Opinion - What Kingdom Come can teach Elder Scrolls

Gamespot opine on what Elder Scrolls games can learn from Kingdom Come: Deliverance.

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Kingdom Come: Deliverance is in many ways a more realistic survival take on The Elder Scrolls series and we think there are some lessons future Elder Scrolls games could learn from it.

More information.

My "opine" is that Gamespot doesn't know what are they talking about:

We're left thinking, “Wow, this really is a lot like an Elder Scrolls game.”

Say what?

KCD and TES games have only two things in common: utter buggyness and no hairworks.
Everything else is totally different and I don't see why should one learn from another. KCD is trying to be storydriven game with meaningful sidequests and without godlike trashmobs, TES games are supposed to be nostory grinders with instant trashmob respawns and dumb fetch quests. As both have their audience, let's just keep 'em as they are.

@joxer
I don't know if they can't learn something from each other. Although yes they have different aims. I like that you can be interupted while fast travelling. That could be cool in an elder scrolls game. It would definitely work in a fallout game so why not.

Other things I like are the more involved combat system. Elder scrolls has a joke of a combat system and really needs to step up its game here. Also I can't count the number of times I was carrying useless stuff and just spam consuming food to raise my health in combat. Its lazy really. Also story and character writing need significant work compared to Kingdom Come.

Having said that Elder Scrolls is quite a fun world for just larping about and creating your own fun. It would be nice if the world they created supported that more through.

Yes there are people who play FPS games in survivalist mode, and that's fine for them. For a fantasy setting though, I'd rather have the game abstract that component and focus on other elements.

Originally Posted by joxer

KCD and TES games have only two things in common: utter buggyness and no hairworks.
Everything else is totally different

Same Oblivion like underlivering NPCs.

Perhaps the thing KCD can learn from TES is how to approach save games.

My life is my own and when a game makes me play extra just to save my position because wifey, my daughter or some important call comes up just is not going to work for me. So any game that does not let me save when I want or have save, I say . . . F em.

Which is why they are looking at putting in a save-on-quit feature, @Dajjer. You probably don't want to buy until they put it in.

"…and really needs to step up its game here" - I see what you did there, @Silver

@Zloth
At least someone noticed.

Originally Posted by joxer
KCD and TES games have only two things in common: utter buggyness and no hairworks.

Hairworks has to be the biggest waste of processing power ever added to a game.

Originally Posted by joxer
Everything else is totally different and I don't see why should one learn from another.

Everything? They're both first person? They're both RPGs? They both have skills? They both have inventories? They both have leveling up? They both have a world map? They both have movement by foot, mount or fast travel? They both have lockpicking? They both have chests with treasure?

I could probably carry on listing things they have in common all day. Did you really not notice these things? The differences are subtle. I'm not saying subtle differences are unimportant, but these are both 1st person RPGS and I'm sure my non-gamer mother couldn't tell them apart.

Originally Posted by joxer
KCD is trying to be storydriven game with meaningful sidequests and without godlike trashmobs, TES games are supposed to be nostory grinders with instant trashmob respawns and dumb fetch quests. As both have their audience, let's just keep 'em as they are.

TES games always have a story? KCD trashmobs also respawn? KCD also has dumb fetch quests?

Like, sure, you love KCD. But, damn, you sound so full of shit like a classic fanboi who can't see anything objectively.

You forgot being openworld.
What you deliberately don't want to accept is there are openworlds and there are openworlds. Different ones.

When it comes to bugs, bugs are not design decision nor differentiate between titles (or genres).
GPU processing power is waste, sure. On Nintendo Gameboy.

I am fanboi of polished products made for PC. I'll continue being full of shit as long as retarded designs restricted by inferior hardware appear on PC. That's definetly subjective and I will never say it isn't.
See, I'm not consolegames company CEO selling garbage by presenting bullshit as if it's made of gold.
I will never change. Unless a superior platform that can do better than PC appears. Sorry about that.

EDIT:
Your non-gamer mother could tell them apart any day. All you need is to show her this just once and say which game it's from, she'd recognize that game later anywhere:

Awww, man. Now I'm even more confused.

You said bugs both games have "utter buggyness" in common, but now you're implying that KCD is a "polished product", and polish comes after bug squashing. Polish is finishing touches that are not required but bug squashing is definitely required!

I mean, I agree that Bethsoft have been very focused on consoles ever since the xbox360, but so has everyone. Even Larian before they officially announced Divinity 2 they were talking about their "next-gen console game". To skip every game that also has a console release would be to skip all AAA games!

There's open worlds and open worlds? Isn't Skyrim actually bigger than KCD? It's also packed full of locations to visit?

Gameboy specs =
Central Processing Unit (CPU) 8 Bit, Clock frequency: 4.19 MHz, RAM: 8 Kbytes

It would take thousands of gameboys to run hairworks without witcher3 being attached!

I've never seen spiders behaving like that in Skyrim or any TES. It's probably a bug from some mods they have installed.

Where did I say KCD is polished? It's not. It's bug-o-rama.

I have no idea which game is bigger. What interests me is quality and not quantity. But you know what I think about endless respawns already.

Over years I learned not to blame mods nor modders for anything. Without modders SkyUI and norespawn would never exist.
Nor would the unofficial patch I never used but apparently it creates illusion that the game was not left in pisspoor state by it's developer.

Posted the video I used in the past, lemme remind you of another one good to teach non-player mothers how to recognize Skyrim:

@joxer
hehehee, two can play at that game!

I showed my NGM this and she thought it was a skyrim spider!

Originally Posted by Silver
Its lazy really.

IMO, this is the single thing worth saying about the Elder Scrolls.
They make tons of money doing what they're doing, so naturally that's what they're going to continue to do.

The 2 games are nothing alike. I had over 200 hours in Skyrim and about 75 now in KCD.

Yes, KCD is buggy, but it's still a very fun game with tons of stuff to do. The game world is beautiful. I have to give Warhorse some credit here, I backed this game on Kickstarter way back when, like what, 5 years ago? No less than a year ago, I was
convinced the game would never be released. The beta was a completely unplayable mess.

And then they actually pulled it off and released a good game. Now they have lots of work to do patching up all the bugs. Still playable and still fun. I guess since I played through the first 3 Gothics, there's not any amount of bugs I cannot endure as long as I somehow get past them.

And the combat in KCD is hard and much more mechanically complex than in Skyrim. You need a bow to survive early on, but later you can get good at melee.

Originally Posted by Dajjer
Perhaps the thing KCD can learn from TES is how to approach save games.

My life is my own and when a game makes me play extra just to save my position because wifey, my daughter or some important call comes up just is not going to work for me. So any game that does not let me save when I want or have save, I say . . . F em.

You do know there is a save game you can download and install from Nexus in about 2 minutes, right? You can save anytime you want.

Originally Posted by Hyperion
You do know there is a save game you can download and install from Nexus in about 2 minutes, right? You can save anytime you want.

Yup, I am aware of that. But when I do, do mods. I do them after completion of the vanilla game. I simply wont play a brand new game that needs a mod to work. I come from the days when you had to config sys a brand new game for a couple hours just to get it to run. And this was the norm not the special case. Matching audio cards and graphic cards and hi mem or no high me and the special CD just to get the game to start. Sorry but those days are far in the past and when I have to do more than figure out what avatar name I am going to use when I start up a new game, well, . . . . NO.

Now obviously KCD is no where near close to those old school relics. But save game is a critical feature for me and when developers have the mind set that they are building a save feature to prevent gamers from gaming their game. . . . Not only does my Spock eyebrow raise, but my spidey senses start tingling and my BS meter is swinging way to the end of the scale.

KCD looks like an interesting game and when the developers get the save system right I will partake. Until then, the RPG playing field is way to vast for me to waste any time on a game that will have my wife hitting me over the head with a frying pan for playing a game instead of being at the family dinner table.


hyperbole much . . . . yes

Yeah, I usually prefer to play games in a "pure" manner initially, but I simply had to get that mod. It was just driving me crazy.