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KickStarter Kingdom Come: Deliverance - Dan Vavra's medieval chad simulator

Eyestabber

Arcane
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AwesomeButton you missed the best thing during your escape:

I did my escape loud and proud, killing as many people as I could and ignoring Zhb pleas for caution. So far so good, except when I aggro my old "friend" the weapon master. Dude wears the best armor in the game: plot armor. You can't even attack him, you're stuck either running away or accepting your fate. Fucking ridiculous. Oh and the dude dies during a cutscene like 2 minutes later. Plot armor meets plot mace :lol:
 

mildTea

Learned
Joined
Mar 14, 2017
Messages
69
I'm at the main quest's last leg. Or maybe last toe even.

I can't help but state that it gets rather underwhelming. Criticism follows. Real spoilers, read at your own risk:

Inconsistencies and implausible developments
1. In a region that's so small that it's one day's ride from one end to the other, Henry has to scout and describe to experienced warriors twice as old as himself that Vranek a) even exists; b) is occupied by enemies? Neither Radzig nor Hanush are aware of Vranek's location? Hanush's constable was in Sasau just recently and the place is right next to Sasau.

2. Hanush's temper is well and fine, but his sudden rashness when it comes to the attack is at odds with his role as a responsible governor and Capon's regent.

3. Why even attack Vranek? The place has no independent water supply and can easily be surrounded. A few days to two weeks, and the defenders would have given up without battle, or tried to sally.

4. After the battle for Vranek is over, Henry is the only person in the world capable of walking up to a table and bringing back a letter? :lol: Warhorse, you were rushing development soo hard at the point you designed this part of the main quest!

5. But before that, I should have mentioned the corridor advance through the camp, together with my clunkily bumping into me armored buddies. Invisible walls preventing us from straying from the One True Path which would throw freshly spawned enemies at us. Simply inexcusable.

6. The game maintains that I have to "pick up my stuff" from the tent? Why this sudden gamy approach? I'd have the player actually lose everything once he *lost* it already. Also, I took the game's hints at heart and when I went into the camp I had dressed up as a simple soldier, I didn't approach it in my shiniest armor and with my grand bascinet on! Actually I expected I would raise suspicion based on flashy armor and be immediately captured by the bandits. I expected the game would continue to adhere to common sense.

7. There was no real need for the forced drama of Henry's being captured at Vranek. It was Hollywood style shit in terms of plot construction. Outright lazy and unoriginal. If the point was the introduction of Istvan as the main villain, this could have been done in many other ways, each of them more plausible than what we got.

8. While we are at it, there was no need for the forced drama of how Henry solves the riddle of who is Pious at the monastery either. In both cases I was on a covert mission and I wanted to roleplay a covert mission, and solve it in my own way. Not be a part of someone's attempts to play at movie director. FFS.

9. Talmberg's capture by treachery was one of the least convincing parts of the plot in any game I've played which has been taking its plot seriously. Witcher 3, a fantasy story where at any point "magic" or "Ciri's powers" can be an excuse for anything happening out of the blue, still treats its plot more seriously than this. And with KCD this was in stark contrast to the tone of everything up to now. It was like watching Heat in one minute, and the tone switching to Lethal Weapon 4 in the next.

10. Talmberg, while it does have a well in the castle's inner courtyard, is also easy to cut off. Even if the occupants eat from the castle's reserves, they still have no endgame, and they don't even have enough people to man the castle properly. Would Sigismund come to their aid with a larger force? And even if he would, what was Istvan hoping to achieve in the first place - take the castle by treachery and at huge risk to his own life, and at the cost of sacrificing his whole force at Vranek, just so he can sit on his hands in Talmberg and wait for relief by Sigismund? If I were Sigismund, I would classify this as a major fuckup and Istvan as more trouble than he is worth.

11. Going back to discussing Vranek, Zbyshek's motivation was plausible enough, but again - the game's development was so forcefully rushed through, so that QA could begin (or for some similar reason), that Warhorse even made it impossible to make a stealthy exit by stealing a guard's armor. The first guard I encountered once I got control over Henry was alone and positioned perfectly for a silent takedown. I took him out, carried him to my cell, finished his unconscious body off with his own axe, then took his clothes, put on his helmet which even conveniently covered my face and tried to stroll out, but no dice! I was immediately recognized, despite my disguise and helmet. Some smarty pants mr. game designer had decided that for plot reasons I have to exit the camp by means of "making an exciting escape" between two guards, and then run down a hill and into the woods. I won't even comment on how after I hooked up with Zbyshek, Henry was shown in undergarments in cutscenes even though I escaped the camp completely armored.

These 11 things are just off the top of my head. Jesus Christ, Warhorse, I had such a good impression of the game, and you had to shit it up at the end, from going completely linear from the monastery quest, to switching to a badly scripted interactive movie which doesn't even cover for reactivity. You still managed to run out of funds and time to give the main story a proper conclusion. For shame!

Well you need to realize that being a film director is probably Vávra's wet dream and he just loves film-like plots. In addition to that he likes open-world games (Red Dead Redemption being his favourite) so he smashes the two together. And then he can't just help it but to force the plot upon you, even when it's at odd with the overall realism of the game. I'm pretty sure your points 7 and 8 are caused by Vávra wanting to have
camp attack and castle siege
moments in the game. Yes, he could have come up with other ways to achieve that, but they would all involve cutscenes and wouldn't fit playstyles others than yours. It's impossible to account for all the possible playthroughs up to those moments, so for some it will always feel forced.

Specific film-like plot will always clash with open-world RPG and solve it as you wish gameplay. Recall Deus Ex and the Hotel Carone mod. A whole mod was created which explores the alternative to a decision that's forced on you in a cutscene/dialogue options. This continues the best tradition of all the GTAs, RDRs, Mafia's, Witchers... The only thing is that Vávra is sometimes overdoing it with the amount of cutscenes in comparison to those games. He should cut down on it and spend the resources on balance, quest QA, etc.

Also if the people who finished the game already want to discuss the game without caring about spoilers all the time we have a thread just for that.
 

Outlander

Custom Tags Are For Fags.
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Divinity: Original Sin Wasteland 2 Steve gets a Kidney but I don't even get a tag.
aWG7m.gif
 

cvv

Arcane
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Joined
Mar 30, 2013
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Kingdom of Bohemia
Codex+ Now Streaming!
So last week everyone and their cat reported KCD cost 35 million USD to make. That was a number that Forbes came up with, without any attribution or sourcing.

Smart and knowledgeable people like me who've been following the game for years immediately became suspicious because this country hasn't seen this kind of money since Hitler heavily invested in our highway network for his invasion in the Soviet Union. I for one thought it's a total bullshit fantasy, unless Warhorse employment benefits included luxury hookers, Colombian coke and frequent vacations on Maledives.

And sure enough, a Czech gaming website decided to look into it and poured through Warhorse's financial statements from the last 5 years. Turns out KCD really cost about 15 million USD, just as everyone expected.

This report is a few days old but it hasn't trickled down into the global internets yet. So I guess Codex rulez again, you've heard it here first.
 

Smejki

Larian Studios, ex-Warhorse
Developer
Joined
Oct 22, 2012
Messages
707
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Belgistan
So in my very slow playthrough...First quest after the whole prologue:
Miller tells me get ring from dug body, care of the executioner. I arrive there, talk to executioner, he tells me he has the ring, offers it to me for a few moneys....and my dude say "no thanks im not interested". Wtf? Why are you not interested??? I AM INTERESTED! Dialog ends and I cant speak to him again.
Looked up the conditions. Player needs to
have at least 20 mittelalterbucks. got 'em?
There's certainly a proper "not enough money" option missing which was reported. It's one of the oldest quests, there are some relics of the past in there.
 

Jimmious

Arcane
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Joined
May 18, 2015
Messages
5,132
Steve gets a Kidney but I don't even get a tag.
So in my very slow playthrough...First quest after the whole prologue:
Miller tells me get ring from dug body, care of the executioner. I arrive there, talk to executioner, he tells me he has the ring, offers it to me for a few moneys....and my dude say "no thanks im not interested". Wtf? Why are you not interested??? I AM INTERESTED! Dialog ends and I cant speak to him again.
Looked up the conditions. Player needs to
have at least 20 mittelalterbucks. got 'em?
There's certainly a proper "not enough money" option missing which was reported. It's one of the oldest quests, there are some relics of the past in there.
Yes I believe I didn't have the money required, it's just weird how it was handled, the "not enough money" option as you say
 

cvv

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Codex+ Now Streaming!
Also the budget estimation discussions we had in the PRE-RELEASE thread weren't far off then. However, does that mean now the 36.5 mil. USD is a complete blunder or was it the total cost and Deep Silver somehow magically spent 20 mil. USD on marketing?

I've been thinking what kind of deal Warhorse actually secured from Deep Silver. I wouldn't rule out Deep Silver let them keep the Steam distro and the IP and even paid for the French and German dubbing only because they keep most of the moneyz for the console sales or maybe even all of them. Maybe Warhorse doesn't get jack shit for the boxed copies. If true it's possible Deep Silver invested some pretty money in marketing the game, tho 20 million still seems waaaay too much.

No need to pull out a Hitler reference.

It was a joke derp.
 

Xeon

Augur
Joined
Apr 9, 2013
Messages
1,858
Sales from hard copies profitable? I can't imagine it selling more than or even close to digital ones nowadays.
 

Smejki

Larian Studios, ex-Warhorse
Developer
Joined
Oct 22, 2012
Messages
707
Location
Belgistan
How the fuck do I make the citizens of Rattay not hate me (currently at -100 rep)? I don't know what I did to anger them. Maybe it's because I killed the executioner in the quest to get the ring? But how would they even know that, no one has commented on the fact that he hasn't showed up for 3 days and everyone keeps talking as if he's still alive. I can't take any quests in Rattay because they tell me to fuck off and I can't trade with anyone because they tell me to fuck off too. Same for getting a simple bed in the village. This is too much like real life and it's getting annoying.
Wait for fix. We've had some nasty bugs in reputation propagation system and several instances of improperly set data. We'll have to do a major amnesty update along with the fixes. Sorry about that.
 

Smejki

Larian Studios, ex-Warhorse
Developer
Joined
Oct 22, 2012
Messages
707
Location
Belgistan
So in my very slow playthrough...First quest after the whole prologue:
Miller tells me get ring from dug body, care of the executioner. I arrive there, talk to executioner, he tells me he has the ring, offers it to me for a few moneys....and my dude say "no thanks im not interested". Wtf? Why are you not interested??? I AM INTERESTED! Dialog ends and I cant speak to him again.
Looked up the conditions. Player needs to
have at least 20 mittelalterbucks. got 'em?
There's certainly a proper "not enough money" option missing which was reported. It's one of the oldest quests, there are some relics of the past in there.
Doesn't work even
if you have the money, unless you need to have exactly 20 of those mittlealterbucks.

edit: should've spoiler'd it, I guess...
Doublechecked the condition. It's correct.
You might have been confused by the fact that
the UI prompt says 15 but condition is 20. n'est-ce pas?
(this discrepancy was also reported)
 

Beowulf

Arcane
Joined
Mar 2, 2015
Messages
1,963
What is with the Nest of Vipers main quest? I can sneak into the camp undetected no problem, but as soon as I slip poison into a cookpot, some guard from all the way across the camp makes a bee line right for me and attacks. WTF. Shitty design there.

Yeah, I didn't manage to poison the food unnoticed, so I just decided to run after I poisoned the first pot, burning arrows and dropping poison along the way. The objectives to sabotage the camp where first marked as completed, but when I started the assault I got subsequent messages that I failed the sabotage objectives.
On the other hand, the archers on the church wall just stood there with bows in hand, but I don't know if that was due to me burning the arrows, them running out of arrows, or them bugging out.

According to what I read, even if you poison all the food, and burn all the arrows, the changes to the battle itself are very small (reportedly few enemies less, an perhaps less shooting from archers). Even if you manage to kill all of the bandits in the camp (which you could before 1.3, I don't know how difficult endeavour it would be now) they just respawn for the battle.
 

AwesomeButton

Proud owner of BG 3: Day of Swen's Tentacle
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PC RPG Website of the Year, 2015 Make the Codex Great Again! Grab the Codex by the pussy Insert Title Here RPG Wokedex Divinity: Original Sin 2 A Beautifully Desolate Campaign Pillars of Eternity 2: Deadfire Steve gets a Kidney but I don't even get a tag. Pathfinder: Wrath
Well you need to realize that being a film director is probably Vávra's wet dream and he just loves film-like plots.
I know, or at least I've heard as much. Well, I guess Hollywood lost one more B-Movie director during the 90s. No big deal.

This continues the best tradition of all the GTAs, RDRs, Mafia's, Witchers... The only thing is that Vávra is sometimes overdoing it with the amount of cutscenes in comparison to those games
IMO Witcher 3 overdoes it as well, but ofcourse its production values were making its movie segments somewhat more bearable. I've found GTA III/IV/V to be just fine with regards to cutscenes length, haven't played RDR.
 

IHaveHugeNick

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Apr 5, 2015
Messages
1,870,123
Yeah, I like an RPG that makes no compromises about being a storyfaggy genre, but even I felt the main plot was dragging a bit by the end. And the plot coherence falls of badly after Vranik, which is a shame because the writing was really tight up until that point.
 

Smejki

Larian Studios, ex-Warhorse
Developer
Joined
Oct 22, 2012
Messages
707
Location
Belgistan
But to the great part: I'm getting Ultima 7 vibes from this game. And I had a fun experience with some AI. I was looking for a fellow named Ginger, and he had a couple bandits asking around for him. Some guys asked me to kill these bandits and I accepted the job. the game saved, sio I could try and kill those guys. Turns out they were very strong for me. I tried a lot of strategies but always ended up dying. So I tried to sneak upon them, take down them while sleeping. The thing is that this always woke up the other guy. So, in order to see if they were sleeping, I tried to pickpocket them to get their weapons. As always, I failed so I ran away. then, when I was getting back, both guys were exchanging insults and started fight each other. After one was murdered by his friend, I choked the other and killed him while unconscious. I don't know how that happened, but when I tried pick-pocketing, the screen told me that the guy noticed me stealing him, but I fleed the scene before he got up, so I like to imagine he didn't actually see me and blamed his friend.
These two bandits attacking each other was a bug that's fixed in 1.4. I was hunting that bullshit down for 4 fucking days. Basically the quest is waiting for signal that you attacked either of the two (attack, arrow flyby, knock out whatevs). Once the quest gets the info it makes sure to set both bandits aggressive towards you. The thing was that if you got near the bandits for exactly second time the signal subscription was thrown away and the quest never got the proper signal needed henceforth. At that moment a different implicit rule was triggered which says that anybody who has a temporary override faction falls back to their basic one (which is Bandits in this case) upon switching to combat with player. Which happened to the bandit you attacked but not to the other one. And since the temporary faction of bandit2 and basic faction of bandit1 were in hostile relationship, the two clowns attacked each other.
Exploit till you can!
 
Last edited:

Grampy_Bone

Arcane
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Jan 25, 2016
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Wandering the world randomly in search of maps
What is with the Nest of Vipers main quest? I can sneak into the camp undetected no problem, but as soon as I slip poison into a cookpot, some guard from all the way across the camp makes a bee line right for me and attacks. WTF. Shitty design there.

Yeah, I didn't manage to poison the food unnoticed, so I just decided to run after I poisoned the first pot, burning arrows and dropping poison along the way. The objectives to sabotage the camp where first marked as completed, but when I started the assault I got subsequent messages that I failed the sabotage objectives.
On the other hand, the archers on the church wall just stood there with bows in hand, but I don't know if that was due to me burning the arrows, them running out of arrows, or them bugging out.

According to what I read, even if you poison all the food, and burn all the arrows, the changes to the battle itself are very small (reportedly few enemies less, an perhaps less shooting from archers). Even if you manage to kill all of the bandits in the camp (which you could before 1.3, I don't know how difficult endeavour it would be now) they just respawn for the battle.

I figured out a way to do it in the lower camp. I passed time in a corner until 1AM and then only 1 guard was still awake in the lower camp. After giving him a good shanking I was able to poison both pots without interference. I think when you sabotage a pot the game just aggros every active guard in a certain radius, visibility be damned. Kinda crummy.

In the upper camp there were always 3-4 guard awake and they were all covering each other so there was no chance for shivving any. I did the poison-and-run move like you did.

On one failed run I decided to arm up and make my last stand, and ended up killing everyone in the camp. So it's still possible. I figured it would be a wasted effort though so I reloaded to try to do it properly.
 

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