Penny Arcade - Comic - Kingdom Come

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Penny Arcade - Comic - Kingdom Come

Videogaming-related online strip by Mike Krahulik and Jerry Holkins. Includes news and commentary.

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Hahnsoo1

Wait, is the Hub working again?

Tofystedeth

yar

Steel Angel

KCD's full circle as a proxy in a mostly American-based culture war has been a wild ride, not helped by the lead developer being pretty bad at reading the global room during PR a few years back. Meanwhile in Czechia, a whole lot of people have been confused and weirded out about why a Czech independent studio making a game that is very Czech has gotten caught up in all this. It's struck me as very similar to some of the discourse around The Witcher 3 in both that a European nation that doesn't really get to see its culture represented in games wanted to create something with deep ties to a major cultural moment that's a major part of their national identity (the frequent domination of Poland by the HRE/Germany and other neighbors in The Witcher 2 & 3 and more obviously the Hussite Wars/5 or so times the rest of Europe declared a Crusade against now modern Czechia that the rest of Europe doesn't much like to talk about) in KCD AND that both are heavily influenced by novels written by Andrezj Sapkowski weirdly enough.

This is very clearly a passion project by a studio that really wants to tell a meaningful Czech story in a new format. The time period and events of the game are a frequent inspiration for historical fiction of many formats in Czechia and even the attention to detail in the armor system may have been inspired by a popular movie about the time period that really got those details right. Though it's not just an encyclopedic demonstration of the difference between brigandine vs. a cuirass. It's also been a demonstration of a bunch off bad sheep puns during an side quest with fully optional dialogue options that were fully voiced.

Grendus

I went into Dennys in the mood for sausage, and left after learning something about myself...

Lttlefoot

If your game is good, you can offend the culture warriors on one side or the other (or both) and still get lots of sales and good reviews

Djiem

Lttlefoot wrote: »

If your game is good, you can offend the culture warriors on one side or the other (or both) and still get lots of sales and good reviews

Even if it isn't all that good, you can get away with it if you make your whole game about a butt in a shiny suit.