KickStarter Kingdom Come: Deliverance Pre-Release Thread [RELEASED, GO TO NEW THREAD]

[Xeon]

Is it me or is there frame rate issues?

Tried to look up his specs but didn't find it. I imagine a big youtuber has a really good spec tho.

 

[cvv]

Is it me or is there frame rate issues?

Tried to look up his specs but didn't find it. I imagine a big youtuber has a really good spec tho.

Yeah that's straight up his problem. The German playthrough earlier was smooth. His picture quality rather shitty in general.

 

[Outlander]

Kingdom Come: Blood Dragon Peasant

 

[Haba]

I gotta admit, I shit my pants at the "Social communications expert" -part.

 

[Dexter]

http://archive.is/4rHfi

Kingdom Come: Deliverance Still Fails to Deliver Representation
By Lucia Taylor - February 7, 2018

Kingdom Come: Deliverance is coming out this month. That struck me as sort of weird, given that February is Black History Month, and Deliverance has failed utterly to include any people of color (PoC) in their white man power fantasy game. Surely, a development team that touts itself as being dedicated to “historical accuracy” in their game would have done some simple research. Surely the head developer at Warhorse Studios would never have done something as skeezy as responding to valid criticisms with xenophobic tweets!

No, I’m sure the folks working on Deliverance just need some last minute advice for how to include people of color in their game. So, here you go, Warhorse: Just a few character concepts that could add some representation to your game without compromising your precious “historical accuracy”:

A Knight

This is a game about knights, right? Among the various armored men swinging swords at one another, it would probably be easy to include a few PoC. I’ve even provided a basis for a historically accurate character design! The image above is identified as Saint Maurice, a Theban martyr venerated as a patron saint of the Holy Roman Emperors. Saint Maurice appears in art from as early as the 10th century. Often, as above, he’s bearing the Imperial coat of arms. So, historically speaking, medieval Europeans had no problem with the concept of PoC serving in their knightly orders.


A Scholar

Taking place in 15th century Bohemia means that Deliverance will coincide with the early days of Jan Hus at Charles University in Prague. Europe’s early universities were among the most ethnically diverse locations on the continent. This would be an ideal site for historically accurate representation. The above image is by Theoderic of Bohemia, a 15th century scholar and artist who had no qualms about portraying Saint Jerome with a darker skin tone. Historically, it looks like medieval folk were pretty comfortable with the idea of PoC in the academic sphere, as well.


A Blacksmith, Merchant, or Townsperson

If medieval Europeans were so comfortable with depictions of PoC in their art, does that mean that PoC were a part of everyday life in the middle ages? Unfortunately, we don’t have strong evidence one way or the other. The fact is, we don’t have much evidence about any aspects of day-to-day in the middle ages. We do know that PoC traveled throughout Europe frequently under the Roman Empire as soldiers and settlers. It’s unlikely that they simply disappeared.

What it comes down to is a matter of what base assumptions medieval historians choose to make. Warhorse and their rabid fanboys refuse to recognize that their assumption of “white until proven otherwise” is indeed an assumption. It’s a rather sweeping one at that, but it’s become privileged as centuries of white historians have nodded along. Meanwhile, they get to shout down any framework as “revisionist”. It’s academically lazy at best, if not blatantly suppressive. But of course, we already know it’s not really about historical accuracy.

Ultimately, Warhorse is going to stick to its racist guns, as are their fans. The issue of representation in gaming won’t be solved by dialogues or articles on the internet. But I promised a solution. A decent start though is to avoid buying games like Deliverance altogether. Even better, you can spend your money supporting games developed by PoC. Without backers, Deliverance wouldn’t exist. The simple fact is that without support, representation in gaming won’t exist either.

Lucia Taylor
Lucia's an avid RPG gamer with a soft spot for old-school titles, the clunkier the better. They're also a part-time dungeon master and full-time tabletop enthusiast. On the off-chance they're not busy thinking about magic swords, they're probably on a desperate, mindless scrounge to find another cup of tea.

Spoiler

 

[Paul_cz]

Kingdom Come: Blood Dragon Peasant

selfdeprecating cringy humor, how I missed ya

That last part with descendant of queen of sheba and social communication expert made me laugh like a motherfucker

 

[unfairlight]

Medieval Europe in 1403 was 75% black, this is fact. Fuck white people.

 

[AwesomeButton]

Weirdo abominations gonna weirdo abominate.

 

[Sentinel]

Damn that Codex entry on the menu is amazing. Reminds me of learning bits of history that I didn't know much about in Age of Empires 2. Fucking love shit like that.

 

[Jenkem]

Friendly reminder this game comes out in like 3-4 days!!

 

[Raghar]

His employee Smejki can manage that just fine.

How do you know this Smejki is really Vavra's employee? Did Vavra ever confirm that this person here is the real Smejki? Could be an impostor or just a random czech dude trolling the 'Dex for teh lulz.
This guy should give us his original Böhmische Knödel recipe so that I can check its authenticity, for all I know he might be Polish and only pretends to be a Czech.

Do you know it's recipe from Bavaria?

 

[Burning Bridges]

How would it be if there are a few people of color, like a servant or a slave, but they are called naggers throughout the whole game.

They certainly not expect ordinary medieval people to have said "people of colour".

 

[Smejki]

His employee Smejki can manage that just fine.

How do you know this Smejki is really Vavra's employee? Did Vavra ever confirm that this person here is the real Smejki? Could be an impostor or just a random czech dude trolling the 'Dex for teh lulz.
This guy should give us his original Böhmische Knödel recipe so that I can check its authenticity, for all I know he might be Polish and only pretends to be a Czech.

Here's me speaking Czech a making some traditional Czech meal.

You are very much willkommen

 

[cvv]

How would it be if there are a few people of color, like a servant or a slave, but they are called naggers throughout the whole game.

They certainly not expect ordinary medieval people to have said "people of colour".

Lol, terminology would be the least of their problems. There's a tale of a 16th century noble in Bohemia who imported a black rhesus monkey from Africa as his pet. Eventually the damn thing ran away, scooting through the village. The buck-toothed idiots grabbed their torches and pitchforks and started chasing the poor animal around. For our Kwanian friends - the European idea of devil is basically a blackfaced dude with goat horns and tail. The simpletons really thought it's a devil. Finally they caught and burned the monkey alive, I think.

If a kang showed up in 1400s Bohemia he wouldn't survive the first day. He would end up torched on a spike with a pitchfork sticking from his ass.

THAT would be historical accuracy.

 

[Infinitron]

Friendly reminder this game comes out in like 3-4 days!!

The release thread better not be 100 pages of people talking about SJW reactions to the game instead of playing it.

 

[Burning Bridges]

His employee Smejki can manage that just fine.

How do you know this Smejki is really Vavra's employee? Did Vavra ever confirm that this person here is the real Smejki? Could be an impostor or just a random czech dude trolling the 'Dex for teh lulz.
This guy should give us his original Böhmische Knödel recipe so that I can check its authenticity, for all I know he might be Polish and only pretends to be a Czech.

Here's me speaking Czech a making some traditional Czech meal.

You are very much willkommen

"Sausages with mustard?" LOL

 

[Drax]

Mustard Master Race
Death to infidel mayoslurpers!

 

[Burning Bridges]

If a kang showed up in 1400s Bohemia he wouldn't survive the first day. He would end up torched on a spike with a pitchfork sticking from his ass.

THAT would be historical accuracy.

Not really. eg Lions were held in cages as rare, exotic animals, that's how the lion came on Richard Coeur de Lions coat of arm 400 years before this game tales place. I am sure monkeys were also kept, for example in circuses.

I believe black people were also generally known, the German term was "Mohr" which I think cames from Moor as there lived quite a few of them in Spain, or just "Neger" which means Nagger. So yeah most people would not have been teribly shocked, but probably just surprised and curious and looked at them like circus animals because they had never seen one in real life.

 

[SlamDunk]

Ok, first ever playthrough with an English commentary.

Too bad about the terrible video quality. That guy apparently still sucks at producing videos.

Oh... the Czech doppelgänger of this guy:

 

[cvv]

If a kang showed up in 1400s Bohemia he wouldn't survive the first day. He would end up torched on a spike with a pitchfork sticking from his ass.

THAT would be historical accuracy.

Not really. eg Lions were held in cages as rare, exotic animals, that's how the lion came on Richard Coeur de Lions coat of arm 400 years before this game tales place. I am sure monkeys were also kept, for example in circuses.

Dude we're not talking about Rome or Paris here, we're talking about 1400s rural Bohemia. Lions and circuses? Lol, chicken and shit smeared pigs at best.

 

[agris]

Smejki Since you have been so nice as to answer questions, I have a few gameplay related ones.

1. In terms of melee combat, since a properly timed parry opens up your opponent to a counter-attack in "bullet-time", what's the incentive for the player to attack, and not always use the previously mentioned defensive move?

2. The game seems to have a quest compass, which is an unfortunate concession to the mainstream casuals, any way we could convince you to make that optional? A related question, is it possible to figure out where to go from the dialogue itself so that the quest compass could be disabled?

3. Early interviews described hunting as being a side-activity in the game. Is that still in? Is it an in-depth system? What I mean is, is it something where animals have complex behavior, need to be tracked/stalked, special weapons/tools, or is it just you running into the forest and whacking a bear with your sword?

Appreciate your time and responses.

[...]

ad 2. What we found out is that our "Living World™" is hard to navigate. If you played the alpha/beta, you might have noticed there was no telepathic knowledge of NPC names and next to no markers. Important NPCs could wander around a lot. It was really hard and frustrating sometimes. Sure, one could add a bunch of "Where's Waldo?" dialogues (and we did) and other supporting in-world systems and items however we decided to focus on other things, like quests and reactivity and whatnot. Also such systems and related nuisances might be fun for a small map with 5 quests and 30 NPCs but not for 100 quests on a large map with 1000 NPCs. An example - if you are meant to follow someone and they are meant to be independent from and you get astray, you are fucked without a marker, but if you're following the instructions you don't need to pay much attention to it. In that sense the markers even give you more freedom. And that's how the games is meant to be played. You are not dependent on markers 100% of the time but they are there and they make your life much easier. Some quests might rely on markers more than others. In short - the static text-driven worlds of olden days were much much easier to work with.

Hey Smejki, your response to the 2nd point leaves a lot to be desired. Was not relying on a quest compass ever a design goal of KCD? I ask because the 'problems' that you point out have been solved by other games many many years ago. If a specific NPC needs identifying, give that NPC/tell the player about:

• body features such as: height, weight, gender, scars
• clothing that stands out such as: brightly colored anything, side weaponss, other noticeable wearables
• locations that the NPC spends time: a bar, blacksmith, alley, etc
• companions of the NPC: whore, wife, friends, etc
• time of day: this combined with a location and any of the other identifying marks above make easy to ID an NPC without a quest compass

Taken as a whole, identifying a NPC can be as easy as telling the player that they "Spend their evenings at the Groveling Peasant Pub in the company of friends, has a facial scar". Or "Spends the afternoon in the "X" district, and always dresses like a dandy with gold shoes and green pants". Or "Leaves the Castle at sundown, fully armored and carrying a mace".

That is why I ask if it was ever a goal of KCD to create quests that didn't require a compass. It isn't difficult to structure quests such that a compass isn't needed, but you need to plan and account for it. Your response to question 2 sounds like you're fishing for any reason other than "it wasn't a priority", and in the process, sounding disingenuous.

 

[Lyric Suite]

"Detroit 2001"

The absolute madman.

 

[Starwars]

Friendly reminder this game comes out in like 3-4 days!!

The release thread better not be 100 pages of people talking about SJW reactions to the game instead of playing it.

It's the Codex, of course it will be. It's more important than whether the game is good or not after all.

Can't believe this is finally getting released. Being a backer and paying the dough way back when feels so nice later on... feels like you're getting an expensive, cool game for free. Just hope this will run decently.

 

[PorkyThePaladin]

Hey Smejki, your response to the 2nd point leaves a lot to be desired. Was not relying on a quest compass ever a design goal of KCD? I ask because the 'problems' that you point out have been solved by other games many many years ago. If a specific NPC needs identifying, give that NPC/tell the player about:

• body features such as: height, weight, gender, scars
• clothing that stands out such as: brightly colored anything, side weaponss, other noticeable wearables
• locations that the NPC spends time: a bar, blacksmith, alley, etc
• companions of the NPC: whore, wife, friends, etc
• time of day: this combined with a location and any of the other identifying marks above make easy to ID an NPC without a quest compass

Taken as a whole, identifying a NPC can be as easy as telling the player that they "Spend their evenings at the Groveling Peasant Pub in the company of friends, has a facial scar". Or "Spends the afternoon in the "X" district, and always dresses like a dandy with gold shoes and green pants". Or "Leaves the Castle at sundown, fully armored and carrying a mace".

That is why I ask if it was ever a goal of KCD to create quests that didn't require a compass. It isn't difficult to structure quests such that a compass isn't needed, but you need to plan and account for it. Your response to question 2 sounds like you're fishing for any reason other than "it wasn't a priority", and in the process, sounding disingenuous.

I would also add that look, from following KCD's development over the years, we know they are very passionate gamers and want to develop a great game (unlike say suits or whatever Todd Howard is). So I am sure they understand our concern with quest compasses/markers. But, on the other hand, we also understand, they need to make a living, and it's a bad idea to make your game too difficult for a lot of casuals. Because of these two things, the best way to handle this is a compromise, include the compass/markers for casuals, but make it optional, and include clues in dialogue, and the kind of systems I or Agris talked about. I realize this demands extra resources, but this is a very important aspect of open world RPGs, as I am sure you guys realize as gamers.

 

[agris]

PorkyThePaladin I understand the business reality of the market (xplat) they're going into, which is why I would much prefer a straight-up "it wasn't a priority" rather than spin and half-truths. I just expected more from Warhorse - not necessarily a design free from quest compasses, although that would be a delight, but an honest reply free from weasel-logic.