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

[Lyric Suite]

He's right, random encounters are fun.

And there are random encounters in KCD. What he is scoffing at is the sort of radiant quest bullshit with infinite generic boring ass quests that Bethesda and Ubisoft come up with.

Afaik there are radiant quests in KCD very similar to what Ubisoft and Bethesda offer:
[1] [2] [3] [4]

The game already has minor "side" quests, they are called "activities". I think some random generation could work on these. It wouldn't exactly be the same as Ubishit quests because the gameplay in this game is a lot more complex, especially on hardcore. The three activities Bernard gives you to just go out and kill x bandit leader turned out to be more interesting than one would have thought. First, just finding them is a quest in itself, not the least because of the things you encounter along the way (i have no idea if you can just fast travel to quest location on normal that would just suck). Then, when you get there you have to decide how you want to go about it, whether you want to poison the food, wait for night and raid the camp like that etc.

With that said, perhaps once i move on with the main quest i may discover there's so many side quests and activities throughout the whole game there's no point in having more. Plus, even the activities are hand written with fresh spoken dialogue etc so maybe its best to just have limited quality minor quests like that. The only draw back of having such a carefully hand crafted world is that every playthrough is going to be pretty much the same as the next one. This is definitely one of those games that i will have to replay once i forgot everything.

Anyway, the botched execution is done and Hermann showered me with gifts as a reward. Time to finally move the fuck on hahaha.

 

[Harthwain]

Also, if you are good at blacksmithing you can reduce the sound of items repaired, if I recall correctly.

 

[The_Mask]

I've just did Johanka's quest line, and it's pretty great.

Question: if you never gorged, if you never drank alcohol, if you never stole and if you never killed... do you get to skip any of the shrines?

 

[Lyric Suite]

So i'm supposed to fail the dialogue check with Father Godwin for best quest result, right?

 

[cvv]

So i'm supposed to fail the dialogue check with Father Godwin for best quest result, right?

Yes. I think it's a charisma check.

Altho with your view on Warhorse's Hussite anti-clergy sentiment I'm not sure you'll love the quest as much as everybody else

 

[Hace El Oso]

So i'm supposed to fail the dialogue check with Father Godwin for best quest result, right?

I accepted his invitation thinking that I'd just have a social drink with him and win his confidence, but then it turned into The Hangover: Kingdom Come Edition and I reloaded and refused to sit down with the heretic. It all depends on what you want.

 

[The_Mask]

So i'm supposed to fail the dialogue check with Father Godwin for best quest result, right?

You should save before. It's up to you if you want the degeneracy on your record.

 

[Lyric Suite]

Well, this is my "must try everything" first run so i'll certainly check it out.

I gave up thinking this game has any positive view of the Church a long time ago. Same old same old, John Hus spoke to the "people", people gud authority bad even though the first thing the "people" did when they shed the shackles of the Church was indulge in orgies and swap wives around. Luther was in for a shock when he saw the results of "honest" folks just relying on the Bible and not heeding to any higher authority but themselves.

I think Vavra meant well and he did try to give a lot of his characters more than one dimension but he is a product of modernity and can't escape the usual biases. I'm also curious to see where the witch quest is gonna lead to.

 

[Lyric Suite]

Ok WTF is going on while i was searching for the stupid horse that ran away i met some guards fighting bandits, and as soon as i engage the bandits, the guards turn on me, but if i kill any bandit i gain rep. The fuck is this.

 

[Spectral Pontifex]

Well, this is my "must try everything" first run so i'll certainly check it out.

I gave up thinking this game has any positive view of the Church a long time ago. Same old same old, John Hus spoke to the "people", people gud authority bad even though the first thing the "people" did when they shed the shackles of the Church was indulge in orgies and swap wives around. Luther was in for a shock when he saw the results of "honest" folks just relying on the Bible and not heeding to any higher authority but themselves.

I think Vavra meant well and he did try to give a lot of his characters more than one dimension but he is a product of modernity and can't escape the usual biases. I'm also curious to see where the witch quest is gonna lead to.

Imagine thinking Hussites were anything other than proto-communist Slavic Untermenschen that damaged Bohemia beyond repair and later served as an inspiration for inferior communist and democratic elements against the noble Germanic hegemony.

Most Czechs have an incredibly romantic view of Hussites that has nothing to do with reality. They are regarded as national heroes, because Czechs today refuse to acknowledge their shared history with Germany (HRE, if you wish) so the only thing that remains is this bunch of cutthroats celebrated as anti-German liberators.

 

[Crichton]

Ok WTF is going on while i was searching for the stupid horse that ran away i met some guards fighting bandits, and as soon as i engage the bandits, the guards turn on me, but if i kill any bandit i gain rep. The fuck is this.

The AI is fucked up the ass. It seems like they tried to make some sort of super general "radiant" AI and it shits the bed in all sorts of situations. I rode past a bandit early in the morning and when I dismounted to face him, he was walking towards me holding a torch and shouting "what's going on here!?". The dumbfuck never even drew his weapon; as if the 'low light' AI totally overrode the 'bandit' AI. The infamous Cumans v. Bandits encounter where they unite against you if you're 2.9m from them but turn on each other when you're 3.1m away is another classic.

 

[Lyric Suite]

So i did the quest. I have no idea if this is an endorsement of John Hus or a condemnation of it lol. I even got a "sinner" achievement for it but i think all in all Vavra probably actually thinks Godwin is a good character, instead of being the decadent degenerate he actually is and a living condemantion of everything Hus is said to have taught in this game. The irony of course is that John Hus taught nothing of the like and he would have loathed Father Godwin to the core. And yes, he would also argue that Father Godwin would most likely go to hell, and would deplore the idea of leading people into accepting that kind of degeneracy as Henry does at the end of the sermon.

I'm going to have to say it but i despise this kind of amorality, that its ok to be a degenerate as long as one is "honest" about it. I guess as the argument goes, we are all sinners and degenerates, and there's no such thing as being free of vices and desires, so anybody who pretends otherwise is ipso facto an hypocrite and a liar, and those who openly indulge in their depravity are the "good" people because they are just being honest about what humanity is.

The funny thing is that the portrayal of priests having concubines in the middle ages is done through a modern lens. The characterization of Godwin is done through the view point of someone who thinks a priest having a concubine must invariably imply he is some kind of libertine. In reality concubines were not something akin to "sex slaves" but were surrogate wives. Concubinage can actually be traced back to Roman times, where marriage carried all sorts of heavy social and legal repercussions, and men often resorted to concubines when the committment to marriage was still not possible. St Augustine was heart broken when he had to severe ties to his concubine after his mother arranged a marriage for him with another woman, which shows that his concubine was basically just a wife to him in all but name. It's likely that between the time the celibacy of the clergy was first enrforced and the time the crack down begun to have an effect some priests carried with concubines as if they would when they still had wives, which means their relationship to them was just as discreet as that of any other married couple, or more closely to that of any married Orthodox priest.

Like a lot of things in the Church, the question of the celibacy of the clergy took a long time to establish itself as a universal rule, and along the way there were many debates and disagreements. The Gregorian point of view won with the Second Lateral Council, but even after that there were still disagrements and the rule wasn't followed or enforced everywhere. For that, it had to wait for the Council of Trent. Hence, while it was possible to find a priest with a woman and even children in the middle ages, its a bit absurd to think they just used them as any common prostitute.

 

[Lyric Suite]

Ok WTF is going on while i was searching for the stupid horse that ran away i met some guards fighting bandits, and as soon as i engage the bandits, the guards turn on me, but if i kill any bandit i gain rep. The fuck is this.

The AI is fucked up the ass. It seems like they tried to make some sort of super general "radiant" AI and it shits the bed in all sorts of situations. I rode past a bandit early in the morning and when I dismounted to face him, he was walking towards me holding a torch and shouting "what's going on here!?". The dumbfuck never even drew his weapon; as if the 'low light' AI totally overrode the 'bandit' AI. The infamous Cumans v. Bandits encounter where they unite against you if you're 2.9m from them but turn on each other when you're 3.1m away is another classic.

Yeah i noticed the bandit vs cumans one but the guards doing the same just took me by surprise.

Funny thing is i resorted to sneaking up and choke out the bandits as usual, and once they woke up the guards killed them and i got rep for it. Fucking hell.

 

[The_Mask]

There is a random encounter where there are guards vs bandits, and if you help the guards you gain rep.

 

[Lyric Suite]

Except in my case when i tried to "help" the guards they turned on me.

 

[Larianshill]

Question: if you never gorged, if you never drank alcohol, if you never stole and if you never killed... do you get to skip any of the shrines?

No, because no matter what, you kill at least one person in this game, and shrines are a very important plot device.

 

[Lyric Suite]

So i reloaded and refused to drink with Godwin. Won't help the guy drink his way to damnation or help him convince the town people to accept heresy. Breaking his seal of confession because of one drunken night meanwhile you got people like John of Nepomuk more or less from the same era who was martyred for refusing to break the seal. Perfect contrast if you ask me and i know which side i'm gonna be on.

Replaying the conversation with Godwin its interesting though how the writers of this game aknowledge some of the inconsistencies with Godwin. Like Godwin thinks if John Hus were to move out of Prague and come to Uzhitz the good father could convince him to give up his condemnation of drinking and laying with women. Godwin isn't actually a good Hussian anymore than he is a good Catholic. His justification for his excesses seems to be exactly what i said, i'm poor, so it's not immoral for me to do it.

My personal biases aside, it's a well written quest as far as RPGs go, but i'm not gonna fly with it. The fact he even pissed on the monks form the monastery sealed the deal for me. Fuck you Godwin.

 

[Lyric Suite]

Eitherway, next playthrough i will do a fully honest run. Kinda sucks that just means missing out on a whole lot of quests though. Ever since i skipped the thieving quest in Baldur's Gate because i was playing as a paladin i had to struggle with my OCD about ignoring content for the sake of LARPing morality in a video game lmao. This game doesn't really aknowledges your choices there doesn't seem to be that many alternative outcomes if you pick the wrong option you just miss out on stuff and that's the extend of it. There should be more consequences if you help Peshek for instance you should start falling out with the guards and vice versa, make the moral option more significant than just go "well fuck you then, go miss out on those nice quests we've written". Same applies for Hermann it's impossible to help him unless you play a thief. Being "honorable" in this game just means cutting yourself off from a ton of content.

 

[Wunderbar]

The game was not designed with "every type of character gets their own piece of content" in mind. You're not allowed to larp, it's a game where you play as a pre-defined character - Henry, and Henry is a fornicator, a drinker and a petty thief.

 

[Lyric Suite]

Yeah well, that just sucks.

 

[Junmarko]

It's been a few years since I played, but is it possible to go through the entire game and never touch Alchemy? I found it to be extremely slow, with the whole "immersive mixing" BS, also just a huge grind to get materials.

Great game, but time sinks like that really prevent me from replaying.

 

[Wunderbar]

It's been a few years since I played, but is it possible to go through the entire game and never touch Alchemy?

there were a bunch of quests that involve alchemy (like "Pestilence"), but all of them are optional. Still, without alchemy you're going to fail those quests, or miss on content.

 

[rusty_shackleford]

Yeah well, that just sucks.

you fell for the codex czech propaganda team

 

[Hace El Oso]

The game was not designed with "every type of character gets their own piece of content" in mind. You're not allowed to larp, it's a game where you play as a pre-defined character - Henry, and Henry is a fornicator, a drinker and a petty thief.

I played my Henri as a good boy and never felt like I missed out, on the contrary I felt that playing as some thieving piece of garbage would ruin the experience. The romance with Teresa was a good fit for him, too.

 

[cvv]

Henry is a fornicator, a drinker and a petty thief.

Aren't we all?