinity: Original Sin 2
If you replay in the future, I find playing on hardcore with the XP reduction trait helps slow down the ascension to godhood a little bit (though you still end up getting there pretty quick).
I feel like the overwhelming utility of meta-game knowledge (where to easily get good armor + weapons early, where to find herbs for essentially unlimited saves, etc.) would make it almost impossible for any subsequent replays to be even remotely challenging, but I'll probably take that advice whenever I do replay.
 

xuerebx

Erudite
Joined
Aug 20, 2008
Messages
1,001
Finally bought this (Royal Edition) during the Christmas sale. I'm enjoying it so far, and I can understand why it's called a simulator moreso than an RPG. It is giving me The Witcher 3 vibes with the compass - I think the game would have benefited from not relying on the compass (but you would need to be given good directions).

I also get my ass kicked in any combat scenario (I'm still level 4), so I really feel like a peasant :D

And I quite like the Saviour Schnapps way of saving - this is the first game where I'm living with the choices I make as long as I don't die. Not sure if CTDs are common but I haven't encountered any thus far so not saving except before certain events or before quitting has worked well till now.
 
Glory to Ukraine
Joined
Nov 22, 2020
Messages
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Strap Yourselves In Codex Year of the Donut Codex+ Now Streaming!
Warhorse has some people from Bohemia Interactive (the makers of Operation Flashpoint/ARMA), which is where the simulation vibe comes from.
 

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