Editorial RPG Codex Report: Gamescom 2016 - Mount & Blade 2, Kingdom Come, SpellForce 3, South Park 2 and more

[Bohrain]

Apparently they are also releasing mod tools for Butterlord.
A PEASANT
I'LL RAPE IT
NO ONE WILL EVER KNOW

 

[Burning Bridges]

Can't help but Kingdom Come and Mount & Blade are different genres. Mount Blade is pretty much openworld, Kingdom Come looks like a console storyfag game for people with A-levels.

 

[Kev Inkline]

Kingdom Come looks like a console storyfag game for people with A-levels.

I think the terminology has changed: nowadays it's called Tier 1.

 

[Shin]

I risk sounding like a broken record, but Mount and Blade II is fucking M&B: Warband with nice graphics (ok and better sieges). Still makes me wonder if the engine is the most glorious thing ever produced considering the time spent working on M&B2. The dev which was interviewed (stan?) clearly didn't know how to respond to questions such as "Speaking of the world, what measures are you taking to make it more interesting?". I guess it won't take too long before mods start filling that void, but I would've liked seeing at least the functionality of Floris Mod incorporated in the vanilla game. Stuff like "join a random lord in service to start off your adventure" was one of the more essential things for me, it would've been awesome if they had made that more complex, like gaining ranks (which actually give you benefits). Stuff from other mods (like starting your own Knightly Order in Prophecies of Pendor) should definitely be in there plus I'd like to see a lot more (dynamic) events happening in the world, maybe a bit like the Paradox GS games.

Having said all that, it's still a day one purchase for me; I've played too much M&B:W to deny them that. I'm just scratching my head thinking about the long ass development time, oh well.

As for Kingdom Come.. eh, I'd have to play it to judge it. If the combat is fun and not your standard Bethsoft first person kiting simulator I'd say it might be a fun action romp. I'll hold out on buying it until post-release when the first codex impressions are up. Vavra is a real bro though, so I might pick it up at release if there's nothing new released and I have enough cash flow to fuel all my addictions.

 

[Bubbles]

Looking forward to calling my character ”Trianon, the Scourge of Magyars”. :D

Kingdom Come has a pre-set main character with a fixed name, face and background. You'll always be Henry, humble son of a blacksmith, whose family is killed by wild Cumans.

 

[ERYFKRAD]

"Speaking of the world, what measures are you taking to make it more interesting?"

Dev was just an animator, btw.

 

[veevoir]

Looking forward to calling my character ”Trianon, the Scourge of Magyars”. :D

Kingdom Come has a pre-set main character with a fixed name, face and background. You'll always be Henry, humble son of a blacksmith, whose family is killed by wild Cumans.

Wait, werent Cumans more of pre-romanians/bulgarians? I remember something about them trying to rape Hungary most of the time, not as their allies.. Must brush up on history

 

[JarlFrank]

The dev which was interviewed (stan?) clearly didn't know how to respond to questions such as "Speaking of the world, what measures are you taking to make it more interesting?".

To be fair, he said he was an animator so I don't blame him for not having great in-depth answers to gameplay questions.

 

[jungl]

I loved the first spellforce game. The second however killed the franchise for me.

 

[Shin]

The dev which was interviewed (stan?) clearly didn't know how to respond to questions such as "Speaking of the world, what measures are you taking to make it more interesting?".

To be fair, he said he was an animator so I don't blame him for not having great in-depth answers to gameplay questions.

My bad.

 

[Bubbles]

You can see a gameplay demo for Spellforce 3 here:



I wonder if there might be a sizeable amount of people out there who actually like this type of gameplay.

 

[Burning Bridges]

Looking forward to calling my character ”Trianon, the Scourge of Magyars”. :D

Kingdom Come has a pre-set main character with a fixed name, face and background. You'll always be Henry, humble son of a blacksmith, whose family is killed by wild Cumans.

Wait, werent Cumans more of pre-romanians/bulgarians? I remember something about them trying to rape Hungary most of the time, not as their allies.. Must brush up on history

Yes, Kumans and Magyars are an entirely different thing.

 

[JarlFrank]

The Cumans work as mercenaries for the Hungarians.

 

[thesheeep]

I wonder if there might be a sizeable amount of people out there who actually like this type of gameplay.

I really don't see what's wrong here.
I mean, yeah, sure, not exactly the most exciting choice for a demo. Fairly standard monsters and fairly standard abilities were shown. And certainly no tough battles.
Would've been much better as some kind of dev update than showing it to a live audience.
And trying to sell stuff like a bleed ability as some kind of fantastic tactical choice is rather odd.
If they really did show their most interesting features there, then I agree with the negativity. But I somewhat doubt it.

 

[Crescent Hawk]

Mount & Blade is really on a league of its own, to me it already reached legendary status like Thief. The freedom and emergent gameplay are incredible, people want true nex gen games, well these crazy guys have been trying to do it since M&B 1.
Maybe there is some Trojan and Greek blood still worth saving in asia minor.

 

[Burning Bridges]

Yeah, totally nex gen.

 

[Crescent Hawk]

Yeah, totally nex gen.

In spirit isnt it? It tries to merge tons of great stuff and pulls it off, and the community really helped in the years.

 

[Bubbles]

I wonder if there might be a sizeable amount of people out there who actually like this type of gameplay.

I really don't see what's wrong here.

It was boring to play. I assume SpellForce fans are just looking for a time killer that mostly plays itself, and God bless them, but I feel like I've personally grown out of my whole "watch units auto-attack each other" phase.

 

[himmy]

Looking forward to calling my character ”Trianon, the Scourge of Magyars”. :D

Kingdom Come has a pre-set main character with a fixed name, face and background. You'll always be Henry, humble son of a blacksmith, whose family is killed by wild Cumans.

Wait, werent Cumans more of pre-romanians/bulgarians? I remember something about them trying to rape Hungary most of the time, not as their allies.. Must brush up on history

Best be careful with that shit. Romanians are so sensitive about their probable Cuman origins that the government banned exhuming and DNA testing one of the early Romanian kings because some Historians agree that he might not be a pure-blooded Latin-Romanian guy, but a filthy steppe-mongrel Cuman sort. And that would be just too much.

 

[Forest Dweller]

Looking forward to calling my character ”Trianon, the Scourge of Magyars”. :D

Kingdom Come has a pre-set main character with a fixed name, face and background. You'll always be Henry, humble son of a blacksmith, whose family is killed by wild Cumans.

Now if only it had sex cards...

 

[thesheeep]

It was boring to play. I assume SpellForce fans are just looking for a time killer that mostly plays itself, and God bless them, but I feel like I've personally grown out of my whole "watch units auto-attack each other" phase.

The whole deal with this kind of gameplay is that army composition and overall strategy matters more than microing and hotkeying and I cannot stress often enough how much I prefer that approach.
You make decisions and then you watch how those decisions bear fruition. Or not. Instead of having to go into a hotkey frenzy without having the time to analyze anything.
To me, games like Starcraft (1 or 2, doesn't really matter in that regard) are simply too stressful to enjoy. And because they are so fast-paced, their design does not allow for some deeper strategy*.
Slower games do allow for that.

Does that mean that a slower-paced game like Spellforce is automatically more strategic? Hell, no. It might, or not. IIRC, Spellforce 1 and 2 were not.
But it surely means that more people (those without the skills to play in the Starcraft leagues, for example) will be able to enjoy it.

Of course, I do understand that some people feel like they aren't doing anything, and that this game might feel like an RTS in slow motion to them.
Thankfully, I'm not one of those


*Let's not pretend that Starcraft is very strategic, please. There is a very simple counter-strategy to anything your enemy might do ("alright, he uses unit X mostly, so I have to go for Y now. Oh, he switched to B, so I need a little more C...", "He has no units at that point, so that's where I will send mine", ...). It is a very rock-paper-scissors approach and usually, the more RPS-like an RTS is, the easier the strategy part becomes and thus in turn the more important the microing part becomes. And when the game is also more fast-paced, it just adds to making microing more important.
In the end, I'd say SC is maybe 30-40% strategy, the rest is the player's hotkeying and memorization.

Again, I don't say this is wrong. Or bad. Any (well-done) game has its audience. I just wish not every RTS game was trying to copy Starcraft

 

[anus_pounder]

Kingdom Come looks pretty good. for sure. Not sure about the other stuff shown, might d1p them if I have the money, but ehhh...

 

[Paul_cz]

I really hope Warhorse manage to optimize Kingdom Come to run well. That AI at this level of fidelity is demanding as fuck.

 

[Burning Bridges]

Yeah, totally nex gen.

In spirit isnt it? It tries to merge tons of great stuff and pulls it off, and the community really helped in the years.

It really doesn't get any more nex gen.

 

[Jrpgfan]

Can't wait for M&B2. And I hope they optimize KCD. Bought the beta and it runs like shit no matter the settings.