Etsu wrote:Having a negative point about the church is nothing new and definitely not something modern. It has existed as long as the church, this church or any other organization of political power.
That's not what I said, though.
Flatfingers wrote:The question I have is the extent to which Warhorse will treat those forms respectfully, implementing some of both the positive and negative influences as appropriate to the core gameplay.
There's a difference between fairly portraying uncontested facts about the past, good and bad, and deliberately emphasizing negative things about the past in order to score points from a modern-day perspective.
There were plenty of things about Christianity in that area at that time on which there's general agreement about their being problems -- the selling of indulgences, the secular power of the "princes of the Church," and the corrupting influences of those things were well-documented. I wouldn't be surprised or offended if those were part of Kingdom Come: Deliverance, so long as the equally well-documented positive parts of the Christian faith -- acts of charity and the preservation of knowledge, for example -- are also fairly represented.
What I hope not to see -- if religious elements appear at all in KC:D -- is the presence of religion in daily life portrayed as uniformly stupid and evil. That's a viewpoint that didn't exist then but which is popular today among some people. I think it would be inappropriate to jam 21st-century secular chauvinism into a game that the developers themselves said would try to be historical.
What I hope to see is what they promised in their Kickstarter pitch:
We want to bring you a strong story rooted in the height of the Middle Ages, brought to life in all its glory. So what is Kingdom Come: Deliverance? Think of it as Braveheart: The Game. Majestic castles, armored knights, large, open field battles, and political intrigue set in a vast, emergent world. We want to make the experience as authentic as possible – real-world locations, real castles that don’t look like something from Disneyland, period-accurate armors and costumes, combat and fencing systems designed in collaboration with the most knowledgeable, skillful swordsmen around, and a story based on actual, historic events.
Even having said that, Warhorse can and will make the kind of game they want. If they choose to exploit their power as creators to inject their personal beliefs into what they themselves said they wanted to be "authentic," they're free to do so. I'll be disappointed in them, and I'll enjoy their game less than I would have had they refrained from turning a game into a political soapbox, but it's their game.
Etsu wrote:The only thing that could disappoint me is to find any kind of supernatural presence, religious or otherwise.
You probably would not have enjoyed
Darklands, then, which is a shame. It was a brilliantly designed game, set in a medieval northern Europe that resembled ours but in which the spiritual and religious beliefs of people in that time and place were implemented as though they were real. There were witches, but there was also intercession from the saints. (Incidentally, Darklands is now available again from GOG.
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Having said all this, I'm not about to blame you for knowing what you don't want from a game. I myself am no longer willing to play games that are console ports that don't implement quicksave. If that's not an impediment for anyone else, good for them; I'm just not going to do it any more because every time I've wavered I've regretted it. So while I personally might not avoid a game because it includes religion in a meaningful way, I'll defend your privilege to do so because I want that same privilege -- for other things -- for myself.