Before I begin, this is not a hit piece on lockpicking, if you read (or watch) through you’ll understand that. After a few more hours of play I know am at grips with the mechanic, I wouldn’t say I’ve ‘mastered’ it but it’s not a struggle. With that out of the way…
So I’ve been kind of addicted to Kingdom Come Deliverance this week, and what I’ve found is that sure its buggy, it rough around the edges but at the same time there are moments where it’s beautiful, where it just…works. But there is one moment where I believe Kingdom Come Deliverance doesn’t work…and thats when you’re lock picking.
You see Kingdom Come Deliverance has a lock picking problem, and here’s why.
It was very early on in the game, I was playing The Good Thief quest line. The premise is that you’ve just survived the attack at Skalitz, you’re friend has managed to get your battered and bruised body to Rattay where you’re recovering at Mill ran by an old, grumpy and morally shifty miller. In order to repay the miller for his hospitality you offer to help him with a job, the job is stealing a ring from a corpse.
Now, on the run-up to the release of Kingdom Come Deliverance there was impetus put on the fact that most quests could be approached from a number of different directions, that they could be completed in more than one way and weren’t just linear experiences. This is important, and we’ll come back to this later.
So I run up to Gallow’s Hill, shovel in hand, I find the grave, I dig up the body….no ring. So I run back down the hill, I talk to the miller and he tells me that the Executioner likely took it off the body and is keeping it for himself. Sneaky bastard, you may think, and you would be right!
The miller then asks if you know how to lock pick, seeing as you’ll be needing to lock pick your way through some chests. Well, being the fresh-faced Henry that I am I said….no. Not to worry, the miller takes you round the back of the mill, plonks you in front of a chest with Easy difficulty, gives you 10 lock picks and tells you to have at it.
Which I did.
And I cocked it up…every….single…time.
You see when we play through other RPG’s that have lock picking mechanics involved there are usually a few factors that are common and that are also key to enabling players to understand and master this mechanic in their game. These factors are availability of the lock picking tool and a gradual but distinct difficulty curve in the lock pick levels.
If we look at Skyrim or Fallout Bethesda the mechanics are very simple, you move one thumbstick or cursor for the first lock pick which will then stay stationary as you move the other with varying degrees of severity so that the lock pick doesn’t break. It’s a simple mechanic but it’s effective and no matter what platform you’re playing on, chances are your experience and ability to complete lock picking will be the same.
Kingdom Come Deliverance isn’t like that. In Kingdom Come Deliverance your task is to get the cursor - the little circle in the middle - to hover over the right spot, and then when you’ve found the right spot to rotate the lock around, moving the cursor to keep it in place relative to the rest of the mechanism… If you stop moving the lock, the lock pick breaks. If the lock pick goes to far away from the sweet spot it breaks, then sometimes the sweet spot lock pick shakes violently which then freaks you as the player the heck out as you think the lock pick has become possessed by the devil due to your villainous actions, you freak out and then the lock pick breaks. Oh and by the way, when the lock pick breaks, its loud, so anyone near you will hear it, meaning they’ll come investigating so all you hear over the sound of your resounding failure is an innocent villager shouting their disgust that you’re pilfering their worldly possessions, followed by the clanking sound of the village guard.
But back to the back of the millers place, I’m standing there, I’ve just broken all of the lock picks and I look at the miller waiting for him to say something…but he doesn’t. I’m waiting for him to give me more lock picks….but he doesn’t. I’m waiting for the game to say that I failed to complete the optional section of unlocking this test chest…but it doesn’t. Instead the miller just stands there looking at the chest, I’m standing there looking at the miller, then I start looking at the chest and then it hit me….
The developers didn’t plan for anyone to be this shit.
So I reloaded my save, I ran out to the miller, he told me about a ring, I ran up the hill, I dug up a body, I came back down and told the miller, he asked if I knew how to lock pick….I clearly didn’t. I knew that lock picking was going to be a part of this quest and I only had one lock pick on me, it was all I could afford up to this point. I knew the miller would give me 10 more but then I’d only end up wasting them all failing on the test chest.
It’s fine I thought. I’ll talk my way out of it.
I told him I knew how to lock pick, I ran up to the executioners house and I started talking to him, I started to realise that there could be a way for me to talk the executioner into giving me the ring. I wouldn’t have to lock pick anything, I wouldn’t have to steal anything, my honour would be intact. The executioner tells me that he has the ring, that it’s a useless bauble, I have 14 Groschen on me, surely thats enough for a useless bauble I thought.
So, the executioner asks me if I want to buy it.
OF COURSE I WANT TO BUY IT.
But this is what Henry said…there was no dialogue option, no pause, just refusal……why? Why would he turn down that opportunity. Whats worse? This then locks out the possibility to talk to the executioner which means you can’t talk to him again…ever.
Meaning you’re forced to lock pick, which would be fine for some players….but not for me…because remember….I’m shit at lock picking.
And so I tried and failed, I reloaded, I thought it was a glitch in conversation with the executioner, after all why would they include the option to ask him that if I wasn’t allowed to buy it….right?
But all I got was the same outcome. And this really pissed me off. It pissed me off because I was shit at it and it pissed me off because the game was punishing me because of that. It pissed me off because I’d been backed into a corner by the game.
And here’s how.
First of all, why couldn’t I buy the ring from the executioner? It’s because this quest opens up a whole thieves guild type quest line you might say, but surely using your charisma is all part of the arsenal of a master thief? If Kingdom Come Deliverance encourages players to find more than one way to complete a quest, then why is it very clearly stopping me from completing it in this way?
Secondly, remember what I was saying earlier, about lock picking in Bethesda games? There were two factors that made the mechanic accessible to players of all skill levels, these factors are availability of the lock picking tool and a gradual but distinct difficulty curve in the lock pick levels. Lockpicks in Kingdom Come Deliverance cost 18 Groschen which may not sound like a lot, but early game, it’s not to be scoffed at. Compare this to the bobby pin or lock pick in Fallout and Skyrim…they cost one coin, or one bottle cap. And yes, its a different universe, its a different setting but you can also very easily find lock picks ambiently in Bethesda games, in Kingdom Come Deliverance? Not so much.
When you’re learning how to lock pick in Kingdom Come Deliverance, you need a lot of lock picks, you need to try and fail and try again, but when the lock picks themselves are so expensive, when they aren’t readily accessible to players it’s harder for them to get to grips with mechanic right at the start of the game without having to keep reloading their save.
And finally, there’s a steep and inconsistent difficulty curve in learning how this mechanic works. After I failed the first couple of times I went to YouTube, to the internet at large to find tutorials, guides any sort of advice at all. What I found coming up again and again in all of these articles and videos were statements like this: it’s a lot easier on keyboard and mouse, if you’re playing on console it’s a lot harder to control, if you’re on PC you’ve got to change your DPI.
It just seemed like players were having to change the way they play or alter their settings simply to pick locks in the game. I couldn’t help but wonder why they should have to do that in the first place?
And so there I was, stuck in the millers house in Rattay wondering how in the hell I was going to get this bloody ring out of a locked chest.
Needless to say, I did it. It took a while, and a lot of practice and save reloading but I got the hang of lock picking, I aced the quest and unlocked all the chests first try, got the ring and off I went continuing my adventure through the Bohemian countryside.
I want to finish off this video by saying, I don’t hate Kingdom Come Deliverance, I’m actually really enjoying the game and will likely go back to playing more after I get this edited. What Im trying to say here is that sometimes it can feel like developers don’t really understand how shit some of us can be at their game.
