Merging my original post by OP’s request :
In addition of my bug report here, I thought about some improvements (most of them had certainly been discussed over, and maybe in development/fixing right now ^^).
Visual improvements (suggestions)
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Eyes and gaze : Eyes should look very shiny. I know there was other games that got issues with that, lighting not precise enough to finely render those details, but in any case, eyeballs/cornea are reflecting light, even the slightest one in the dark night ; any distant light (torch, moon, water reflection) will reflect on cornea.
As such, human eyes are constantly jittering around, even when staring at something/one : it will massively improve immersive factor to introduce some randome jittering of eyes, characters gaze switching slightly to different parts (eyes, chin, shoulders…) when talking to Henry.
For a simple improvement, you could get eyelids to blink more naturally… -
Head moves : I noticed sitting people never turn their head to talk to Henry : some animation is missing, or it’s an artificial limitation of neck twisting to avoid ugly deformation (managed to see one in the prologue cutscene on Henry’s Neck) ? Either case, quality will vastly increase allowing NPC to naturally look at Henry (avoid the extreme “all town is constantly gazing on you” effect
). -
NPC/animals animations/reactions : There could be some more walking/bumping/ranting animations added to get more “lifelike” cities.
Wilderness could use some improvement as well with fleeing/jumping animations (steep angles and quick direction changes without bumping into each other, pack behavior with more synchronized fleet vectors, etc.).
EDIT : Hunted animals needs to get some “heard something and freeze all ears out” animations, as well as “wounded and trying to escape” ones, for instance a deer should try to run away when got hit in the leg by one arrow, with limp(ing?) behavior (before falling from exhaustion ?). Game animals should flee farther from trouble, especially deers (rabbits too but they already are hard to hit so… idk). Wild animals are very easy frightened by any disturbance in general, and to be able to hunt them efficiently, Henry should have some furtivity levels, wears near from 0 noise gear, in addition with discrete colors, to no cause them to see him and instantly flee from dozen meters away.
Chikens need to flee too, you almost could invert sheep/chicken behaviors :p. -
Blood/mud/weather : the game immersion will be massively improved with better handling of blood (on corpses mainly, including Henry’s parents at the beginning, but on each slain bandit as well). Looks like there is no real dynamic decals for blood/mud ; all the wear and tears of gear/clothing seems to be static and hard-coded on textures ; lighter in calculations, not great for immersion, especially with such a dense and dramatic atmosphere…
Weather (rain mainly) effects on faces and clothes could also use some refinement ; the rather simple shader is not very convincing, right at the start when awoken by Sir Robard on the walkway, no one got their hair wet, and rainy shaders on clothing is not very convincing.
The best could be to add nVidia Hairworks like The Witcher 3 did great, but it’s a big thing IMO, in development terms. Nonethelesse we will be very happy to see it ingame !
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Back gear spacing : I saw shields and other gear in the back of characters being overly spaced out, to accomodate wearing quiver, bow and halberds ; infortunately it’s not very good looking when only the shield is worn, and could use two “levels” of spacing for shields, one near the body when shield only, the other as now.
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Covering hood on/off for Henry : I saw last time bandits with black and white hood, with hood over the head ; apparently Henry is never wearing the hood like this, but let it down over his shoulders. I wish to be able to set the hood position on/off (button in the inventory maybe ?), to get another full-head covering piece of gear. Also, it could slightly improve Visibility (easier to hide our face), in exchange for the same amount lost to Conspicuousness (hidden face is not often friendly to others), and it looks cooler, especially when hunting
).
Gameplay Improvements (suggestions)
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Lockpicking : fine, hard at first but doable after some use, and mouse sensivity reduction. However, you should include a setting to automatically reduce mouse sensivity when lockpicking (we could set this in game settings maybe). It could use some “sectoring marks” to help a bit (I installed a mod to to that, and it works fine so far). I saw you planned to patch this mechanics, so no further comment here (1.2.2).
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Better noise/sight feedback : The game is somehow missing some feedback on generated noise, especially in forest ; A bandit noticed noise of my Henry sneaking (crouching and slowly moving) behind him, half-naked (around 20-30 noise), from 30 meters away, and bushes/vegetation should had given me clues about the noise I was making (“frush frush” or something similar :p)…
In addition, (visual improvement) we could use some “peeking behind” animations for sitting/standing/leaning NPCs. It’s great to hear them shouting “hey, who is there ?”, but feels somehow unnatural without adequate “peeking” animations. Hopefuly it will come later… -
NPCs Perception modifiers : (Note : it could already be in the game, so I’m speculating here). Humans could get some maluses from getting their eyes/ears partially covered ; all ear-covering gear should reduce their noise perception, same for obscuring helmets that impede sight with “visibility” rating (reduce their FOV maybe, dunno how it’s calculated ingame).
Wild Animals should react more from bright colored clothes (red, blue, yellow), and less from natural colors (brown, green, black at night).
This could translate into bonuses for Henry in those stats, regarding sneaking from living entities. It should be far easier to sneak around a fully plate-armoured knight (wich is noisy himself btw), than from a simple clothed peasant. -
Better horse movement/handling : Our valiant mount should be able to climb/step down steep hills (obviously not very willingly), nonetheless without to much struggle like now, at least a bit better than Henry is able to.
Also, it shall be great to be able to accompany our Horse on foot, holding it by its reins, while traveling inside town before parking it at the nearest stable. And it will be great to see other NPC doing so (nobles and guard obviously, but why not a rich merchant either ?). -
Larger/higher interaction hitboxes : When coming to gathering herbs, there is often the case of having to croush and/or aiming to the roots to pick specific herbs, wich is not very convenient. Those things being not especially fun to gather, they could use a bit bigger hitboxes to improve ergonomics.
The same for talking to people or grad food across a table/bench, interaction keys didnt always show as they should unless jumping on table (for instance, as soon the game start, Henry couldnt reach all apples on the table without jumping over it - mud everywhere, boo ! - ). Interaction range appears to be connected to Henry’s arm length, but he should be able to lean a bit to reach further ^^.
Same for other collectible things (items on the floor like arrows are sometimes painful to take back).
So far it’s a big wall of text (sorry for that), full of mistakes (I’m French :p), congrats to all readers, and keeps the good job WHS, I love the dedication and result of your work !