Game News Warhorse's RPG Unveiled as Kingdom Come: Deliverance

[Humanity has risen!]

I hope there are multiple factions, I sure as hell don't want to play an anti-Catholic heteric.

 

[evdk]

I hope there are multiple factions, I sure as hell don't want to play an anti-Catholic heteric.

Yeah man, those heteros are icky.

 

[Edward_R_Murrow]

"Realistic" is usually a buzzword that tells me to stay away from an action game...we'll see if this one is any different.

 

[DeepOcean]

The concept is innovative but:
1)Swordfight in first person sucks, "realistic" sword fight in first person has the potential to suck even more. They really need to invent something truly special here, the spam left mouse button of Skyrim and the clusterfuck that is Chivalry won't cut.
2)There isn't cheap tricks like "YOU GONNA ENTER ANCIENT RUIN TO RECOVER ANCIENT ARTIFACT AND FIGHT ELVES."m so their plot really need to be something good as it won't have the usual fantasy distractions.
3)If you gonna make a "realistic" action RPG with you entering on battles, you must command a band of warriors to make things interesting as playing just like any other soldier on a battle wouldn't be so fun.They need to make this a more developed Mount and Blade.
4) This trailer is shit, it isn't wonder why some people reacted with a lukewarm reaction, they removed the fantasy bling but failed to show their strenghts.

 

[deuxhero]

But can you look down and see your body?

Seriously, I hope this is something interviewers ask ASAP. It's impossible to dodge by "we can't talk about that yet" shit, but says a lot (game is pretty much pop-a-mole auto shit if no. It's even a problem mechaniccly as it means you can't see what armor you have outside of a menu or possibly mirror).

 

[PorkyThePaladin]

1)Swordfight in first person sucks, "realistic" sword fight in first person has the potential to suck even more. They really need to invent something truly special here, the spam left mouse button of Skyrim and the clusterfuck that is Chivalry won't cut.

Why does realistic swordfighting suck in first person? Have there been many games that have done it with terrible results? Bethesda games have never featured realistic combat, so it's kinda unfair to use them as an example of why such combat sucks. The problems with Bethesda combat don't have anything to do with first person perspective or realism, they are just the result of design decisions that are either terrible or aim to appeal to casual players, or both. For example, in Oblivion and Skyrim, you block by holding up your shield or weapon indefinitely, and the enemy hits right into your block, instead of going around it, even if the block was there for 10 minutes. Not only is this stupid and unrealistic, but it also removes any challenge from combat, you know, like having to time blocks/parries. Likewise, the enemies are not smart enough to counter the cheesiest tactic of spamming attacks.

I think first person combat can be done very well, it's just a matter of designing it where there is challenge both in terms of timing your parries and strikes, as well as challenge in terms of having a pool of stances, strikes, and blocks from which you can select the most appropriate one for any given situation, and do it fairly quickly. This will give the player both the strategic aspects to play with, and test their reflexes (within reason, most of us arent athletes ), while keeping the whole thing visceral and exciting. Among the games that I've played, the closest that came to it were the first two Gothic games. The system there was fairly simple, with only one kind of parry and attack (combo stuff didn't work well against humanoids), but it required the player to time parries very tightly, and led to a nice fluid combat flow. That system was third person over the shoulder, but there is no reason you cant do the same in first person.

On the downside, a system like i described would be hell to sell to a publisher, since it would have to be fairly complex compared to Bethesda type button mashing.

2)There isn't cheap tricks like "YOU GONNA ENTER ANCIENT RUIN TO RECOVER ANCIENT ARTIFACT AND FIGHT ELVES."m so their plot really need to be something good as it won't have the usual fantasy distractions.

Isn't this a plus? Fantasy, sci-fi and post-apocalyptic RPG devs have been using the exotic creatures prevalent in those settings as a crutch for ages. Any time they need some story plot or quest, BOOM, lets have a mind flaying draconic mudcrab sorcerer guarded by an army of dubstep ogres do something cliche. It would be much harder to do this with an all human cast, so I think this might actually force the devs and writers to come up with deeper stories and more interesting situations, much like most of the world now, not having Hollywood budgets for special effects actually makes good movies about the human condition, as opposed to superhero movies.

 

[IDtenT]

3)If you gonna make a "realistic" action RPG with you entering on battles, you must command a band of warriors to make things interesting as playing just like any other soldier on a battle wouldn't be so fun.

Disagree wholly; the best part of the Operation Flashpoint campaign was progressing from just another soldier into a commander.

 

[DeepOcean]

stuff

I really feel disoriented all the time when I try melee attacks in first person, you lose the feel of what is around you and the sense of distance. I mentioned Skyrim but I never said that it had a realistic melee fighting, I mentioned because it is very easy to fail in making a realistic fighting model and end with something like Skyrim with left mouse button spam. I think the lack of fantasy is a plus but I said exactly what you said, fantasy is a crutch that weak writers use to hide behind and without it you have to show that you have the goods.

 

[eremita]

Also to

I hope there are multiple factions, I sure as hell don't want to play an anti-Catholic heteric.

Uuuuu I wanna play some nasty heretic and kill all that catholic scum.

 

[eremita]

stuff

I really feel disoriented all the time when I try melee attacks in first person, you lose the feel of what is around you and the sense of distance. I mentioned Skyrim but I never said that it had a realistic melee fighting, I mentioned because it is very easy to fail in making a realistic fighting model and end with something like Skyrim with left mouse button spam. I think the lack of fantasy is a plus but I said exactly what you said, fantasy is a crutch that weak writers use to hide behind and without it you have to show that you have the goods.

Exactly. In reality, thanks to your perceptual field which you as an object are part of, you're not restricted to "what is before my eyes". Basically, you're aware of you surroundings. That's just not the case with first person view in videogames (btw, I'm excited about Oculus Rift in this regard). Paradoxically, third person view is closest to our actual perception/capabilities in case of melee simulation.

So yeah, fuck first person view especially with its "immersive bullshit"...

 

[valcik]

Uuuuu I wanna play some nasty heretic and kill all that catholic scum.

Same here! I'm looking forward to plundering some Romanic church. Bring the torches!

 

[PorkyThePaladin]

I really feel disoriented all the time when I try melee attacks in first person, you lose the feel of what is around you and the sense of distance.

In reality, thanks to your perceptual field which you as an object are part of, you're not restricted to "what is before my eyes". Basically, you're aware of you surroundings. That's just not the case with first person view in videogames (btw, I'm excited about Oculus Rift in this regard). Paradoxically, third person view is closest to our actual perception/capabilities in case of melee simulation.

So yeah, fuck first person view especially with its "immersive bullshit"...

Can't say I ever had these issues with first person combat. While it's true that you can't judge distance in first person view as well as you can in real life (not sure if third person helps with this), I don't think this has much of an impact on gameplay. Melee enemies will close to melee distance anyway, so you can tell by their animations and actions when you are in range, and with ranged enemies, I don't think I've often missed a melee attack because they weren't in range. It just seems pretty clear to me when I am close enough, you get a certain margin of error there, doesn't have to be to the exact inch.

Likewise, it's true that you dont have the same 180 degree view in first person as you do in life, but again, I am not sure this matters that much in a realistic video game melee combat system. What I mean by this, is that if they emphasize realism, you probably won't see the kind of super fast side-to-side strafing movement that's common to "gamey" combat systems (e.g. WoW, Rune, Darkfall Online) or jumps or dashes. With those, lack of side awareness can hurt, because the enemy can quickly change position into your blind spots, but with a more realistic system (at least the kind I imagine), the enemy will move at a slower speed and basically just settle in front of you as you exchange blows and parries, so I don't think in this case, disorientation would be an issue. Also, if the system is more realistic, you are probably not gonna fight many enemies at once (that only works in the movies), so again, you won't have to be aware of a bunch of guys behind you.

I personally don't have a problem with third person view, and I've enjoyed games with that perspective (Gothic 1 and 2, GTA games, Hitman), but overall though, I do think first person is better, both due to superior IMMERSION , and also third person can get annoying sometimes when your avatar is blocking your view.

 

[Juggie]

Can't say I ever had these issues with first person combat. While it's true that you can't judge distance in first person view as well as you can in real life (not sure if third person helps with this), I don't think this has much of an impact on gameplay. Melee enemies will close to melee distance anyway, so you can tell by their animations and actions when you are in range, and with ranged enemies, I don't think I've often missed a melee attack because they weren't in range. It just seems pretty clear to me when I am close enough, you get a certain margin of error there, doesn't have to be to the exact inch.

Likewise, it's true that you dont have the same 180 degree view in first person as you do in life, but again, I am not sure this matters that much in a realistic video game melee combat system. What I mean by this, is that if they emphasize realism, you probably won't see the kind of super fast side-to-side strafing movement that's common to "gamey" combat systems (e.g. WoW, Rune, Darkfall Online) or jumps or dashes. With those, lack of side awareness can hurt, because the enemy can quickly change position into your blind spots, but with a more realistic system (at least the kind I imagine), the enemy will move at a slower speed and basically just settle in front of you as you exchange blows and parries, so I don't think in this case, disorientation would be an issue. Also, if the system is more realistic, you are probably not gonna fight many enemies at once (that only works in the movies), so again, you won't have to be aware of a bunch of guys behind you.

I personally don't have a problem with third person view, and I've enjoyed games with that perspective (Gothic 1 and 2, GTA games, Hitman), but overall though, I do think first person is better, both due to superior IMMERSION , and also third person can get annoying sometimes when your avatar is blocking your view.

Ever tried melee in first person games? Your environmental awareness drops hugely because you have to keep facing the opponent, which is cool to some degree but makes it very hard to move around or notice incoming threats. So I would say it's just not viable unless you do strictly one on one battles with little to no movement. For large scale battles with shit going on around you, you would need about 180° FOV and that looks really weird on flat screens so that breaks immersion even more than third person view in my opinion. So unless the combat is based around standing on one spot and spamming attacks at one enemy they better make it third person.

Also it's not really that hard to show your character in third person without blocking about half of the view unless you're making a console game.

 

[eremita]

What I mean by this, is that if they emphasize realism, you probably won't see the kind of super fast side-to-side strafing movement that's common to "gamey" combat systems (e.g. WoW, Rune, Darkfall Online) or jumps or dashes. With those, lack of side awareness can hurt, because the enemy can quickly change position into your blind spots, but with a more realistic system (at least the kind I imagine), the enemy will move at a slower speed and basically just settle in front of you as you exchange blows and parries, so I don't think in this case, disorientation would be an issue.

Real combat is fast. Really fast. With plenty of side steps and shortening the distance etc. Foot work is absolutely crucial in any kind of duel (provided your technique is already good). And that is why first person view totally suck giant donkey balls compare to third person...

When I'm playing Chivalry I just can't "feel" my body and its position in the area unless I switch to 3rd person (and then I kick ass). But maybe that's just me.

 

[Oesophagus]

Uuuuu I wanna play some nasty heretic and kill all that catholic scum.

Same here! I'm looking forward to plundering some Romanic church. Bring the torches!

If you side with the Catholics, you should have a massive bonus to income, especially if you're somehow ecclesiastical

 

[Machocruz]

I'm reading The Canterbury Tales right now. S'okay, but needs some shit covered mud people and dragons for more middle age realism and to make it less boringer. Right now he's talking about how well dressed and groomed people are. This Chancer guy was obviously pulling stuff out of his ass. When was this written, 1986?

 

[Smejki]

Uuuuu I wanna play some nasty heretic and kill all that catholic scum.

Same here! I'm looking forward to plundering some Romanic church. Bring the torches!

If you side with the Catholics, you should have a massive bonus to income, especially if you're somehow ecclesiastical

You should also have a massive boost to "Lose a battle" skill until some 1430

 

[cherry blossom]

Daniel.Vavra why no love for the Codex?

 

[PorkyThePaladin]

Ever tried melee in first person games? Your environmental awareness drops hugely because you have to keep facing the opponent, which is cool to some degree but makes it very hard to move around or notice incoming threats. So I would say it's just not viable unless you do strictly one on one battles with little to no movement. For large scale battles with shit going on around you, you would need about 180° FOV and that looks really weird on flat screens so that breaks immersion even more than third person view in my opinion. So unless the combat is based around standing on one spot and spamming attacks at one enemy they better make it third person.

That's kind of the point. Your environmental awareness dropping by a large degree when you are fighting IS realistic. People don't have eyes in the back of their head, and even your side vision in real life is very limited (we don't see clearly to the sides in a 180 degree angle, we just see blurry movement), so when you are focused on fighting someone in front of you (with full attention, since your life depends on it), it is perfectly logical that your awareness drops. This is why movie type fights where one guy takes on whole groups are pretty much nonsense, and I expect a game advertising realism to limit your enemies to small numbers at a time. You can still do certain things to fight against say two guys or maybe three at a time, like for example back up and to the side, so that they are all in front of you, and take them out one at a time while keeping others in front and backing up.

If anything, third person is very unrealistic and like cheating in this aspect, precisely because it gives the player an unfair advantage in terms of seeing all around you, and looking around corners.

Real combat is fast. Really fast. With plenty of side steps and shortening the distance etc. Foot work is absolutely crucial in any kind of duel (provided your technique is already good). And that is why first person view totally suck giant donkey balls compare to third person...

When I'm playing Chivalry I just can't "feel" my body and its position in the area unless I switch to 3rd person (and then I kick ass). But maybe that's just me.

My point was that in a "gamey" type of combat, players and enemies just zoom around the battle like they got jetpacks on, strafing, dashing, jumping, etc. This makes it a bit harder to keep track of them in first person view. While real combat does involve lots of footwork, the end result of it is the combatant still standing in roughly the same place or moving a few paces this way or that. They are not zooming around like in games, so keeping them in view in first person should not be a problem.

As far as Chivalry, if you google some opinions about first person vs third person, it seems like there are some people who prefer third person, and plenty of others who prefer first person.

P.S. It also seems like you guys are thinking of this too much as a competitive deathmatch type multiplayer game, while we are talking about a single player RPG. The combat dynamics are completely different. In the former, you have a bunch of human players running around the map trying to kill each other in utter chaos, whereas in the latter, you are exploring a world, and fighting against NPCs who are going to behave quite differently.

 

[Oesophagus]

Daniel.Vavra why no love for the Codex?

hiver, most likely

 

[Juggie]

That's kind of the point. Your environmental awareness dropping by a large degree when you are fighting IS realistic. People don't have eyes in the back of their head, and even your side vision in real life is very limited (we don't see clearly to the sides in a 180 degree angle, we just see blurry movement), so when you are focused on fighting someone in front of you (with full attention, since your life depends on it), it is perfectly logical that your awareness drops. This is why movie type fights where one guy takes on whole groups are pretty much nonsense, and I expect a game advertising realism to limit your enemies to small numbers at a time. You can still do certain things to fight against say two guys or maybe three at a time, like for example back up and to the side, so that they are all in front of you, and take them out one at a time while keeping others in front and backing up.

If anything, third person is very unrealistic and like cheating in this aspect, precisely because it gives the player an unfair advantage in terms of seeing all around you, and looking around corners.

Except it isn't.

In real life you can control your head and limbs independently. In games you don't have such luxury and when you want to look to the right side you have to turn the whole character model. A person can turn his neck, or just eyes to check what's happening to his right or left. This can be done in a fraction of a second.

When it comes to FOV, humans have about 90° of sharp vision. You can see stuff clearly in that cone and a wider cone (about 180°) of lateral vision which isn't clear, but it's very sensitive to movement. So even if you can't see everything clearly you're easily alerted when someone approaches or something happens within your lateral vision field.

Games usually have between 90° and 120° FOV. And this sucks hard when you try any form of melee in first person. Third person is cheating when looking behind corner, but not when seeing stuff around you as the character should have way better awareness than the player does when playing in first person.

And I never said anything about one guy taking on groups. The game is supposed to feature large scale battles and sieges so designing the game around zero environmental awareness would be just plain stupid.

First person view is good for ranged combat - when you're focused on one spot.

 

[evdk]

You should also have a massive boost to "Lose a battle" skill until some 1430

"Lose a battle, leave your supply train with all your gold behind" skill, which also nicely takes care of the money bonus.

 

[eremita]

P.S. It also seems like you guys are thinking of this too much as a competitive deathmatch type multiplayer game, while we are talking about a single player RPG. The combat dynamics are completely different. In the former, you have a bunch of human players running around the map trying to kill each other in utter chaos, whereas in the latter, you are exploring a world, and fighting against NPCs who are going to behave quite differently.

Differently? How? NPCs won't be jumping around like assholes but that doesn't mean they can't use proper footwork. Well, they can't but that's because player character would stand no chance due to 90° FOV and distorted perception... I'm not talking about deathmatch, I'm bitching because first person view (in terms of realistic melee combat) imo embodies lots of restrictions (expecially in case of movement)...

 

[twincast]

Except it isn't.

In real life you can control your head and limbs independently. In games you don't have such luxury and when you want to look to the right side you have to turn the whole character model. A person can turn his neck, or just eyes to check what's happening to his right or left. This can be done in a fraction of a second.

When it comes to FOV, humans have about 90° of sharp vision. You can see stuff clearly in that cone and a wider cone (about 180°) of lateral vision which isn't clear, but it's very sensitive to movement. So even if you can't see everything clearly you're easily alerted when someone approaches or something happens within your lateral vision field.

Games usually have between 90° and 120° FOV. And this sucks hard when you try any form of melee in first person. Third person is cheating when looking behind corner, but not when seeing stuff around you as the character should have way better awareness than the player does when playing in first person.

And I never said anything about one guy taking on groups. The game is supposed to feature large scale battles and sieges so designing the game around zero environmental awareness would be just plain stupid.

First person view is good for ranged combat - when you're focused on one spot.

True. Sad. But true. A proper OR implementation should take care of some of that (♥), but for a perfect tool we'll have to wait for some later generation of VR displays.

 

[PorkyThePaladin]

In real life you can control your head and limbs independently. In games you don't have such luxury and when you want to look to the right side you have to turn the whole character model. A person can turn his neck, or just eyes to check what's happening to his right or left. This can be done in a fraction of a second.

In games, you can move your mouse and turn the screen in a fraction of a second, but you won't be doing that in the middle of combat for the same reason you wouldn't turn your neck or move your eyes, you kind of want to concentrate on the guy trying to hit you with a sword.

When it comes to FOV, humans have about 90° of sharp vision. You can see stuff clearly in that cone and a wider cone (about 180°) of lateral vision which isn't clear, but it's very sensitive to movement. So even if you can't see everything clearly you're easily alerted when someone approaches or something happens within your lateral vision field.

While we do have peripheral vision in real life, as you say, have you ever been deeply involved in some activity and had someone you know come up from your side and tap you on the shoulder, without realizing they were even there? I think if you are fighting for your life, there is a very good chance your brain and eyes are so completely preoccupied with your primary opponent that even if some vague movement registers out of the corner of your eye, you will not have enough available resources to deal with it at that time. And even if you tried, what if that happened at the exact moment your primary opponent aimed a savage slash at your head? By thinking about the other guy, you've probably slowed down your reaction time to the first guy, and possibly got yourself killed. I think what muddies the waters here is that most melee combat in games is really simple, and people can just mash some buttons while doing other stuff at the same time, like looking for other threats. With a more realistic combat system that demands your full attention, and where you have to watch the enemy for visual cues and time your stuff, you are not gonna have a chance to do other things anyway.

Also, again, we are not talking about a deathmatch multiplayer game (though as I mentioned earlier, more than half of Chivalry players in the polls I saw preferred first person combat anyway), but a single player RPG designed for realistic combat. The first two Gothic games were like that. Do you know what kind of combat encounters they had? You mostly dealt with a single or a pair of really tough opponents at a time, rather than larger groups. So you would do the whole "parry/counterattack/parry/counterattack" against one to take them down (sometimes two, but in that case, they were both together, and could both be kept in front of you with intelligent movement), and then continue on. There weren't enemies roaming behind you, looking to sneak up on you (as in a deathmatch), and even if that happened occassionally due to the open nature of the games, usually those enemies would make distinctive noises, alerting you to their presence. Because of all this, while I agree the loss of peripheral vision in first person is somewhat of a negative, I just don't see it as a big deal in terms of impacting the gameplay.

Also, if in first person you lose peripheral vision, in third person you gain way more of it than in real life. Whereas in life, you can see vague movement out of the corner of your eye, in third person, you can clearly see everything around you, even things that are happening behind you. So it seems to me neither approach is spot on, and it just might be a matter of personal preference. If some of you guys just said that you prefer third person combat, I wouldn't have any problems with that, it's the definitive way you claim first person melee combat must suck, despite plenty of people, myself included, who are just fine with it.

And I never said anything about one guy taking on groups. The game is supposed to feature large scale battles and sieges so designing the game around zero environmental awareness would be just plain stupid.

First, how many large scale battles do you think it will have? It's not a strategy game, it's an RPG. There might be a few, but I am sure they will be a small part of the content compared to the majority where you will be fighting against individuals/small groups. Secondly, large scale medieval battles weren't like Chivalry matches. People tend to act differently when their life is at stake, much more conservatively. Large scale battles are typically fought in organized manner, where you fight in formation, and others on your side watch your back and flanks, so you can concentrate on the enemy in front. In that context, I think first person view gives you enough awareness.