Dark Souls …. wait!
Don't leave, it's not what you think!
Dark Souls achieved harmony between its fiction and its gameplay by making a surreal narrative
that finally matched what actually happens in video games.
There's in-world lore reasons for all kinds of traditional game stuff
for players being able to come back after death
to drop in and out of other character's worlds
why enemies why enemies just walk around in a stupor waiting for you to come along
and why there are very few real people you can actually talk with.
Kingdom Come Deliverance achieves harmony between it's story and its game
by doing the exact opposite.
By making interactive action scenes that finally match what happens in traditional storytelling.
What comes next is look at the first two hours of Deliverance
staying away from mid and late game spoilers.
This is Henry.
You're Henry.
He's a lad.
He didn't like someone's opinions, so I made him throw crap at their house.
Then we beat the crap out of 'em and ran away from the cops.
Henry's a wanker.
Not only the way the game portrays him, but in the way that I played him.
While I don't like Henry as a person, I do like him as a character.
I've made videos before about how it's a fun escape to be a prick in games
and it especially makes sense to be a prick here in the much less enlightened past.
It's role playing the period, or at least an early period in Henry's life
Henry's a young, inexperienced, but headstrong teenager
and I was happy to get into this role.
When faced with decisions I always took the unwise ones.
I talked crap, slung it, procrastinated my dad's errands, got into fights
and went behind my mum's back.
Going behind my mum's back meant studying the blade against her wishes.
This tutorial, and some simple one-on fights that happen later on, had me confused
as to how the combat works.
Early on I feel as if the game is intentionally keeping information from me
specifically how blocking works.
Is blocking directional?
I dunno, so I don't really know how to fight, but Henry doesn't either.
It's a little frustrating, but it seems intentionally designed like this to put me
in the shoes of my character.
It's definitely a brave idea, most games seek to avoid frustration, especially with
understanding game systems.
Here it has its purpose though.
What I really like is how little hard combat is involved in the first chapter of the game,
and how it manages to be engaging without it through the use of other sources of conflict
and challenge.
After completing those errands, in typical video game fashion your hometown gets destroyed,
your family murdered, and you have to run away.
What's not typical is that you actually have to run away.
Most every RPG with the doomed hometown trope has you kicking bums and taking names.
It's not the threat of the enemies that pushes you along
it's the needs of the plot and the invisible hand of the developer.
"The darkspawn could be on us any minute."
You run excitedly towards enemies, not away from them.
There's a disconnect between the situation presented by the story and what's actually
happening as you play the game.
There's no such disconnect in Deliverance.
You flee because an invading army of geared up soldiers is going to run you down
and run you through
a very real threat in the narrative that's matched by the game's action.
Very early on in the sequence you're given the objective to save a townswoman
naturally I thought this meant taking out her attackers.
I tried to take them on and realized that I couldn't even handle one of them for more
than a few seconds, and there were three of them in front of me and still more chasing
me down from behind.
After a few silly attempts I realized the solution was to distract them momentarily
(whistle)
so the townswoman could slip away, then take a horse and continue to flee
all without basically slowing down.
It was a mad dash, it was chaos, I couldn't even see if she got away OK, and it felt like
actually fleeing from a crazy battlefield, running very much a mile in Henry's shoes.
As the chase continues on horseback, you can hear the arrows pelt into you, and the horse,
and there's a genuine fear that keeps you hard on the reins.
That fear is built from the knowledge that they greatly outnumber you, and uniquely,
how even one of them greatly outmatches you.
Here running is a scary but exhilarating experience.
It succeeds at something so many action games fail at.
Escaping the police is a big part of the GTAs for example, but cops are just too weak.
I feel more annoyed than afraid.
Mirror's Edge figured out all those years ago that you need to be outnumbered and outmatched
for an exciting chase scene, and on this point Deliverance certainly … deliverances.
Once safely behind walls two towns over, it's time again for more cutscenes and conversations.
During these the game's camera switches to third person.
I like this view for other games
but those other games maintain a consistent third-person style throughout the whole game
and flow more seamlessly from exploration to conversation.
Here the switch from first to third person and back again is a little jarring
and it isn't helped at all by the fade in and fade out everytime you talk to someone.
It takes you out of Henry's shoes, quite literally, after all the hard work the game
does putting you in them.
Henry's role in cutscenes also serves to separate the two of us.
For example, here the duke or whatever asks about the enemy and their banners, their flags.
"Did you see the ensigns of the attackers?"
The flags … approximately how many were there?
It's an engaging question … that I wasn't allowed to engage with.
Henry immediately took the floor and spoke for me.
That wasn't a dialog choice, but a cutscene.
Henry speaks a lot for the both of us, and says things I often don't want him to.
For a better example I have to skip forward to the second chapter in the game - mild spoilers
for about three hours in I guess.
Here the game tries really hard to bring about a conflict between you and a local young lord.
Now, the game has spent a decent amount of time showing a realistic portrayal of class
culture in the medieval period, how lords were basically gods among peasants, and were
to be treated as such.
And then to build the conflict between them, with just a little bit of provocation from the lord
Henry, without any input from me, goes and says:
"What did you say?"
"Calm down boy keep in mind who you're talking to."
"A braggart who was born with a silver spoon in his mouth."
Now, I was playing Henry as young and stupid.
But this was stupid on another level.
With the medieval game world as I understand it, it's practically committing suicide.
"Now you've really done it - you'll go to the stocks for that."
I might have taken a subtle, perhaps more passive aggressive option if offered
but this was a cutscene with no options to choose from.
I was a passenger behind the keyboard ... it may as well have not even been plugged in.
The thing that really bugs me about it is there's an obvious way to to force the conflict
without taking choice away, without taking Henry away from the player.
Just have the lord keep pushing you.
If the player backs down with polite refusals, have the lord mock your subservience and taunt
you even further.
I would have snapped.
Behind my keyboard I'd've felt the rage rising, just as Henry would have on the ground.
I would have finally chosen the go screw yourself option
only this time Henry and I would have been on the same page
feeling the same emotion, which is really what I want from RPGs.
To get into character.
Cutscenes are fine for neutral conversations, say ones where you're asking questions,
but anytime a character makes a decision that affects the story, or expresses their personality,
I want in on it.
Don't take Henry away from me.
He's all I got.
The developers have literally everything else.
They've got the entire world and all its characters to push the story
in the direction they want.
Especially in this game, where for the first time I'm a nobody, where others really have
direct power over me.
The developers can leverage that world power to influence my decisions or force the narrative.
That's why I was excited for Deliverance, but at least in this case
they failed to capitalize on the concept.
Anyways, let's go back to the first chapter of the game, where I'd just run to safety
from my burning village.
In a safe new town, my first priority is to go back to the old dangerous one and bury
my parents.
I try to persuade a guard to let me out, and I succeed, but it's an awesomely soft success.
"I'm sorry my friend, but I can't.
You'll have to persuade Sir Robbard.
Or think something up so I don't end up in the crap for it."
"What am I supposed to think up?"
"If a Talmberg soldier turns up all kitted out properly - in armor and a helmet - then
of course I let him go.
That's obvious."
I love soft success like this and even soft failures.
Too often NPCs reward success by immediately giving you everything you want, which leads
to a feeling that characters are just there for your amusement instead of being
agents in the fiction with their own set desires to follow and rules to abide by.
Three times on the way back to my hometown I run into some looters who uh …
just attack me on sight for not much reason.
I get why these fights are here though, the game's teased combat long enough.
These fights are used to build up your confidence, which you'll need later on.
These clearly insane looters become a little more believable as characters when they either
run away or even surrender when things look bad for them.
I like that, it gives me a few different options for role playing
and means I don't have to become a mass murderer just to get through the game
or at least the opening chapter.
After finding your parents you set about burying them when you're ambushed by a gang of thugs.
Me, and every let's player I've watched to research this, craps their pants.
Then that big one steps forward and a fight starts, 1v1.
I get a few hits in.
I started out a boy, running errands and then running away.
Now it's time to stand my ground and be a man.
Crap.
This was a rigged fight.
But they've done a very deliberate act of deception here.
They had me believing I could win.
I got cocky, then got an almost fatal dose of reality
again this game has really turned me into a teenager
and I can't understate enough how much I enjoy that
especially as a greying middle aged man.
I've been a village teenager before in games, mostly Japanese ones.
In those games about youths that I played in my youth, the lowly village boy
gets the sword in the first few minutes and bests huge monsters with it at the end of the opening act.
I love and have great nostalgia for the those old games, but there was a fundamental disconnect
between the lowly village boy in the story and the day-one superhero in the combat.
Deliverance made me really feel like that village boy, and all it took was
some combat confusion
a proper chase scene
some ego-boosting leading to a near fatal arse kicking
and being robbed of the magnificent sword.
It's a bold approach.
Most games, especially RPGs, try make the player feel powerful right from the start,
even when the narrative dictates otherwise.
Zero to hero exists everywhere in RPGs, but this is the only time I've gotten to play
the first part of that story.
As such, it sets itself for up for a real character arc.
But I'll have to keep playing to find out if it delivers.
Kingdom Come Deliverance achieves harmony between its game and its story by taking
the zero to hero story and finally matching its gameplay with that narrative.
Mostly.
It's got places to go, this game.
I've never really hated any game character as much as I hate this tosser
and I can't wait to get out there and take his bloody head off.
But I suspect I've still got a few more hard lessons to learn before I'm ready for that.
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