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I didn't seem to find a thread of this game and I'm compelled to make one. If one exists and I searched wrong, nixing this thread is fine by me.

 

Consulting the idle slack, I have been informed that the game has significant controversy due to its bad history, exclusion of period racial diversity, women characters relegated to be wives and sex workers, and a very embarrassing development staff.

 

I now have a feeling of shame for not researching this more before purchasing it; instead pursuing my compulsive obsession for escapist fantasy.

 

As for the game, it so far is interesting for it is gated progress open world, a Tell-Tale style story telling system in the fashion of forward moving branching choices that return to a bottle neck plot point. It does have a sort of 1980s writing style at best. It's interesting in that the pacing so far seems to be slow and procedural. The environments look nice and I do like the illustrated map and altar style menu design.

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Damn, sad to hear this about the game. It seemed interesting from a couple of trailers, but now i'll skip it.

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Yeah, I think the creative director was/is pro-gator (which I'm guessing is the embarrassing bit you're referring to).

 

I don't think you should feel too ashamed of forgetting to research the creative team behind one purchase, though. You can't be 100% on the ball at all times with this stuff. I don't know what one can do after the fact in this situation once refunding is no longer an option, though. Donate to a charity that would piss gators off and tweet about it with the game hashtagged?

 

(Incidentally, most of the I Had A Random thought About Movies thread is talking about the same issues when watching movies, starting here. Interesting that both industries have had a cataclysmic event in the last few years which have outed a lot of members as being arseholes in one way or another.)

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The more I hear about this game, the less interested in I am in playing it.  That said,  I haven't seen anything particularly compelling that shows how the game is  "bad history."  It actually seems that the historical details in the game are quite firm, if stilted in its representation of women.

 

The core of the historical criticism seems to be aimed at the lack of people of color depicted in the game.  Yet KC:D reportedly features the Cumans, who were a Turkic group displaced to Hungary during the Mongol invasions.  If some are clamoring for Africans (specifically sub-Saharan Africans) to be featured in the game, that would not be historically accurate for 15th Century rural Bohemia.  This is an odd basis for criticism because it seems to demand skewed history in order to get even with someone who's got Alt right sympathies etc.    Find something genuinely alt-right in the game to make this case .  For example, how are the Cumans depicted in the game?  Is that depiction historically accurate, given the time and setting?

 

 

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19 hours ago, Gatazhk said:

Find something genuinely alt-right in the game to make this case

 

Here's the problem with that: our understanding of what is historically accurate, much like our understanding of what is normal or politically acceptable, is based on the entire range of perspectives we see. This can be exploited, and alt-righters know this: they push extremist views not because they think the public will pick up those talking points, but because they know it makes it easier to get away with milder claims. It makes the everyday racism and sexism of their base seem more acceptable by comparison.

 

So I'd be wary of saying "Oh, the creative director may be a Nazi, but it doesn't really show in the game. It's just a normal story about a pure and wholesome Christian country threatened by corrupt politicians and hordes of dirty foreigners" (according to a friend who played it for review). That's not about them making concessions, that's a win. That's getting away with it.

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Oooof, yeah. That game, that controversy. The CEO has indeed jumped on every alt-right train he could find. He complained that the press would ignore his game because he supported gamergate (and that at a time when he had no game to show), gave an interview to Breitbart, yelled at actual historians on twitter, spread alt-right conspiracy nonsense via his youtube account. Yet somehow miraculously all that wasn't so important any more –he's going with "poorly communicated" these days – when the guy jumped in bed with a German publisher rich in hilarious consumer-averse fuckups (e.g. throwing a whole lot of games, including Gothic 3, on the market months too early; pressing Steam on the Broken Sword 5 backer discs; holding back the German voices for the GOG release so they'd sell more retail; etc.).

 

And, surprise, Kingdom Come has been thrown to the market months too early too. It's coming to GOG with a two week delay. There's pre-order bonus content. There's DLC announced. Backers have to deal with the fact that their T-Shirt is one size fits all (and wouldn't fit the CEO, who likes T-Shirts with MRA stuff and the metal bands of neo-nazi murderers and arsonists better anyway). For the backers, the promised manual was never printed and the metal box was never made. The proud metal horseman figure has shrinked to a teensy knight. The backers have not been informed of the decision to nix their rewards until they had the cardboard leftovers in their hands.

 

The backers are a little furious. B)

 

Kingdom Come is by no means a bad game from what I can gather, and it doesn't preach anything unsavory either; the same CEO that called Anita Sarkeesian a lot of names also agreed with her on the issue of excessive violence. Heck, some of the trailers even turn the camera away from the carnage. Nonetheless, KC:D still drowns in the publisher's usual shenannigans and an often misplaced idea of 'realism' in games (Bushido Blade "one hit may be it" battle mechanics, extremely limited saving, helmets lead to blacked out parts of the screen, darkness = black screen). Some of the press that bore the brunt of gamergate's terrorism even had warm words for Kingdom Come, and especially the main character has gathered some praise. It's a very niche game, and as such, it's welcome.

 

Thankfully, it has never turned out to be a game for me whatsoever.

 

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On 2/18/2018 at 4:08 PM, Gatazhk said:

The more I hear about this game, the less interested in I am in playing it.  That said,  I haven't seen anything particularly compelling that shows how the game is  "bad history."  It actually seems that the historical details in the game are quite firm, if stilted in its representation of women.

 

The core of the historical criticism seems to be aimed at the lack of people of color depicted in the game.  Yet KC:D reportedly features the Cumans, who were a Turkic group displaced to Hungary during the Mongol invasions.  If some are clamoring for Africans (specifically sub-Saharan Africans) to be featured in the game, that would not be historically accurate for 15th Century rural Bohemia.  This is an odd basis for criticism because it seems to demand skewed history in order to get even with someone who's got Alt right sympathies etc.    Find something genuinely alt-right in the game to make this case .  For example, how are the Cumans depicted in the game?  Is that depiction historically accurate, given the time and setting?

 

 

 

I haven't heard anyone say if there are Romani in the game nor heard critique of the lack of Romani in the game (cause i doubt they are there). The non-inclusion of sub-Saharan Africans might be hand-waved away with the excuse that there is no definite proof, or that it doesn't fit into the small slice of life the game depicts, but the absence of Romani directly ties into the current and long-tine marginalization in Czech Republic. That is a lot more telling and damning of Vávra than the inclusion of a trader or whatever i see people talk about. I am sure a lot of historical details in the game world are precise and considerate, but they aren't are when it comes to diversity and representation. 

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I played the game for another hour last night, doing a little bit of post credit sequence stuff in the Rattay town. It was boring, for the second time the game had me search around for a spade. I bought one, then got a new mission from the castle lords, and noticed the game autosaved so decided that was a good place to stop.

 

In spite of the game having various mechanics as mentioned above that limit ease of use in favor of 'realism' such as eating, injury systems, limited saving, it does have certain ease of use mechanics that I question. One is fast travel, which I haven't used yet, which I always have issue with but this one might be some kind of mini game with interference.

 

But the most rediculous feature the chest next to save-beds apparently teleports items between all the other chests next to save beds. This is more offensive than all the willful omissions of race, perks that give stinkiness a manly musk to influence women, and other fantasies of a hard right revisionist appocalyptic past. How dare my peasant have a magical chest of teleporting lentil soups. If this game is so dedicated to realism I should have to hire a donkey to transport my pretzels 

 

I don't think I've spotted a potato

 

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1 hour ago, plasticflesh said:

I'll try using my new spade

Hhahaah.

 

The game used to have potatoes in it - but potatoes didn't arrive until the invasion of the Americas.

 

Maybe they took them out.

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The comments on the Eurogamer review have inevitably devolved into a total cesspool but this detail from one of them made me laugh quite a lot:

 

Quote

There are some tips for new players online. if there is one thing - pick a lots of herbs in Skalitz, you will make some money and gain skills in herbalism which offer perks to charisma and even strenght at later stages (getting your legs strong from all the squats).

 

Some top notch squat systems at play here.

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More apparent to me was the back-slapping laddishness revolving around bedding women. I'm pursuing a love story over here, while over there bedding a noble and having one-night stands. That's in addition to my Troubadour perk which makes me even more irresistible to women and lets me use the "bathwenches" for free, which ties into a key mechanic of keeping yourself clean and patched up. It also means I get the Alpha Male buff (+2 to Charisma) because I've been satisfied and apparently it shows. It literally says that. The game's Codex even feels the need to describe the ideal woman of the time: "a thin, pale woman with long blonde hair, small rounded breasts, relatively narrow hips and a narrow waist".

 

So much for keeping politics out of the game.

 

Oh, and conservative lies. The frail woman idealized by Christian knights wasn't at all what the 99.9% would have favored for a whole lot of reasons, chances of survival being one.

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1 hour ago, Vainamoinen said:

Oh, and conservative lies. The frail woman idealized by Christian knights wasn't at all what the 99.9% would have favored for a whole lot of reasons, chances of survival being one.

 

Even if it was, the troubadour was a southern French phenomenon during the eleventh through thirteenth centuries, with echoes in northern Italy and Spain. Having that culture and its ideal woman represented in fifteenth-century Bohemia is just as implausible as having a black African appear there, but not if you make the layman's assumption that European Christendom in the Middle Ages was a static and discrete monolith, as the game's developers have repeatedly shown themselves to have done.

 

I'd be happy for there to be a real hunger for historical accuracy in games, but Kingdom Come: Deliverance is all about flattering the average person's gut instincts about how the Middle Ages "really" were: chock-full of drinking and wenching and murdering infidels.

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Ugh those descriptions of mechanical misogyny in this game is not a compelling inspiration to continue my play. I haven't played more since that Sunday session. Maybe I'll log in and do some squats though. 

 

May the lord dam my forsaken void of temperance to build a bulwark against future impulsive torrents of un-researched purchased based on unverified anecdotes. An industrious and diligent beaver lord, using his holy flat beaver tail to dam it up with logs of research and knowledge. With a dry little hovel inside for baby lord beavers.

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6 hours ago, plasticflesh said:

Ugh those descriptions of mechanical misogyny in this game is not a compelling inspiration to continue my play. I haven't played more since that Sunday session. Maybe I'll log in and do some squats though. 

 

May the lord dam my forsaken void of temperance to build a bulwark against future impulsive torrents of un-researched purchased based on unverified anecdotes. An industrious and diligent beaver lord, using his holy flat beaver tail to dam it up with logs of research and knowledge. With a dry little hovel inside for baby lord beavers.

If it makes you feel any better, there's tons of misogyny in most other video games too.

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My understanding is that it's unlikely to say there's a community of black Africans in 15th century Bohemia, but individual black people definitely travelled. Mediterranean countries all traded with African countries, right?

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16 hours ago, Gormongous said:

 

Having that culture and its ideal woman represented in fifteenth-century Bohemia is just as implausible

 

 

Had they actually been into historical accuracy, they could have shaved their noblewomen's foreheads and marry them off to the player at 12 years of age.

 

...all right, maybe we should be thankful that this is just the CEO's MRA fantasy version of medieval Europe. :sombrero:

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20 hours ago, TychoCelchuuu said:

If it makes you feel any better, there's tons of misogyny in most other video games too.

ah yes, that's the spirit

 

anyway I'll report back with my experiences whenever I spend another bit of time with the game. I bumped into a coworker who has been enjoying it because "it's like gaming in the 90s." He seems unaware of the controversy. So I'll see what he has to say eventually.

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don't know who tagged this thread 'grognard' but I raise my glass to whoever it was

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