It runs so much better than the first KC:D. Good job, Warhorse Studios.
By the by, someone playing the game for an additional 19 hours after giving it a thumbs down on Steam for woke DEI speaks to its quality.
I’m asexual, not aromantic, but thinking about this from an aromantic perspective I completely get wanting more close platonic relationships that don’t turn romantic. That would actually be inclusive, a lot of people try to put romance everywhere, and I get it! It’s fun to do! But aromantic people like to have representation too, and options to be friends but not romantic helps them feel represented.
Too bad this guy’s “checkbox insert” means it’s probably (I might be wrong) an “omg gay people exist in my game, gross” complaint and not a “hey platonic relationships are important too, don’t make every significant relationship romantic” for all the aros (or even non-aromantic people who think friendship is important as well as romance) out there.
I’m like, borderline aro(?) and yeah having the option to proceed down a meaningful friendship path with my favorite characters/have them move in (shoutout to Krobus in SDV) is awesome when provided.
I can also see the “empty tokenism” as in, players deserve more fleshed out queer relationships instead of rainbow stickers being half-heartedly slapped on existing characters but yeah unfortunately the reviewer is probably a pearl clutching “woke DEI other-buzzword bad” type.
Absolutely. Portraying a relationship as less meaningful unless there are romantic underpinnings somewhere is weird. It’s just the “checkbox insert” thing cynically insinuates that they like had a gayness quota to fill. Whatever, my point is that it’s undeniably a good game. Check it out if you’re into medieval Europe stuff. You don’t have to play the first one, although you’d be missing out.
Every time I see a sequel I get curious about the first. KCD1 seems like something I have a 50/50 shot at either loving (roleplay!) or hating (QOL stuff, probably the combat), not sure which side I’ll come out on.
Suffice to say, you have a rough start of it. You’re born into the peasantry. You’re fragile. You can’t fight your way out of a wet cardboard box. I don’t know why this stuck with me in particular, but you’re illiterate. As you progress, life gets easier. Point being, the roleplay necessitates hard as hell combat and lack of QOL stuff.
IDK I’m into swords and horsies. Give it a shot, I’d say.
Very happy for the success of this game, even if it’s not my style. It seems like a breath of fresh air among soulless cash grabs
I tried the first and just couldn’t get into it. But the game industry needs titles that aren’t full of loot boxes and requiring online connectivity
Guess all the people calling it woke still bought it.
This series is the opposite of woke if you ask me.
Jesus christ be praised.
My roommate said that Dragon Age was going to be the most woke game and that he would never spend his money on a game published by EA. He bought it day 1 and beat it 3 times. He fucking loves that game.
For what it’s worth, Eurogamer itself called the first game bigoted and refused to rate it. It’s really a strange case.
That article reads like that other shitpiece that called Ghost of Tsushima racist for portraying Mongols as evil. Like, bruh. It wasn’t called “the dark ages” for a lack of sunlight.
It’s called the dark ages for a lack of records. Not sure where you’re trying to go with this argument.
It’s a reference to a line in a Stargate episode, uttered by a historian in reference to outdated medieval practices (specifically trepanning). If I have to make a point, it is that historical fiction about a specific time and culture should reflect the values and prejudices of the people and not be condemned for it.
Except that isn’t what happens with stuff like this. It isn’t reflecting “the values and prejudices of the people” at the time. It is reflecting them in the modern day.
The problem with KCD1 wasn’t that it depicted low tech people (which it didn’t. It very much went the route of “alchemy is science”) or even the very questionable views on women (that is a very complex topic). It was the insistence that medieval Czech was a land of white people (and a specific phenotype at that…) and blah blah blah. When the vast majority of historical evidence is that medieval Europe was a mixing pot (there is a reason that terms like “moor” existed and plenty of people brought servants, slaves, and even wives back from the various crusades and Crusades).
Which gets back to “the dark ages” being about a lack of records more than anything else. But people interpret “Well. there is no record of an arab being in this entire country for 300 years!” as “The white men kept the brown folk out” rather than “Well… there also aren’t a lot of records period. But if you look a few miles to the east you DO see records acknowledging this as though it weren’t a big deal”
Which also lines up with the lead dev being a piece of shit chud who was a loud voice during gamergate.
And it also left a REALLY bad taste in the mouth of people (who give a shit) who read any of the discussion on this and saw WAY too many people talk about how it is important to have a game about Czech that remembers the glory days back when everyone was white and strong and blah blah blah.
And, as a quick aside: KCD1 is still the most bog standard power fantasy fantasy there can be. The combat is more or less “What if you took two HEMA seminars?” and is still star wars kid slicing through plate mail. And it is especially funny because the “historians” that were consulted? No, they weren’t medieval history specialists or even HEMA specialists. If memory serves, it was a guy who specialized in WW1 tanks. And, while people can obviously have multiple passions, it really showed. Also, you are the son of a blacksmith (?) who bangs his way around Bohemia to become bestest friends with the king and blah blah blah.
Which brings us to Ghost of Tsushima. I genuinely love this game even if there is zero chance I ever finish it (I can’t stand ubi open world games and it is more ubi than ubi has been in years). Yes, it is 500% written by a white guy who studied the blade. But it is well acted and well “directed” and really feels like I am playing a Kurosawa film. That said, it definitely depicts the Mongols as violent barbarians who outright use civilians as target practice and do nothing but <REDACTED> and pillage because violence is fine but the other thing triggers ratings issues.
And in the sense of needing a villain that justifies Jin giving up the pretense that samurai were anything other than violent warlords in armor? It works. But if you actually look at politics and cultural shifts in Japan over the past few decades, you’ll see why it was very well received that All Mongols are Barbarian Monsters and so forth. It is the same problem as depicting “generic brown people” in “generic Middle East” as more or less slobbering zombies to be mowed down.
Which gets back to the key point. Pretty much all of these “We are just depicting the <blank> period as it was” isn’t doing that. It is portraying things through the lens of the modern day which is something that is accepted amongst historic fiction writers (more on that shortly). So if they crank up the whiteness? There is a reason.
Now, I said I was going to talk about historic fiction writers. If you ARE interested in “what things were like”, I STRONGLY recommend authors like Miles Cameron (I think that is his pen name for SFF, but they redirect to the same site). Historic fiction can be awesome and the best stories are the ones that need to have a footnote or appendix of “Yo, this ACTUALLY happened.” because of how wild it is. And you’ll find that the writers who actually put the effort in to cite things tend to have much more nuanced depictions of both sides (because it is incredibly rare to have a genuinely evil empire) and are a lot less focused on racial purity because… that shit wasn’t a thing once we got past “The people on that side of the river all have red hair and are evil. I hear their wives and daughters are hot though…”
For the record, academics and historians generally don’t use the term “the dark ages” anymore.
I’ll purchase this in around a year or more with dlc still playing the first to completion almost done with it on my last hardcore playthrough getting virgin + merciful + hardcore achievements… Really good one of my favorite 100%s so far
Definitely deserved. I’ve played it for 10+ hours so far and it’s such an improvement on the already excellent first game. It even runs much better on the same hardware.
It even runs much better on the same hardware.
That’s great news, I was worried about performance.
That actually sounds wrong. Do they use the same level of graphics or was the first game optimized THAT badly?
That badly. Updates made it better, though.
Pretty sure the first game was just not optimized very well. I can run KCD2 at a very stable 60+ FPS on my RTX 3060 on high/ultra settings. The first one had about 20 FPS less in comparable environments. Not too surprising, considering that it was the dev team’s first CryEngine project. It’s notoriously hard to work with.
Just waiting for gog… Hold the line…
Absolutely this and wait a year for the DLCs to release with it
hopefully the combat system is improved so you actually have a chance of at least escaping when fighting more than one enemy
You can fight 1v10 later on, but in the beginning of the first game you were literally a peasant. It makes sense even a 1v2 would represent a mortally dangerous situation until you get better skills and gear.
Really it’s what made the game so good in my opinion, I’ve never felt a character grow like that before.
what I’m talking about is more that running away isn’t actually an option unless you can win the fight already because if you try to run they can just instantly knock you down.
I know literally nothing about this game and I mostly play FPS or racing games. What even is this game and what does the actual gameplay look like? I don’t give a crap about stories as I always skip them. I just want to know what the actual gameplay loop consists of.
It’s a fairly realistic medieval adventure rpg, sword fighting is stance based and very hard, you also suck at everything to begin with because you start off as an illiterate blacksmiths son. The sequel is a continuation of his story. It’s pretty story focused but you can definitely have a ton of fun just wandering around stealing shit and fighting people if you want to, once you get good at stealing and fighting
Hmmmm… Sounds potentially interesting. I’m guessing I don’t have to have played the first one before I play the second one?
I’ll probably throw it on the ol wishlist and wait for a sale.
The second one gives you the necessary flashbacks to catch up if you should intend to follow the story. It also explains all the basics of the game mechanics as part of the quests.
Sounds intriguing. I’ll definitely check it out.
