Wouldn’t it be cool if we could write letters to different NPCs? We could send messages to our liege lord, by the transportation of a hawk or falcon. Perhaps we could even send letters to our friends and ally’s.We could warn them of an upcoming attack, or simply share information regarding that of our personnel lives.
I’d only add that official organized postal service in the Czech lands started in 1526, 123 years after the game takes place.
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Can Henry read? If not, the words could be very blurry for him until he learns some way
Well unless you can develop artificial intelligence this would be impossible.
Sorry for the rudeness, your imagination is awesome and it would definitely add to realism but. it simply can’t be done. If they did, it would most likely be a Siri like AI which would only send a message back with local Domino’s in our area, or a nearby swamp to dump the dead Cuman.
Perhaps a minigame? a really fun minigame like sharpening swords but instead we attend literature class every in-game day and are forced to learn the Czech alphabet and read books and write papers on what we read and turn it in to class. We then get grades and get to take it home to show our… sniff my dad is dead… damn knaves… i’ll kill’em all.
That is exactly the right question. And I’l guys leave you at that.
I’m just saying it doesn’t seem like it would be impossible to set up some feed back in a few letter, is it?
well i guess i don’t really understand how the letters would be implemented, for example,
will it be some quest thing? where you complete a quest that turns unexpectedly into a problem that requires assistance? or anything relating to a currently active quest?
will it be outside of a quest, like a call for assistance if you are alone and dealing with bandits, or you have a problem that requires you too stay put and wait?
If you could elaborate the implementation of the letters than that would be helpful, but to remind you, almost nothing about this game has been released, hopefully you are not translating the intentions of this game too something that its not, because this game is inspired by Skyrim, but will of course be better in every single way. But the foundation is inspired by Skryim, and the only letter system they had was when couriers would bring you letters from NPC’s, which did not have a reply option, but simply was just a “hey check this out” or “you have unlocked this” or simply some response to the chronological progression of the dragonborn in Skyrim.
thank you.
Mind linking or quoting some references on that? not debating just curious where you got that impression.
The modern Czech alphabet (later taken over also by other nations, e.g. Slovenians) was introduced just around the time of the game, so Henry, if literate, would be probably still using the standard Latin aplhabet to write Czech, including digraphs.
First, a blacksmith even in the Late Middle Ages most probably couldn’t read and write. The only thing he would see when looking at a letter is something like this:
…or this:
…or maybe this:
I think you get my point.
Second, as Andrew Gilmore has already pointed out,
There might be a solution to this, though: predefined letters!
The Czech lands were very special in this. Apart from the liturgy in Czech, one of the other main topics of Hussites was universal education. Although that was only beginning in 1403, by 1503 not only a blacksmith, but also his wife would be most probably fully literate, if they were part of Reformed church (as 95% of population was). That was of course reached by steady increase of literacy from 1380s (first full Czech translation of Bible, ahead of German version) onwards. Having a literate blacksmith in 1403 Bohemia may be possible.
The education went all to hell again with re-catholization in 1630s, so by 1703 a blacksmith would be most probably again illiterate.
I think, we missed the most obvious problem with writing letters in game…
not if Henry can write story-wise
not if there is a working postal system historical speaking
not if NPCs can work with letters they get engine-wise
people, players would have to write - maybe even in complete sentences
might be the first game where under minimum requirements is listed: "players have to pass the touring test"
That may bring sales waaaay down…
I’m just saying it would be fun to write letters, you wouldn’t necessarily have to write if you didn’t want to.
I was kidding, mostly 
Henry can’t be totally illiterate. In video update no. 4 (10:17) Viktor said: “You can read books about fencing”. Moreover, if our aspiring young alchemist lacks basic reading skills then he will run into serious problems next Wednesday
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That doenst stop Henry from being functionally illiterate. He can maybe understand the letters, but he’ll probably have trouble reading a full sentence. And he will probably run into serious problems, cause life isnt easy.
Life ain’t nothin’ but bitches and money
- N.W.A
when first i saw this idea, i thought immediately of a different form of branching dialogue. example: Henry needs to figure out a way to get help from a local magistrate (for some problem, let your imagination roll). there are 5 sentences that are going to be written on the letter. each sentence has a selection of pre-determined dialogue. this could use the perks/skills as well. first sentence: gratitude & introductions. 2nd sentence: neutral plea for help. 3rd sentence: desperation to why help is needed. 4th sentence: repercussions to not helping. 5th sentence (possibly optional): reiterate the plea for help, in one of several tones.
basically each choice is final as you write (can’t erase that ink, time is too short to start again) and each sentence would have multiple flavors to them using strength, intelligence, charisma, etc. you could write the whole letter as one big strongarm letter “I will hurt you if you don’t help. if we don’t get help, you’re next” kind of thing. or more tact could be used to influence the recipient. since each AI character has a “likes you or not” meter of some kind, and could have meters around how they are influenced by each type of dialogue, some characters will respond better than others. if you’re writing to someone you haven’t met or know nothing about then it’s a shot in the dark. if you know this lord is cowardly but has resources, you strong arm him. if one is pragmatic, you use diplomacy. i think this could add a great feeling of really interacting with the world while still limiting the number of permutations there are, and it seems would align closely with the already existing branching dialogue system. true AI would be overkill in this scenario.
what i’d also like along these lines would be writing notes only for myself and leaving them at my alchemy table or something. often times in games i have so much stuff or want to just have notes about what i was going to do with it all or my plan for resources. the next day i come back to the game and i have all this stuff and i can’t remember what i wanted to do (I’m looking at you skyrim) but i have all these chests and desks and other places to store things that i can’t do this with. PC this works great, consoles would have the difficult time if you don’t already have a keyboard hooked up with the controller but it would also be infrequent enough that i think it’d be just fine.
love the idea though, hope something like it gets implemented!
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that’s something I would have wished for in many games, in particular RPGs, - also in combination with making your own annotations to maps, points you want to come back to etc. It’s a bit strange that something along those lines isn’t a common occurrence, since technically it isn’t that hard (in particular if you already have some kind of text input system (depending on the game)) and could be an easy feature as add on to already existing questlog and map UI systems.
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i’ve seen plenty of games that have the ability to set 1 waypoint that doesn’t even persist between saves/loads. it would be great if along with all the things on the map they made room for like 5-10 user annotations. that way it’s built into the memory budget of the map and they don’t have to worry about a user endlessly spamming notes and crashing the game. if Oblivion had that i wouldn’t have spent so long running around trying to remember where that great spot for X flower was, only to find it again and then forget it after i get distracted by a cave in the distance. also notes i think would be easier because you could have one inventory “notebook” (oh wait, it’s already there, the journal!) and text doesn’t take up a whole lot so allocate another 5-10 average “quest notes” length for user created dialogue. i could work with that easily.
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