I appreciate your point of view on the cutscene at the beginning. However, I understand the reasoning and purpose. It was to set the stage for the game, I would rather of played through the chase and but that is just my wanting to learn the mechanics of the game. It is a great game with many novel concepts.
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Exactly what I did with playthrough 1. To me, the best way to develop. As a player, makes sense and much appreciated.
Problem I have with all the games I play nowadays (KCD, RDR2, FO4) is they suffer from the same problem: You can disregard the urgency and momentum of history to go off and do your own thing. There are little to no opportunity costs. If weâre candid about realism, this isnât it.
At least in HC, by delaying the MQ whilst I explore and play Cuman-bandit executioner, i should suffer an opportunity cost. For instance, nest or baptism becomes more difficult. Etc
I agree with the overall structure of the Prologue and acknowledge that, (a) it was necessary to do something of this sort to âsetupâ the actual beginning of the game in a way that properly conveyed the flavor they sought; (b) Once one has finished the prologue (and in my case calmed down from the rage it induced the first time), it IS effective in this narrative objective; © In fact, it strikes a reasonable balance between freedom to play and constrained action during crux periods, as well as providing the player with a very engrossing âTutorialâ of sorts.
For my tastes, they could have done it differently, and in such a way that it didnât offend my gamer sensibilities, i.e., my deeply-rooted loathing of scripted action sequences where I am given a SMALL measure of control over events and expected to keep my inputs to within a very narrow and well-timed structure.
Alternatively, and simpler: they could have kept the prologue EXACTLY how it is, except to do one thing (a thing which I suspect they falsely feel would undermine their overarching goal to strive for ârealismâ): alert the player when scripted action sequences start, pause the game and fill them in more fully about what will be necessary to complete the action sequence effectively.
When you give me, and end-user, control over an in-game entity and allow me to develop mastery of that dynamic, and then, at a moment of stress, take it away in order to advance your narrative, you have just insulted me deeply and you should step back and reconsider if you might not also be insulting many other end-users.
And a word about ârealism.â I applaud, VIGOROUSLY APPLAUD!, Warhorseâs conviction to strive for it. However, a couple of points: 1. In any game that is not literally a mathematical simulation, realism is only good in moderation. Another way to say that: if you wish to make a commercial software application which will be sold as a âGameâ and to have end-users enjoy it and love it and buy it, then one must always keep in mind the basic premise that 'Realism is best done in moderation." The exact degree which represents âmoderationâ can vary tremendously and there is no single way to determine it. It is an emergent, context-dependent value which can only be ascertained from a backed off âable to see the forestâ view.
Overall, KCD does a fine job with this. The game is very playable, and nonetheless manages to convey much, perhaps all of importance, that relates to the realities of life in the time period and the challenges a wayward adventurer like Henry would face. Indeed, the level of mastery they have shown in appreciating that ârealism is best done in moderationâ is pretty amazing for a first time studio.
With that said, there are a few areas where they either overlooked this balance between ârealismâ and gameplay, or (iMHO) made an error which undermined gameplay for the sake of realism.
I. First Person only camera
II. Excessive use of locked in animations (most notably in the alchemy bench, but others as well)
III. (and this one is more questionable, as it might have simply been a manifestation of the enormous amount of work that had to be done, or just an oversight) Too Much Collision on many environmental models, and/or not enough distinction between collidable and cosmetic models. The most poignant example of this are foliage, but some others too.
Well written and thought out. I agree with you. I will state that an RPG is probably the hardest game genre to develop for the very reason of ârealismâ. It is much easier to create an game with magic and super natural powers than to have a game developed that depicts human frailties. KCD is commended on their work and the final product. Is it perfect? No, but it is a darn god game. Combining fun with gameplay. Have a great day.
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understand but necessarily donât agree. there was a confluence of events necessary to maintain the integrity of the KCD narrative. that gets blown away if the user has mastery over actions to be taken. in fact, mastery is exactly what KCD doesnât what the player to have at that watershed moment.
even with the heavy funneling as i call it, thereâs a lot that you can do that WH never intended. punch cattle and you can leave Skalitz with a lot of strength and some martial skills. sneak behind the villagers who walk along the palisade and gain stealth. pick flowers and develop herbalism. choke out the Skalitz guards and develop skill and a sizable amount of middling loot. pick a weapon you looted, target the sheep and gain combat skill. harvest, cook and sell for decent coin. get the lockpick from Fritz, sneak about and improve your lockpicking long before your chat with Miller Peshek, avoid Martin and you can use the grindstone to develop repair.
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Taking away the end-users agency, or rather temporarily reducing it to a minimum, is perfectly fine. Just donât try to pretend you didnât do it, and if you do it, TELL the user either well-before or immediately before and/or during.
Had I understood that something like that chase scene or the beat down by the bandit lord or the dream sequence WAS coming and that the designer acknowledged they were going to âsubjectâ the end-user to it, I would have had no problem whatsoever with it.
Also, just so Iâm clear: despite having a very strong negative reaction the first time I played through that bit, in my hard-core replay I have taken a lot more exploratory liberties doing things like you suggest (punching cows, picking ALL the flowers, etc.) and the scripted parts were little more than a âhold down the W key and hit fast forwardâ annoyance.
The game is a masterpiece, which I donât take to mean âPerfect,â but rather achieving its goals to an extraordinary degree and advancing its art in ways which one could not have guessed. Iâm just trying to provide some âusefulâ feedback to these geniuses about how they could make the next one âeven better.â I think it must be pretty clear that I am not alone, so WH just needs to decide how important addressing these kinds of issues is to them.
When you take a studio like say Rockstar, and observe how their games have evolved: more and more funneling, less and less actual gameplay, i.e., meaningful and plentiful consequential choices and consequences. A game is NOT a movie, but Rockstar certainly seems to think that they can make their projects increasingly more like movies, and while I appreciate the aesthetic of incredibly meticulous animations and the workmanship and artistry of copious voiced dialogue interactions, when these âfrescoesâ (to use that metaphor) which are there to âdress upâ the edifice become so full of importance that the edifice itself is built increasingly âaroundâ them, that to me is a bad thing for the computer gaming art.
Of course the ideal is to get the best of both worlds: almost total freedom, along with exquisite animations, voiced characters, and pre-prepared action sequences galore, but of course that is a matter of tradeoffs.
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interesting notion. how would you like to see such implemented?
get the idea up to a point. for a narrative to have temporal coherence there has to be some limit.
yes, the MQs of RDR2 are almost pure funneling. i really donât like the lack of latitude in executing the tasks at hand. the options in performing a task are way too limited. why the heck did i fail the epilogue task because i got a little crazy when i tried to run around all the cattle fencing? why is the choice just who stealth kills this next guard (eg Charles or Arthur in Fort Wallace mission) ?
that said, RDR2 actually has a story with some coherence. imo, itâs pretty tight as computer game narratives go. KCD lacks that but has more latitude. then again KCD as a game doesnât often recognize your idiosyncratic approach and sometimes bugs out.
no doubt thereâs a balance. not sure any game has nailed it.
Easiest way the Prologue could have avoided âoffendingâ Open-world purists like myself: provide periodic tool-tips with game pause (and allow the user to turn them off if they like). as one example (and this is a bit of a spoiler) so lets see if those tags work . . .
[spoiler]To âget the mostâ out of the Skalitz opportunities, one might want to go try to fight Kunesh at least once by oneself, and only THEN enter the courtyard to the tavern because the scene where you can ask your friends to help you beat him up only occurs then (it seems). A tool-tip here could have popped up similar to the alert icon that tells the player they are trespassing, basically saying âDuring some quests or activities in the game, events may begin which you cannot opt out of. Are you sure you want to go and talk to your friends now?â[/spoiler]
For scripted action sequences like the chase, the bandit âfightâ and the dream-scene âfightâ with the cumans: if the user has not turned off âPrologue/Tutorial Tool-Tipsâ then, whenever one of these cut-scenes start, put an icon or a tool-tip on the screen something like âPress F to Auto-Play Cut-Scene.â
During the âRescueâ theresa scene my first reaction was to sneak off to the side and attempt to come at them from a different angle: didnât work, detected and then when I tried to run ran into an invisible wall."
They seem to have a different philosophy or sensibility than I do when it comes to these things and feel that âtaking awayâ or otherwise âconstrainingâ user agency in ways which breach the rules which have already been established is apparently âjust fine.â I disagree with that. If you have a good reason to take away user agency (or to temporarily change it) for the sake of advancing a narrative then you owe it to the end-user to let them know in some way, and ideally give them the option to disable it.
I tell you, if there was a setting to just disable the alchemy bench animations altogether, I think Iâd click it. Sure it would be flat and less immersive, but how immersive is it to watch your character ponderously reach for the water jug for the 300th time? Or worse, to watch your camera sway back to the center of the alchemy bench after you clicked âauto-brewâ for the 75th time? I literally figured out how I could do auto-brewing with my eyes closed because watching that animation sway back and forth over and over was making me nauseous.
I havenât played a lot of rockstar games. I think I owned something like GTA 2 at one point but found it fairly difficult to control and superficial and never got into it. I got into GTA 5 and loved it. Another masterpiece. But it could have been so much better if they had focused more on open-world and freedom and less on cut-scenes and âFunneling.â That was frankly why I didnât buy RDR2. No matter how beautiful the game looked, I suspected that it would be what it seems to have turned out to be: annoying superficial in some of the most interesting ârealism survival open worldâ elements. For example, angry Joe commented on how so many of the âmissionsâ require the player to do an exact set of steps to finish, and do not allow any kind of creativity or improvisation. He also noted how, the âcampâ system in the game, which seems superficially to be super cool is ultimately meaningless. It has no real consequences how one treats the gang, and the extent to which one maintains the camp apparently.
Itâs ezpz, I just gallop till I hit the left of the Brook weave in and out of some brush and then jump the Brook. After doing this the cumans usually get very confused and never get on course again and itâs a smooth ride to Talmberg. In earlier patches Iâve killed the cumans at the bridge glitching them out and starting the game with cuman captains gear, though itâs kinda heavy. Just use your head and be creative, this game is so easy to abuse to the point I have to restrain myself.
@Moopy any game is âeasy to abuseâ if the user has (a) played it at least once already, or else availed themselves of meta-game info; (b) is striving more for a min-max play style rather than an immersive RPG-play style.
While I donât wish to be confrontational, I find responses like yours to be dismissive and perhaps confused about what the real underlying problem is.
As far as I can tell, the OP (and this applies to my critiques of this dynamic in the game) was responding from the standpoint of an earnest, willingly beguiled first-time ânaiveâ user. Not responding as you have, from the standpoint of an armchair âGot Gud Brahâ been there done that gamer. Now maybe you didnât really mean to come across that way, but you did.
Both we gamers and developers need to realize: there are various âmodesâ of interaction which a user might be in. The âmin-maxâ or âIâm gonna git gudâ mode are perfectly legit. I donât mean to dismiss that viewpoint. It can be a lot of fun, but here is the caveat to that: it is NOT fun to do it on a first play through of any game really, or at least not one like this one.
The problems that exist with the âFunnelingâ as @frelmedieval put it are primarily problems for those users who are trying get the most out of their very first time play of the game and following the earnest, willingly beguiled first-time ânaiveâ user.
Ok, well the first time I played this game I had no issues escaping the Cumans even taking the road, common sense told me not to run in a straight line. This is a large game and everyone always has an opinion on how they want things changed and little things like that are not what the devs are focusing on. Your entire village was slaughtered and you are fleeing for your life, I never saw this part of the game to be a problem. If a person canât get passed the cumans in the beginning then they are playing the wrong game. You sound like someone who takes things way to seriously.
It is a wonderful game that harmed itself with its funneled opening scenes. I take that seriously from the standpoint that Iâd like to see this studio (a) not make that same mistake again; and (b) become a powerhouse delivering all the goodness that is 97.5% of the rest of the game in many future expansions/titles to come.
The fact that you or anyone else âhad no problemâ with finishing the beginning is not the point.
Iâve seen many commentators complain about this very issue, so donât try to pass it off as only me or OP or even necessarily a âminorityâ of users. Perhaps it is a minority of users and WH can disregard us and go down the Rockstar evolutionary path. But if they are gonna do that, they should have the market research data to convince them it isnât going to hurt their bottom line.
Well thatâs your opinion, I personally as well as others think itâs fine the way it is.
Agree to disagree, but we all have our favorite games and game genre. Warhorse with KCD (IMHO) have provided a game that is challenging, entertaining and fun. The historical setting and the theme are a refreshing departure from those games with magic and dragons. (Yes. dragons are cool, but there are so many games that have dragons and monsters already out there). Is the game perfect? No. Does it have :bug" and âglitchesâ? Yes. For me neither those âbugsâ or âglitchesâ are game breakers or detract from my enjoying the game. So to my fellow gamers I say enjoy the game for what it offers and if you canât there are plenty of other games to choose from. Cheers!
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3rd try I figured out that if you weave slightly from the left to the right of the path as you are galloping, they miss you with their arrows.
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disable the saddle to get more speed
Those opening scenes added a huge amount of context about your character, your world, and the people around you. It depends on what you want. I slow play all RPGs so I enjoyed them. If you want to get straight to action you can. Quickly do the quests (they are not hard) and skip any cut scenes.