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Video game thread
I haven't played anything in weeks. Been too busy with a responsible adult mode/productivity streak. Haven't been getting enough R&R and became a bit worn down. Please tempt me into some fun gaming.
I have been playing Kingdom Come Deliverance and, while it was already clear that this was not a woke game from pretty early on, this line really drove that nail home for me. You would never here a line like this in a modern American video game. It's not even anti-woke: as a game from the Czech Republic, it's so far removed from the modern American culture war that it just doesn't even care. This is in response to being asked why does God allow so much evil in the world, and the man responds that it's probably a test so we can become better by overcoming it. Everyone is a medieval Catholic (except the evil foreign Cumans who are barbaric and evil, but also way way stronger than your local bandits which makes it terrifying when you stumble on one early game and you probably need to run away instead of fighting), and it's just kind of in the background morality of the individual characters. There's a quest where you go back into the ruins of a town that was just destroyed and still roving with bandits and scavengers in order to bury your murdered parents, putting yourself in danger for no reason other than respect for them and wanting them not to get stuck in purgatory. And yet it's not as if the story is glazing Christianity either, it's got plenty of evil and corrupt people abusing the system, and even a drunk and lecherous priest who is preaching protestant reformation against the Catholic church and their money grubbing ways. Characters believe things because it makes sense for their character to believe that in this culture and the narrative isn't using them as a cudgel to propagandize you that they're obviously right or wrong.
What I think I like about it most of all is that it's an open world Western RPG where your character is... actually a character. You play as Henry, a blacksmith's son from a town, with parents and friends and a personality. He speaks, he has opinions, he makes decisions that you cannot control that drive the plot forward. He is not a blank faceless self insert who gets swept along in some chosen one plot so that you can pretend he is actually you in this world. Henry is Henry in this world, and that gives the writers so much more room to actually write a real story that involves him in it because they can make him do and say things that the story needs a protagonist to do and say. They do a clever job of giving him a bit of moral gray at the beginning with a good and honest father who tells him to do what's right, and a bunch of mischievous friends trying to get him to misbehave, so that whether you decide to run around stealing and murdering or decide to be good and helpful both are still kind of "in character". But there is a character, and I really like that and think that most Western RPGs are missing this.
I haven't finished it yet, so I can't speak for an overall review of how good it stays or how the narrative wraps up in the end, but I am very much liking it so far.
I remember that quest! It was a hard hitting one. I never finished KCD, but I really enjoyed the game for similar reasons to yours. They managed to pull off having a pretty defined character rather than a total blank slate, without making him offputting. He's vanilla enough and interesting enough at the same time. It's almost an immersive sim game. Very historically accurate, which I appreciated! There's a great sense of progression and character development. E.g. learning to read and all sorts of things.
Unfortunately KCD2 is not free from wokeism, due to the devs getting new owners or something prior to making it. Still a very good game though. I was a few dozen hours into it last year. Should get back to it at some point. I loved making lots of groschen by brewing skillfully made potions and slaying bandits/cumans. :D
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