Hey gang,

With having a brand new gaming PC, I've been looking into big ass PC games to test out my new computer. I've had my eye on this game for a while based on press coverage, but I realised this game is out in the next 2 weeks, and I haven't seen ANY ingame footage of it.

Does anyone know what it's going to be like, or anything we could compare it to? I'm thinking it's like a cross between Mount and Blade and Skyrim?

Anyone have any idea/details?

It is all across youtube mate, I just came here after watching this video.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XgNSeiK5hEQ

Looks kind of unique for consoles, which is where my interest lies. It may not be great, but it looks worth spending time with.

@sombre: Looking at the old posts here, it looks like a Game of Thrones-ish medieval, low fantasy story with moral decisions and realistic, yeah, Mount and Blade combat. Where my worry kicks in is the "from some of the makers of Mafia 2" part.

Its an open world first person game set in Bohemia (which I believe is modern day Chezch). It features, or claims to feature a more realistic sword fighting system, and as a someone who practices historical sword fighting that was one of the big draw to back this game. It also claims to boast a "living world" that will do its own things and continue on even when the player is not present.

It could be great, but I feel that it is promising allot, and will be janky as a result. I am excited to get my copy when it comes out though.

@sethmode: I believe it's actually "no fantasy" which is the main reason for why I'm interested in it to begin with. And Vavra, who I think is the main Mafia dev involved, also was part of the studio that developed the first Mafia, which has a far better reputation than 2.

I'm very much on the fence about this. I like everything they promise for this game, and while it doesn't look as impressive technically now than it did a couple years ago, it still looks pretty good (at least the environments). It's just that in my mind there is a very big gulf between what they promise for this game and the money they seemingly had to make it.

@hans_maulwurf: oh good to know regarding Mafia 1 vs. 2! And yeah, I should have probably said no fantasy, because it definitely looks more like historical fiction than fantasy.

I wouldn't say my hopes are high, because yeah, there are a lot of promises out there. But it looks neat and I am kind of a sucker for Eurojank games, so I'm sure I'll give it a go.

It looks like a more thoughtful and less fun Skyrim to me. Let's remember that no magic means no Fus-ro-Dah-ing all the food off a table.

@veektarius: there are people that think realism is more fun.

@rk92: There are probably lizards that think so too, but you don't see me listening to them!

I'm all for a grounded medieval setting in a game. Something like this could get pretty grim and brutal though, I expect.

Is mafia 2 considered bad now? I remember people liking it but thinking it was way to empty for an open world game.

That UI looks really bad. Some Oblivion shit going on there.

I used to work for a studio under the same publisher. All I know was that I responded to an email from the publisher asking what box art looked best.

I don't remember what I said.

So, to answer your question, the detail I know is that there will probably be box art.

I apparently backed this on Kickstarter. I have no idea why.

I recently started looking at this game as well. They are billing it as The Witcher meets Skyrim, which if they can pull off would be awesome.

Watching game play though It looks really cool, but there is just something that looks off about it and I think it's the open world. It's big sure, but It looks very sparse, like there is nothing interesting to do in it.

I'll see what reviews have to say, but I will remain cautiously optimistic.

It looks pretty cool. Adult themes, sex & violence - sold.

Hopefully the combat is fun. It's the only thing that looks like it can go either way to me, but I'll settle for an interesting world.

I don't mind an 'empty' open world. Most games just fill it with meaningless nothing anyway.

It's the Witcher 3 but made by a weird racist from the looks of it.

Racist?

@xeirus: From what i gathered, there are no black people in this game.

The dev said that that the game takes place in Bohemia, and that it was a very white place in the medieval times.

People point out that there were Moors in europe during those times.

The dev says that those were in Southern europe, mostly Spain, but not in Bohemia at the time.

Maybe impartialgecko has more reasons to call him a racist, but this is what i found so far that might've prompted that response.

fair to say, the guy seems to be quite passive-agressive on Twitter. 'Are people in other continents and of other cultures so incompetent that they need me to produce their culture?'

@onemanarmyy: pretty much yeah. he's not being explicit but the vast majority of interviews (esp with breitbart, that famously not racist publication) he throws out a lot of dogwhistles for white supremacists i.e. small number of liberal elites bringing politics into games, being proud of his culture etc etc.

There was a way for him to make his arguments that would have ensured he didn't come off as weirdly defensive and contemptuous of the points that actual academics have been making about medieval-themed games being a haven for myopic worldviews, but he didn't make them that way.

I can't blame him for being a bit salty when people from the beginning where dog-piling on him for being some kind of racist before and after he gave a reasonable explanation as to why things are they way they are. It's nothing more than another point for not engaging in pointless twitter conversations.

It looks like the scale and style of combat from Mount and Blade attached to a historical RPG. Josh Sawyer of Obsidian is a history buff and responsible for some of my favourite RPGs and his excitement for it makes me keen to try it out.

I'm interested to see if they deliver on their combat system. They brought in actual western medieval combat re-constructionists (look up Historical European Martial Arts on Youtube, it's a really interesting scene) to help with motion capture, techniques, etc. I hope they found a good middle ground between actual medieval-style combat simulation and fun gameplay.

This seems to have a lot of interesting ideas but damn, those emotionless faces and the dialog in general seem pretty awful.

I do like the fast travel system and that saving involves drinking alcohol. If I had a PC capable of running this I would check it out. I have a feeling this will be a mess on consoles.

I've never seen a no-name studio put out a full-scale RPG like this and succeed. I'd love to be proven wrong but this just screams of a Spiders game but with even more ambition and even less pedigree.

Would love to be proven wrong.

@impartialgecko:

Good for him for not pandering to the race baiting twitter mob .

Good lord this menu is a work of art.

@impartialgecko: You have a source? I'd like to play this game, but may not if what you're saying is actually true about him being a racist.

@coryukin: Here's a 2015 Kotaku piece about an E3 meeting with the dev in question, and his pro-GamerGate views, with direct quotes.

Thanks for the link! He doesn't come off as someone who is racist or sexist like the vast vast majority of gamergate people, he even said he agrees with Anita Sarkessian on some things. Just someone who is a bit naive about what GamerGate turned into and the kinds of people who hijacked the movement. Instead of realizing that he should have distanced himself from that movement, he became more entrenched on keeping it about what he believed it should be about. He doesn't seem to be someone that fully fits either side of the usual political dichotomy.

@gooddoggy:

“Our game isn’t even out yet, but these people already know that it’s gonna be racist, because we said we will not have people of colour in 15th century Bohemia,” he told me. “It doesn’t matter that we are writing [a] story dealing with very touchy and controversial topics as hatred between Czechs and Germans, about anti-semitism or religious fanaticism. It doesn’t matter, that we are the first game about Czech culture and history. That’s not enough! We need to cover all the problems of all the people in the world in that one game, otherwise we are very bad people. And that is A – impossible, B – Insane, C – bullshit. It took me years of stress, hard work and risks to be able to finally create a game I always wanted to make and I will do it the way I want. If you want something, do it yourself. But it’s not as easy as barking at someone.”

I mean.. it's not like he's wrong in the slightest here.

@coryukin: here's the breitbart article that attempts to launder his position a bit, probably because as a hard rightwing site they want to give oxygen to anyone defending a whitewashed piece of entertainment.

http://www.breitbart.com/big-hollywood/2015/07/28/developer-speaks-out-over-claim-historical-accuracy-pushes-white-supremacy-in-games/

otherwise just check out his twitter. dude is a reactionary and when his game gets the same critical evaluation he'll respond in exactly the same aggressive and defensive way about his whites-only game.

@impartialgecko: eh that sucks as the game looked cool. You can always tell a genuine racist by how defensive they get about it, most people would just say "it wasnt my intent and sorry for the offense you may take but its the story i wanted to tell" and leave it at that.

I don't think this tone works very well for handling remarks about racism or others. Such an aggressive tone is probably meant for "trolls" and people that try to hurt feelings on purpose. But he comes across to me as someone who has to learn how to handle the internet as a representative of a company and a product.

Apart from that I played a demo of it in Gamescom 2017. I hit a few sheeps a couple of times and then suddenly I was attacked by undefeatable guards. I think the combat system was not fun and it might be a game that tries to do too much at the same time. But maybe he pulls it off, but only if he listens to his market. And his market is probably big enough without making connections to the modern era. I wonder if the game can manage to be respectful and enlightened enough to handle the heavy subject matter in an engaging way.

Also there has been a post above from the site breitbart... Giantbomb is a site that is open and fun to all people, that horrendous website is not. Please enjoy it in the bubble of the internet it belongs to, but don't link it to stuff that luckily doesn't need to have anything to do with it, like giantbomb.

@oursin_360: Or maybe he's annoyed at constantly being berated as being a racist because his game set in 15th century Bohemia doesn't have black people in it. I'm sure there were non-white people there, but the vast vast minority. I'm not gonna go bitch about Ghost of Tsushima if there's only Japanese people in it. Nobody deserves an apology from him.

@leeftie: i agree that it's a scum website for white supremacists, which is why him giving an interview to them is more evidence of the veiled toxicity of his politics, in addition to the actual content of the article itself.

@rk92: if you cant deal with criticism then dont sell products to the public, you can't tell anybody else what they find offensive. Raging at it defensively only solidifies the judgement and brings more negative press, even if you disagree and dont understand it being respectful to your potential buyers is the way to go.

@oursin_360: Huge difference between dealing with criticism and dealing with constant hate messages calling you a racist and white supremacist simply for making a piece of entertainment you want to make. Nobody that calls people that cares about having a respectful conversation, their mind is made up already.

@rk92: The first part of your sentence is correct, but he still could have taken the high road with this response. Regardless of what the feedback he's getting looks like. Because he didn't, it certainly looks a certain way, fair or unfair.

Kingdom Come's claims to historical accuracy are one thing, but he was also weirdly enthusiastic about The Witcher 3’s complete lack of ethnic diversity. It’s possible that he’s just an asshole and not actually a racist, but everything I’ve seen of his behaviour makes it seem like he’s much more interested in creating a white fantasy land than a historically accurate period piece, so much so that the latter is really only in service of the former.

I was rather on this developers side, he really doesn't have to justify anything beyond context. But explaining his position through Breitbart, if I understand this right? There are at least some right leaning gaming sites. I read an article by an editor of one (forget the name) in the Federalist. He had some good observations from a right view point and pertaining to the culture war. And it was hard enough for me to read that, since the previous article I read in the Federalist was a denunciation of the 'Middle Class Welfare State' that was sucking monies away through Social Security. And unless I am ignorant, Breitbart has only an interest if views coincide. I do admit, I don't want to read the link. My past views do not coincide.

I'm not putting my money for a white only video game if that is how it is intended. If rather context is what's cited, then my attitude changes. And what the hell, might have been interesting to throw in a couple of Moors. People do travel to distant foreign lands, do they not?

Edit; I should add I watched the trailer and some you tube from a previous thread about this game. What I watched for about an hour looked pretty darn good. It appears to have strong realistic graphics, and well developed menus. The forest the protagonist was doing stealth through seemed very lush and green. The game play, as far as I could tell (archery and sword combat), came off as decent, There were collection of amour sets to be had and that sort of thing. I was particularly struck by the well developed and evil looking bad guy. Hundreds of years later he would be tying women to the railroad tracks, very distinctive. I would have to say it all made a good impression on me.

Ugh, definitely a couple of red flags from some of those developer comments.

As for the the game itself, it looks mad Eurojank, which is to say that it looks both incredibly ambitious and decidedly rough around the edges. Hopefully it'll be more of a Two Worlds 2 and less of a Bound by Flame, but I honestly think it could go either way.

I think you're conflating a few separate things here. First, whether a game set in 15th century Bohemia with only white characters is inherently racist. Probably not! Second, Vavra's stated political beliefs, outside the context of this one game. @coryukin asked for a source about Vavra being a racist, and that Kotaku article was the first thing I found; other people have brought up things he's said on Twitter. So aside from the issue of whether the game's portrayal of an all-white Bohemia is racist or historically accurate, Vavra definitely has expressed some reactionary views. Finally, there's the tone of his reaction to critics. Yeah, it could just be frustration at being labelled a racist when the game isn't actually racist. But when placed in the context of his other stated political beliefs, and the fact that places like Breitbart are turning around to champion him, it starts to look more suspicious.

Whether or not his personal politics are super evident in the game is something we can't really answer till next week. And whether or not his personal politics are important enough to impact one's desire to play it is a personal decision; he's not the only one working on it, by any means. Whether or not you think he's a racist, there's enough evidence that he has views that at least some people would find distasteful.

And Ghosts of Tsushima should, at a bare minimum, have at least some Mongolian characters, and conceivably Chinese and Korean ones as well.

I played the beta a bunch of months back because I backed this on KIckstarter

First off, the sword play is interesting but really fucking frustrating and un-intuitive. It uses a dial system for direction of attacks and combos and while it is pretty satisfying to pull off, it was a huge pain in the ass to get a hang of. I understand they are going for full realism when it comes to sword fights and that's admirable, but it seemed that by going 100mph in the direction of Realismville they forgot to get gas at Funtown.

The game was beautiful and had a unique style going for it by being a period-piece, but man at least in the beta the world itself was boring as fuck. There isn't much to do and the few quests I was able to play were so devoid of fun that it just felt like a slog

The dialogue was painfully bad, the inventory system is confusing, and the animations of the NPC's were extremely wooden.

This is the ARMA of medieval games. I'm sure there's a market for that. But I sure am not a customer.

@snakeeater321: Its not, this game only serves as an introduction into HEMA. I would say that this game has the same level of depth as Die by the Sword had.

Hopefully this game will be a lot like The Witcher 3 and Gothic. Also hopefully there will be minigames, such as dice or card games, love em.

I heard some pretty interesting things regarding timing and missions; that is if you don't do a mission in time you completely miss out on certain key events, and maybe ignore the main story completely. In my mind this is 'realistic Skyrim' but who knows for sure until it ships.

@dray2k: it has dice

I mean, beta is where the dev is supposed to refine the gameplay, animations, and systems. A bunch of months back could be a year-old build, since it seems they don't put out new builds often.
It's very possible this all got fixed, or at least to an acceptable level.

I'm definitely not going to preorder, that's not a smart choice for a full-priced game from a new dev. I'm going to be watching its launch closely though.
Might be the first time I ever actually use twitch.

Dude about the racist part "there no black people in this game BS". I think the dev. is totally right there where none black peeps in Bohemia in the middle ages it totally makes sense ( this game deals in racism although it's Germans against Czechs, with Germany trying to force the Czechs to learn German). putting them in a historical game makes no sense to be honest just like a Black German WWII soldiers in the new COD. And the first time people in Europe saw black people on mass was when the US freed Europe from the Nazi terror. To be honest i am not a fan of pushing people to add a color of human in a videogame or movie just because it's "PC" It should reflect set society. Not some warped up version of a political stand point. I also wanna ad that the Czech Republic is a very white country compared to other European countries, like Belgium for example witch is way more Diverse then the Czech Republic.