Post
Sun Feb 25, 2018 4:57 pm
#201
by Etsu
Well, I have the chance to try this and... It's freaking amazing!
The Good
The graphics, performance and the narrative are not only good but better than what I have found anywhere. Finally a medieval RPG with a good story. (Sorry, Geralt, but I'm a bit tired of grumpy heroes and prophetic children. Next time I see a prophetic child, either in a video game or in real life, I will kill the bastard myself.) The faces are the most realistic ever, but that could be a bad thing too. (Characters look real but still behave like game characters, so I have the uncanny impression that I'm watching real human beings trapped in a video game world, a Puppet Masters kind of thing. Weird.) The music so far is not perfect but it is good. (This game would like to have Ennio Morricone as composer.) The cut scenes are as good as in a very good movie, not like in a very good game, which is excellent. (Finally!) The gameplay is great, the world, the exploration... I really like this thing.
The Bad
There are some elements that are not convincing. For example, if you rotate Henry his feet rotate as well, which is amateurish stuff, unjustifiable in a game of this quality. (That wasn't the case during the alpha.) There is no zoom. (Not serious but uncomfortable anyway.) There is no way to control your speed with an analog stick. (Bad.) There is also no way to control Henry's height when he tries to pick through windows or holes for example, which would have been useful. (Alien Isolation gives you that option.) And there are bugs. (One in particular left me without a horse for a while, and there are problems with some textures, but not frequently.)
The Ugly
Now comes the part that could ruin the game for me, a design decision that doesn't make any sense: gifts. Yes, the game gives you gifts. (Some are for bakers, so if you are not a baker you may be safe from some of this.) For example, treasure maps and armor that the games gives you for free, for no reason, and without any kind of integration with the fictional world at all. (These guys follow Bethesda in their way to integrate DLCs to the main product. Don't do that!) The most insulting of all (so far) are the nests. I found two of them, but I only looked inside of one. What did I find? Jewelry worth 1000 groschen, the coin in the game. Curious, because I was having trouble trying to get 50 groschen to pay a debt, and then I find freaking jewelry with a cost of 1000 groschen. Great! No more debts, not more worries; I could buy food, potions, a horse, and even hire the services of one of those nice looking girls in a Bath House. Oh, yeah, and no more play. Why to play the game? I can get money for free! I only need to walk around and become a kind of nests collector or something, apparently a very lucrative job on medieval times. Or maybe is me. Maybe it was a common thing for birds to steal jewelry and for people to find it over their walks on those times. So it is one of two things: or the economic system in the game is broken and the designers had to add this kind of thing as a way of balance (so the economic thing is broken for short) or it is not, it actually works perfectly, but now this thing breaks it badly.
The Rant
Why? Why did you did that? The game was so perfect. Why did you have to add this thing that ruins the game experience so badly? Was it because you wanted to make KCD look like a AAA game? You didn't need to do that. This game is better than most AAA games out there. You have the best graphics, acting and narrative the money can buy, and amazing gameplay. Why to borrow the worst techniques from the AAA companies? If you want to steal something don't be this. It just doesn't work. This is a gift for people who actually don't like the game, who prefer not to play it. Why did you make something that will benefit people who don't like your game? What about the people who like it like myself? The people who helped you to make this game possible. Don't worry. I didn't take the jewelry, and I didn't look at the maps or took the gambeson. But those things are still there, and will still be there tomorrow when I sit to play your game, like a ghost presence trying to remind me of this outrageous disgrace.
Conclusion
I will be living in that world for many weeks/months to come. This is a triumph that surpass everything shown during the alpha or the first beta. It has troubles, estrange troubles, but it is delightful. Hope you enjoy as much as I did.
"Playing" is not simply a pastime, it is the primordial basis of imagination and creation. - Hideo Kojima