Player Values Environment

"Slickback, wisecrack, I can smell a rat
Ransacked, setback, down another cul-de-sac
Bullwhack, maniac, sitting on the train track
Crookback, lumberjack, think I better backtrack"

 

Oi Va Voi - Dusty Road

 

 

While Kingdom Come: Deliverance will never hold my attention quite like Mount&Blade, it's still an undeniably expert piece of work and even its infuriating melee combat, savegame potions, stripping down to sneak or other minor chores can't stop me from returning to polish off at least a majority of quests, basking in recherché medieval immersion and hardcore mode's lack of pointers forcing you to navigate by landmarks and cardinal directions.

Having bemoaned the loss of such mechanics repeatedly in the past and clung to the few attempts at rebuilding video game pathfinding (like Miasmata or Sir, You Are Being Hunted) in the era of Skyrim map markers, I had to note how KCD makes stumbling around the woods so engrossing. Largely, as it turns out, by stepping back and giving control to the player (ironically where its overscripted melee combat fails in the opposite direction) and giving you tools and goals but few direct procedures (alchemy recipes aside, natch) letting you game the system via your own aptitudes. Most important among such tools is shaping the terrain itself as to encourage the player to deliberately get his bearings and plot a course.

 

Having snuck out of Ledetchko in the dead of night for some innocent deer poaching (and incidental deer-poacher-poacing; turns out poachers are a territorial breed) I made to turn in their RAW DRIPPING LIVERS to the butcher of Sasau only to find myself yet again hopelessly discombobulated after my adventures and unaware how many roads or woods I'd crossed in the dark. I ambled rather aimlessly downhill in hopes the river may lead me to civilization. Luckily, first light broke just as I broke through the trees above one of the land's many mills and (praise be unto Saint Christopher!) gleamed white against the distant unmistakable squarish sight and newly raised bell tower of Sasau monastery. A quick glance at the map unmistakably pinpointed the mill itself and thereby my own position.

Knowing this helpful landmark would be once again blocked by the upland fields once I descended down the escarpment to the river, I made my plans (as I had business in town) not to cross the fields but skirt their border with the woods. Sure enough I soon hit the final landmark, the roadside shrine to some mysterious benefactors (read: kickstarter donors or somesuch) and was home free!

Other games have tried to reward you for walking, sometimes by such insulting metrics as simply counting the number of steps you've taken (looking in your direction No Man's Sky) or giving you levelups for such a freebie action. But whatever KCD's other faults or accolades, Warhorse Studios displayed unimpeachable artistry in making good on restoring travel's due relevance, not by arbitrary carrots or sticks but by employing the terrain itself in its own traversing: well-drawn maps, rises and rivers, recognizable mills and camps, towns with individual traits, breaks in the trees, vantage and markers and the ever-glimmering stars.

But of course, when we think of terrain interaction, we mostly think of combat advantages. Aside from maneuvering your archers to high ground, many a fight in Bannerlord will center on keeping your cavalry on open ground or breaking your enemy's charge using fences, trees or rivers to effortlessly pincushion them while slowed.

More interestingly though, even the overland map yields positioning advantages and disadvantages, some unexpectedly... economic.

Much as I bitched out my emperor for gifting me a low-yield string of castle fiefs, the southmost of these, Akiser, reaped an unexpected windfall in ransoms when wars broke out with the Southern Empire and Aserai. Aside from defending it myself, friendly armies fleeing sieges tended to take refuge at the nearest unblockaded castle, and as the AI apparently unburdens itself of prisoners at the first dungeon... ka-ching!

 

In Stellaris as well, much use can be made of third parties or game events punching holes in your rivals' territories.

Around mid-game, the marauders which had heretofore remained contained in their original systems might balloon in strength thanks to the rise of a "great khan" and begin expanding. During other runs it spelled my death. Here I was able to sit on defense and let the khan chew up my opponent then sweep up its systems without risking a diplomatically self-destructive open war. Or take one of the end-game events:

Like the khan, extragalactic invaders can be particularly nasty because instead of claiming territory they wipe existing ownership and take over, even rendering planets uninhabitable. Here one of the systems they "liberated" happened to include a jumpgate which once neutral I used to move up behind their lines and snatch up the conquered stars. Joined by other opportunists, we knocked the Raxycodium Alliance completely out of the running for victory with a third of its territory nibbled off... all perfectly peaceful and legal and even heroic in our timely appllication of squatters' rights. In case you're wondering, it works in reverse as well: under #3 in this post, the different colored territory in the bottom of the image resulted from a Gray Tempest event paired with my ill luck in finding half a dozen L-gates inside my borders. Hey, sometimes you're the Swiss and sometimes you're the cheese...

 

Once you've seen so many games make such creative use of maps and positioning and logistic opportunism, it becomes particularly annoying to see so many more treat theirs as only a flat surface on which to farm ten to the tenth rats. Even some attempted terrain features can be worse than useless for lack of integration.

11bit did brilliant work on Frostpunk, but their earlier offerings fell rather short of that standard. Anomaly Defenders, a tower defense I already bashed here, filled one mission with random meteor strikes destroying your towers. In a better game, this would've entailed some means of detecting, deflecting or intercepting said meteors in such a way as to inform your construction going forward or be deliberately used against your enemies. Here, it's merely more whack-a-mole: the strikes are truly random and inevitable and give little forewarning. "Rocks fall, everyone dies" indeed.

 

The most insulting attitude though would have to be that of mindless arcade-throwback twitch-games in which enemies simply teleport in on top of you to be popped off like skeet. Doom, a classic which should never have remained an aspirational goal, remained a worst offender as of #3, where I quickly learned to mechanically, mindlessly twirl after picking up a health/ammo pack and plug the enemies inevitably spawning to "ambush" me. Diablo-inspired loot grinds like Warframe are at least up front about such idiocy being their core feature, one-upping MMOs without the pretense of larger (nonexistent) events. It's a lot more galling in games like No Man's Sky where exploration presupposes some preparedness, or Mechwarrior which at least facetiously touts some tactical elements but where units are flat-out too fast relative to weapon ranges, making positioning largely irrelevant from second to second. Instead of fabricating the shallow "feels" of enemies coming over the rise and turning this into mere whack-a-mole, why not allow the rise to be deliberately used? Get a rise out of your rise!