Historical Realism in Games

With the successful release of Kingdom Come: Deliverance I found one of my larger desires met; A game set in a historical past that's not a RTS. This aspect of the game, alone, is helping it to sell as many people mostly wanted this game BECAUSE of that historical accuracy.

Interesting, because whenever I've tried to argue to toss historical realism into fantasy people always reply that they don't want realism in their fantasy. And yet here we are, watching a game with said realism succeeding on that principal alone.

So from here I'd like to dicuss two topics: Do you think more medieval fantasy games should use historical realism AND do you think historical accuracy and realism might start creeping more and more into the mainstream (on the heels of KC:D's general success)?

Other urls found in this thread:

en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Realism_(art_movement)
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Codpiece
twitter.com/NSFWRedditVideo

No fucking shit games should be accurate. I don't want queers, niggers, and feminists falsely placed in history. What the fucking christ is wrong with you? How is this even a question? DESTRUCTION OF HISTORY IS DESTRUCTION OF A PEOPLE.

Not what I meant…

I mean along of the lines of maybe seeing less fantasy-based misconceptions about simple things, like armor and medieval combat. (the vid I linked uses actual HEMA instead of movie bullshit)

How is that different? Fundamentally it's the same concept–erasure of history.

Because fantasy games with magic and meme-based melee combat aren't marketed as historically factual.

Imagine for a moment that a fantasy game went goes the extra mile and gives a realist, historically real take on of medieval land that happens to have fae creatures and such.


Granted, this is ESSENTIALLY what Warhammer Fantasy did, albeit with varying degrees of success and failure

Whenever people hear "realism" of any kind in a video game they often think of the UI of ARMA and games with needless details and mechanics that get in the way of gameplay. They think that now instead of pressing a button to throw a grenade, they will need to go into a menu, where they will select a grenade, press a button to bring it out, press a button to pull the pin, press a button to throw it and do all of this only after they have mastered the grenade throwing and pin pulling skills.
Basically they think that realism will mean that gameplay will have unnecessary boring shit in it, because that is what they often witness in games that advertise themselves as "realistic".

What they dont realize is, that when done well, realism of all kinds can actually make gameplay more intuitive and enjoyable because the mechanics and the game world follow a logic similar to the real world. Not to mention that it usually improves the plot and worldbuilding.

That is why you have situations when people will say that they hate realism in games, but say they also enjoy KCD, a fairly realistic game.

Also games need a bit more of a different kind of realism en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Realism_(art_movement)
In which KCD also excells.

honestly I wish they would break away from the medieval setting, it's overused. Give me a fantasy game set in ancient Greece, Central/South America or Mesopotamia

but it depends on the game and what it's trying to accomplish.


Also this, realism for most people and most devs means autistic menus and no fun allowed mechanisms

I've been kinda thinking a fantasy world set just prior to the Seven Years War would be somewhat interesting.

t. Amerimutt

Perhaps, but I make the argument with all sorts of fantasy. Like, for example, I was hearing someone talk about magic swords and shit in modern fantasy and I asked "Well, if you can make a sword magical, why not make a gun magical? Swords become obsolete for a reason, so following that logic wouldn't enchanters consider enchanting firearms as well?" Dude, no shit, got PISSED OFF at the idea. (btw, the third Night Watch book, Twilight Watch, addresses this… by giving people MAGIC AK-47s!)

Also, on that one, I have spoken to others about how in fantasy series and movies they always make people fight like total retards. Again, it always comes back to "muh fantasies!" but it's really not a good excuse. Proper example, The Hobbit: The Desolation of Smog. The dwarfs had a decent shield wall with massive pikes pointed outwards at the oncoming orcs. The movie stressed this as a FAILING STRATEGY despite being, quite frankly, the BEST formation POSSIBLE in such a situation, if not MOST situations of medieval combat. But no, then the fucking elves jump OVER the walls to push out and save the day by somehow disregarding proper medieval tactics and strategy and just… brawling mindlessly with flippy bullshit. And yet MANY of the people I've debated this with LIKE that aspect of the medieval fantasy. I find myself utterly confused and astounded by this.

Maybe I'm just too much of a history buff?

Low-fantasy games can be popular nigga, the fuck you talking about?
Mountain blade's existence already proves this, and chivalry from the multiplayer side

Realism is good if it's fun.
If KCD managed to be interesting without fantasy that'd be pretty impresive.

So far that seems to be the case

its mostly the bugs that are entertaining. teleporting to the top of the sky, getting stuck on doorways, seeing people T-pose, seeing enemies jump around at lightning speed, things like that. How you can break the game you're trying to play next is the most interesting part.

I would argue this was the reason for the early success of the Ass Creed games: being able to fuck around in a more or less accurate historical setting. Shame it was doomed from the start in the hands of Ubisoft.

Fair point, I never thought of that

pick one

Also it doesn't just have to be medieval fantasy. In general you can go about adding realism, and historical realism at that, to a lot of different time periods that, in current games, don't really get the realism treatment. Take hte scenario I stated before about the men-at-arms in the forest, change their pikes to muskets with bayonets, and claim that they're patrolling out of a fort in North America during the early day of American colonization. Hell, adding historical realism and accuracy actually seems to open the fantasy genre up to a LOT of fresh air, more so than the strict fantasy that's mostly what's been focused on thus far.

Well aint you a fag.

That is still stylized choreography. It maybe HEMA (except for the spinning that shit is retarded), but it is not representative of real fights. They are messier and less dramatic. And I am not talking about the music.

Please leave.

He's either pretending to be retarded or he thinks Mount & Blade and Mountain Blade are two different things.

Even fantasy games with elves, humans, orcs and such, inspired by tolkein, shouldn't have niggers because they're not a part of that well-established cultural creation.

Since groups like feminists and niggers cannot create anything good themselves, they are shoehorned into established worlds and characters created by others. It's a practice of shoehorning worthless people into things they were never capable of creating in order to leech off them and destroy them out of an intensely hateful jealousy.

Generic Medieval fantasy is so overdone that even the lowest medieval peasant would hate it by now. Get some new material fucking dumbshit devs. Dragons and elves were overdone in 1599. Fucking stop it.

OH, Mount and Blade. I feel retarded.


This.


Again, I don't mean niggers. I mean flippy anti-gravity bullshit, shit armor that was NEVER actually used like leather beyond the early Roman Empire and female armor with tits or using dual knives in open warfare.

It's a far better representation than what movies are willing to put forth most of the time. You practically have to strong-arm a director to include proper historical combat. They can't even get some of the shit in WWII to be realistic by any means, much less historically accurate.

Their longsword fight was better.

It was, you are correct

sheesh, that's intense but one hell of a painful hobby.

why the fuck is he so hard?

I didn't say realistic, just that it was low-fantasy in medieval europe

en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Codpiece

It really goes down to what's the appeal. Kingdom Come has historical realism and accuracy. Historical accuracy of that era for a specific region is interesting, but if it's broad indistinct European culture, not so much. For example, even if I play primarily fantasy games, historically accurate portrayals of regions like Scythia or now-extinct ethnic groups would be interesting.

If you try to put fantasy in with historical accuracy, you're going to end up contradicting one or the other.

I've pulled the "I don't want realism in my fantasy games" line before in certain contexts.

I think in fantasy it isn't called realism, but plausibility.

I like it when my fantasy is plausible. In a well grounded realistic fantasy you have room to grow into the crazier things.

That being said, I wish kingdom come paid attention to the crazier side of medieval life. You should be able to become a mercury salesman or an astrologer wizard or something.

I thought of that after I posted
bully me

You would be too if you just fought a battle like that.

you're clearly not from around here if this is the first time you see it written like this so think well before you answer this next question : so where are you from?
you have 0 evasions left and suicide is not an option

I'm from here, but I only post every few months when it peaks my interest. I came because I agree with GamerGate but I stayed because, well, I highly disagree with liberals in MOST things in general.

I am part of a Holdfast group. I have a regular day job that is often night shifts, so participation is sporadic.

It's not though because the characters swear too often, and worse words than what would have been used. The creator of the game seems to have forgotten that they were Christian first. Also, I haven't tried it (judging by the few gameplay videos of seen), but does it have "le Medieval kings/lords were GoT-tier XD" bullshit?

This is where I stand.
At the very least everything in the world should server a purpose and have a place. Without this your story is going to be difficult to follow and the world is going to seem like a mess. There still have to be rules no matter how zany the world, pic related, but the rules can make little sense. At this point space travel is powered by a hamster on a wheel, but that same hamster has trouble powering a dragons refrigerator because dragons eat a lot and breath fire so his fridge is really big and it takes a lot to keep it cool.
Internal consistency is the bare minimum if you want an audience to get immersed. If something works in a certain way then it will keep working that way and if something is taken from real life it will work like it works in real life. At this point space travel is common and widespread without realistic downsides and dragons are intelligent.
Plausibility is where an audience only has to suspend their disbelief a little. Any sci-fi is firm to hard. The science is bent a handful of times, and only just. The fantasy is grounded, and what little magic exists is well explained and fleshed out. Good reasons are given for why things are the way they are. At this point time dilation is a problem in space travel and dragons are just big lizards with wings.
Realism demands that what happens in your story really could happen in real life or really did happen in real life. Realistic historical fiction demands the historical figures act how they acted in real life. Realistic science fiction requires any technology in the world exists at the scale people are using it in real life. The animals that show up in your story must exist in real life. You get the idea. At this point people can get into orbit if they work for a wealthy enough government and dragons don't exist. Realism can be the enemy of fun if handled improperly.

people who dont want realism (code word for complexity) in their fantasy are called casuals
why the fuck anyone would ask himself if theres something deeper in the opinions of a casual is beyond me

The word is piques, you illiterate monkey.

Can you not read? I said "not as much as they are", you illiterate mongoloid.
I have only met this sort of strawmanning-due-to-stupidity when I spoke to fucking beaners you shitskin, and now I come across it on a near-daily basis on this God-forsaken shithole of a website. So fucking sick of room-temperature IQ faggots like you. Kill yourself with a rusty spike you waste of space.

hit a nerve?
read a book nigger

This has always been rather silly. People seem to think fantasy is always one thing, and never another. At least, those who aren't aware of Warhammer Fantasy and the like. The notion might be catching on in the vidya's wake.

What about a fantasy game set in medieval Greece? I've never seen that before.

No and yes, and write properly, shitskin.
Yes in that you were the final straw that broke the camel's back, but no in your insult.
You misread my post, that is why.