New interview with Daniel Vávra

Gameplay
#41

Freix, I grew up in a red neck small town… where, by and large, jokes about race WERE racist, mean spirited and … not even very funny actually. That was more the sort of thing I was talking about. Note I praised Cleese for making fun of Germans in the sketch TheDivineInfidel posted… I also consider ‘Blazing Saddles’ to be brilliant comedy for that matter :wink:

And my twisted person killing kids example was who I perceive the wannabe censors to be ‘worried’ about. Someone that plays the game to live out some kind of sick murder fantasy, not meaning to say that is the only way it can happen. Just giving an example… and if someone wants to do that in game… let them I say.

Again to re-iterate, I just want realism and realistic consequences. Drag a small village into a war and when they let loose the flaming arrows on that little village, some kids are going to die. Adults are going to die. Some people will lose everything they have, some kids will be orphaned etc. I would like a game where rallying a village to a ‘cause’ can have consequences like that. And knowing those could be the consequences might impact what a player does in the game. When you remove children, or make children that can not die… it softens the blow of war I think.

I even had an idea for a more noble compromise; allow children to be able to die in the game… but why don’t Warhorse and us backers find and support a charity that helps children that are the victims of the various wars and conflicts being waged right now? Harm the fake kids, help the real ones. That way, when the PC crowd gets their hackles up, we’d be able to take the high ground and say 'well, what have you don’t to help the kids in Syria… or Afghanistan… or Ukraine… or… ’ The answer most often will be, they have done nothing but bitch and moan at being offended and probably never made an actual difference in the world. So while they get upset over the actions of a virtual war in a game… we can act on the actions of real war and help real children.

Just a thought I had.

I’d be willing to kick some cash in for something like that. Betting there is a worthwhile charity for exactly that.

#42

Then I agree with you about the jokes. If a “joke” is mean spirited or is meant to directly hurt someone, then I wouldn’t even call it a joke, but rather being a dickhead.

And that idea about the charity is good, it might be a good PR and defense aginst PC crowd, altough they would probably call it “weaponizing” charity for political goals, as they did recently when people from certain internet consumer revolt, which is also deeply connected with fight against PC, donated to various charities.

Although I would like to see killable children, I’m almost sure that this won’t happen and I really can’t blame Warhorse. The risk of possible complications with distribution in various countries and possible bad press is IMO too high for an indie studio making its first game and I really don’t expect Warhorse to willingly undergo such risk. So my hope is that they will include at least immortal children and maybe patch to make them mortal, or that a mod will solve it.

1 Like
#43

I mean they even started pushing diversity into this game… It’s more as a joke for us normal people, but white guilt of american young people and not accepting parts of history for what they are, is absolutely a thing out there.
Killing kids? Not gonna happen. Journalists won’t be able to take it, interest groups won’t either, campaigns for banning the game, because you can kill kids… You can see a special videos that are showing just the moment you put a sword into kids head and it being described as “medievil kids killing simulator”.
And also other thing: Even people that love the game and have youtube accounts (everyone) will want to get views by showing killing kids, social media, ego driven view whores… It would be horrible presentation for the game. Id rather have cool siege scenes, trailers, interesting quests filling top rankings for Kingdome Come on the Youtube than controversy of killing kids.

Can’t kill them, but they are still there solution… The kids are different from adults (can’t kill them) and they have very different activities than adults. Kids are just so much more work. Warhorses approach to AI is very different than the ones for other games and i rather they make the world living and reacting to everything possible than putting another complex variable in it.

I think they can have younger people… 16+? Looking quite young, but an adult for those times. The game shouldn’t be just people around 30-40 age range. I don’t think kids are really needed when you have variaty in game characters (16-50? age range - which is something we haven’t seen yet from warhorse presentations, maybe some inexperienced “kid” fighting to defend his village or some goofy idiot that playes with bow and kills someone by accident and is to be hanged… i kind of expect that and if this variaty is in the game, nobody will really miss the real younger kids.

#44

very good.

i think maybe he means thistles hard to find, so he’s going to add the model

as for children thing…one of the things he should disregard all moral crusaders or armchair experts on internet and do what he feels is best for immersion.

i hope there is a patch for children. don’t matter if they aren’t interactive, but they should be around for living breathing world.

lol @ dragging samurai through mud.

#45

Really bummed out about the probable lack of children. I’d far rather have immortal kids if other solutions are too complicated; at least that way the game would be realistic for those of us who don’t go around randomly slaughtering everyone.

3 Likes
#46

Usually a play as knight or archer, not as thief, for example. But I wish I could play thief. With chilldren same theme. In Fallout i never killed children. There was no sense & i didn’t want perk childkiller or something like this. All a matter of principle.

#47

Good news you can play as a thief if you want. You could even be a knight/thief person.

#48

Yeah i know, especially that last Thief™ disappointed me.

#49

Well people will probably look differently at you if you killed children, or anyone in the village? I dont think you can just come into the city, kill half of the people living there and face no consequences.

#50

The last Thief, the reboot or whatever you want to call it… you know the original developers had nothing to do with it? It was taken from Looking Glass who did the initial, good, (great for their time) games and given to another studio. The first was developed by Looking Glass and published by Eidos. The ‘reboot’ was developed by Eidos Montreal and published by Square Enix.

I suspect this had much to do with disappointment from fans of the original.

If you happen to be interested in what the old Looking Glass people are up to these days… Looking Glass is dead, but they’ve kind of reformed under Paul Neurath (LG’s founder) are called ‘Other Side’ now, and are returning to their roots; an Ultima Underworld (minus the Ultima). Underworld Ascendant. They are on kickstarter now and closing on their goal.

8 days and 57K to go. Might be worth checking out if you were a fan of their earlier work…

(I hate spamming other project, and realize this is a bit off topic in a reply to Grubocap, but… considering it was a post from Star Citizen that led me here all those months ago… and I honestly do think Thief/Underworld/Looking Glass fans might appreciate the head’s up if they didn’t know about it yet)

#51

Also propose, if necessary solve it.
@Freix say:
Create killable children, but make them immortal in the official version and then only release a patch that would make them killable again.

A medieval world without children is unimaginable. Families often had more than 10 children - 5 of them, incidentally died of itself, before they were 15 years of age. Unassisted or Henry’s kinky investments - simply by pestilence, famine, wild animals or raids by neighbors. The median age was just how it is.

One must not emphasize that children are mortal. They are there, child labor was normal, they are a natural part of medieval society. Point. Open World,…open World… :wink:

1 Like
#52

So I’m still curious, does everyone agree with me about the killable children for realism sakes, immortal children first and a patch to make them killable, immortal children which, like Skyrim, we’d have to mod ourselves to kill (who else hated Bethesda for making Braith?) or are we all agreeing for no children due to the ‘‘morally wrong’’ stupidity of a small group of idiots in straight jackets?

Cause I’m all for the killable kids or patch to make them killable. It’s moronic to put kids into a ‘‘realistic historical’’ game but only they are immortal. If that’s the case Warhorse might as well make EVERYTHING, animals, adults, kids, even the castles and buildings untouchable. If one thing is immortal, all things should be immortal.

And again, I don’t kill children in games. However, why call a game ‘‘realistic’’ if you make the children immortal?

1 Like
#53

you’re not helping our case with that type of argument. it’s never about killing everything vs killing nothing. it’s a false dilemma.

#54

Why not make killable children a setting? It would not be the first time a game would put a setting on potentially offensive content. For instance, CoD4 had a setting specifically for the mission you shot up an airport as a terrorist. The same method could be applied here.

Another option would be to have immortal children assigned to one or two parent NPC’s. If both parents die, the child runs off and despawns somewhere. It’s still unrealistic, but it circumvents the problem with orphan towns.

Yet another option would be to not have children in the game, but make it really easy for modders to add it in. This might be undesirable, though, as there would have to be assets and other work needed to implement children which technically wouldn’t be present in the base game.

In the absence of these possible solutions, I would much rather have killable children than no children or immortal children. The reason is simply realism. In a game that’s trying to be as realistic as possible, having immortal children is simply fantasy.

2 Likes
#55

Because it could get banned in some countries and people are extra sensitive about children getting killed in video games.

?? Why is that when someone could easily make a mod that adds kill able children. No children at all would make the game feel weird.

That seems like a good solution. The people on pc could have the kill able children mod.

#56

PC could mod yes, but us console users can’t, so the killable children setting would be a great idea. Warhorse is trying to be fair in this kind of decision, but if the children are immortal and there is no patch, it’ll be what Gamestop horribly remarked as, ‘‘the next Skyrim.’’ Skyrim was good, but they played inside the safe zone with kids being (yet again) immortal, and put in a kid we would’ve all loved to kill (Braith) If Warhorse decides to listen to all our ideas/arguments with adding children, they’d be safer with immortal children first then giving us a patch the second day of its release so the children can be killed. That or as Scipi said, add an option to make them immortal or not. Just like the 3rd person camera argument. Give us the option and rise above the cliche RPG genre of immortal children.

#57

Yeah but most people dont want pc being held back by console which usually is what happens. Why should there be no children just because console players cant kill them? Its out of our control that consoles dont have mods.

They would get way too much back lash. It could get the game banned in several countries like Australia, Germany and even the U.S.

#58

I think the biggest point your all missing is the fact that Children were scrapped because it would take to much time to create the AI for them, and not just orphaned children.

they would have to go into a whole other branch of medieval life. That’s allot of new daily routines that would be unique to that NPC class, its just allot of work that they don’t have the time for.

4 Likes
#59

When you put it that way McWonderBeast, that makes sense. They themselves (the children) don’t work (young children, mind you), so their AI would be harder to program since they just run around and play. Which, mind you, would be hilarious in the middle of a battle and the village is being burnt down these random ass kids are running around on fire playing tag.

#60

Actually they do work and play which increases the difficulty of scripting them. This is the medieval ages when children were commonly conceived with the intention of having another set of hands to work.

They would have to decide whether or not they want one age group of children or if they would want to cover the full spectrum i.e. infant, toddler, child, pre-teen, Teen. increasing the work load with each decision, or leaving something out which upsets the community.

I want kids but I would rather not have them if they can’t be up to the quality that the other villagers have been given either way we won’t have proper immersion until VR is a more advanced technology.

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