Prism Mirror Lens

[prism-mirror-lens]

I published a little update to my Hans at the Forge mod!

Now you can ask Hans out on a date to the love nest near Sedletz.

Talk to him at the forge to ride out together. Talk to him again once you arrive to spend some time together😉

Read the full details and get the mod here: Hans at the Forge on Nexus Mods

[medieval-bohemia-corner]

I have a little KCD2 conspiracy me and @manatiemtesun talked about: Klara was supposed to be at Suchdol. Most of the evidence is circumstantial, but it is there.

It is a pretty common opinion on Tumblr at least that the Katherine romance is rushed and not very well written, my personal conspiracy, was always that it was added relatively late in development. Like, there was always meant to be a female romance option at Suchdol, just, not Katherine.

She was named after Zizka's wife, this is outright mentioned in the codex in game. She and Zizka share a bed. She reacts negatively to flirting with her practicly the whole game, leaving a sense that multiple scenes are missing when she changes her tune.

So, thinking about it, I think the female romance in Suchdol was maybe meant to have been Klara.

You can sleep with Klara twice.

You get to know her and she is a real character on her own. One of the better developed fling options.

She is introduced as involved with Zizka and is a bit if a spy like Katherine, placed there to lead Henry away from investigating.

Katherine's words about "why men love war" sound weird from the mouth of a women who supposedly wants vengeance and has killed people but sound completely in line with the things we hear Klara say:

"I'd rather not hear what happened next. Storming castles tends to be a bloody business…" or "Like what? Can you even do anything other than wave that stupid piece of steel around?" and treats enemy prisoners and feels passionate about not letting them suffer.

Katherine never acted as a medic, only a spy (except one idle dialog, I think), so her being a medic at Suchdol was pretty strange and jarring to me. But you know who is a medic? Klara.

So my conspiracy as to part of why the Katherine romance is written how it is, is that the female main romance was originally meant to be Klara. But WH realized at some point it wouldn't make sense for Klara to survive Nebakov and gave Katherine her role as a medic and love interest and possibly some of her lines. Which resulted in end game Katherine who is acting as two characters in one and not really feeling like the Katherine who had all the chemistry with Zizka and was all for vengeance earlier in the game (like in the Fifth Commandment).

[prism-mirror-lens]

I keep meaning to write a proper part 2 to my Katherine rant, covering the romance, but then I look at this dialogue and just lose the will to live every time (tw for dialogue basically about sexual assault):

Henry would not fucking say this. No normal human being would say this. why does she like being told she deserves sexual assault. Nobody would, but especially KATHERINE of all fucking characters. Has the writer literally ever seen or spoken to a woman. I hate it so much. Whoever wrote this needs to be forced to read it out loud to every woman they know

[prism-mirror-lens]

For some reason Warhorse were really beefing with this one specific chair in Suchdol

GOD DAMN CHAIR

[glendyrants]

God bless the modders finally I can invite pookie to my forge and playing old couple simulator lol

my wife is here now I have good reason to come home everyday after doing stuffs

Mods :

Hans in Forge

I really want to stay at your inn

Praise Hans

Play Dice with Hans

[prism-mirror-lens]

Can Hans win the hunt?

It seems like Hans never wins the hunting contest in KCD1's The Prey. I've also seen some reports that Hans can't possibly win because he doesn't loot his kills. Is this quest bugged? Did Warhorse screw up? Time to test it!

Does Hans loot hares at all?

Yes! Kinda!

Under the following circumstances, Hans will try to collect his hare meat:

The hunt has ended (i.e. the quest has moved on to the "Return to camp" segment)

Hans has shot 3 hares in a row

Hans has shot all possible hares

The way looting is supposed to work is:

One of Hans' dogs runs over to the latest dead hare and barks

Hans walks over and praises the dog

Hans loots the hare

One of the dogs moves onto the next hare and this repeats

However, what actually happened when I observed Hans is that he only looted one hare successfully. The dog then ran to the next hare but Hans just stood in place forever. When I went with the dog instead and then teleported back to Hans to check what he was doing, the game just kinda skipped the looting sequence and Hans went back to shooting. There's clearly some bug here, maybe involving the dog getting too far away from Hans/the player and the AI shifting over to some off-screen-simulation mode.

Can Hans win?

Yes, but the player is 'cheating' so it's very unlikely.

Hans gets 5 hare meat per looted hare.

The player gets a randomised amount (also based on hunting skill I think?), but it's likely to be 10-20 meat.

The quest compares the amount of meat each person has.

There are seven hares in total for Hans to hunt. If Hans kills and successfully loots all seven, he will have a maximum of 35 meat. So Hans has to kill a lot more hares than the player to have a chance of winning.

(To be fair, Hans can also cheat a bit: if you shoot the hare he's targeting, it will still count as his trophy and he'll loot it.)

Hans is also, well, really bad at shooting the hares. He misses the vast majority of his shots. Add that to his inability to loot them all, his nerfed loot amount, and his propensity to get stuck, and it's extremely unlikely he'll win.

What if you don't follow Hans?

AI works differently offscreen. Most players won't follow Hans, they'll go off and hunt their own hares. Can Hans even kill and loot hares if the player isn't looking at him?

I ran three tests on new debug games where I just skipped time at camp until 1300 each time. Hans had 0 hare meat on all three tests (whereas when I followed him he always managed to loot at least one hare).

I also ran a test where I waited in place but didn't skip time. He had 0 meat in this test too.

So I'm assuming that if you don't run into him and follow him long enough for him to shoot and loot, he's always doomed to lose.

What happens if Hans wins?

Nothing interesting. He just says "A pretty poor catch, Henry. See, unlike you, I know how to hit a target."

If both of you have >25 hare meat and you didn't follow him around (which seems to be an impossible condition based on my tests) then he says "My word! The two of us could supply the whole of Rattay with game!"

Bonus fun fact

Hans' dogs are just called 'Dog' ingame, but in the code they're named Packa and Tapka.

[prism-mirror-lens]

Five reasons I love the cut hansry dialogue

Henry (boldly): I'm sure it's not what you expected… But there's no one else for me. That's just the way it is. Ma: Well… you won't have it easy. But if you love him… maybe you'll find happiness together.

1. It's the only mention of 'love' in this scene for any romance option. The dialogue path is also named "love capon". For the others Henry says "I'd like to win Rosa's hand." or "I'll stay with Katherine. She needs me." and Ma wishes happiness.

2. The ending of KCD2 leaves things quite ambiguous with Hans. He isn't sure what will happen in the future and they both seem awkward. Henry just sounds a bit ashamed talking about Hans to his parents. The cut dialogue at least suggests that Hans' romance was intended to be an actual love relationship and that Henry was originally a lot more certain of his choice. Review notes indicate that this dialogue was present between Sept 2021 to Sept 2022, with most game dialogue written/reviewed 2019-2023.

3. The game suggests a happy ending despite everything. "If you love him… maybe you'll find happiness together." The game itself is more optimistic about the relationship than fans who see it as doomed yaoi or whatever.

4. The original dialogue says more about the complicated relationships between Henry, Radzig and Ma. In the final version, Ma scolds Pa, but says nothing else. In the cut version, Henry imagines Ma wishing him love and happiness in his relationship with a noble he can never really be with. What does that say about how Henry sees the relationship between Radzig and Ma, and what he thinks Ma might have dreamed of?

5. While the writer on some of the cut/obsolete file is listed as Malatinsky, the writer on the "there's no one else for me"/"If you love him" lines is listed as Vavra. This amuses me.

(I'm not convinced he ACTUALLY wrote those lines, it might be that his name is some default value for the field, the idea is great though. Who suppressed Vavra's hansry lines!?)

[playpausephoto]

Simple Followers by keltaria makes dreams come true.

- Thank you @prism-mirror-lens

[prism-mirror-lens]

I just published a new KCD2 mod: Simple Followers!

Take pookie into the open world! He'll follow you anywhere. Even to places he probably shouldn't.

Finally, you can have that romantic fountain date you've always dreamed off.

Get it at Nexus Mods: Simple Followers by keltaria

Also check out my other hansry mods (also available on Steam Workshop):

Hans at the Forge

Where's Hans?

[prism-mirror-lens]

My epic Katherine rant pt 1: Katherine's personality change

(warning gigantic wall of text)

Katherine completely changes at Maleshov. It seems to be an intentional change. It's just not one I buy.

Katherine's established character

Katherine is set up to be capable and strong-minded. Interactions with her at Trosky/Suchdol prove that she can pick pockets, kill men, spy on important conversations, steal items and help prepare for sieges.

In the conversation with Peter of Pisek at Suchdol, Katherine participates on a fairly equal level with Henry and Zizka, even interrupting them to stop them saying something inopportune or fix what's already been said. She chats with the combat master of Suchdol and clearly knows about sieges and fighting forces: she doesn't think much of his men and berates him about the crumbling walls and towers.

During her sidequest, Katherine is absolutely on the side of killing the perpetrator. "I'd enjoy the idea of her burning in Hell … What would you say if I kept telling you to forget about Sigismund, about revenge?" Henry can ask if revenge and justice are the same to her, and she doesn't disagree.

When you talk to Katherine in the bath at the camp, she has no real problem with the danger of being in the camp or the danger of the plan itself.

Up to this point, Katherine acts as if she's a hardened veteran. She's not traumatised by the deaths of named characters at Nebakov; she outright celebrates Mikesh's death, and she only softens her statement that Klara is dead when Henry is horrified by it. She's not afraid of anything and insists she can take care of herself. She's bloodthirsty and willing to kill personally in her sidequest. She's not flustered by Zizka and Henry's torture. She has nothing to say about Henry breaking into Maleshov alone to rescue Hans, which is basically a suicide mission. I think this is a fairly cohesive character concept: she's hardened by war, she wants revenge, she kills easily and flirts easily but doesn't let anyone get close to her except Zizka.

Katherine and Maleshov

But then there's a sudden change. When talking about sieging Maleshov, Katherine is completely different. She's visibly upset and opposes the action:

Henry: What's the matter? You didn't mind what we were doing until now. And all of a sudden… Katherine: Until now we chose our foe, one we stood a chance against, and engaged them when we had an edge! Katherine: And for some time now we've been getting into wilder and wilder enterprises! But go, if you "must". And try not to die there, damn it!

So the game wants to argue that this change is because Maleshov is far more dangerous than previous activities like Nebakov. But to the player this probably doesn't ring true. Maleshov is a planned attack which results in the forgettable loss of some no-name mercenaries. Maleshov is not a particularly long or difficult gameplay challenge. Nebakov, on the other hand, was a difficult situation which resulted in the loss of named NPCs, Hans almost being killed and then captured, and Zizka/Henry/Godwin being tortured. But Katherine, while saddened by some deaths at Nebakov, also takes them in stride as part of the life she's chosen: "You have to live every day like it's going to be your last. That's all you can do in our trade." She only starts opposing plans and worrying about people being killed starting with Maleshov.

The real explanation is, I guess, given at the end of the same conversation.

Katherine: I don't know what you want. I can't figure you out. Henry: That makes two of us. What's changed? We've been fighting the whole time. Katherine: Nothing's changed. Except that with every passing day you're risking more and more. Just… just try not to get killed, Henry.

So apparently we have to believe that Katherine has had a complete change from being a tough woman who's been in multiple combat situations to being a scared crying mom figure because… she has a crush on Henry.

Men and violence

It's also at this point that she starts turning into a generic female character who complains about men and violence.

Henry: We must defeat and capture von Bergow. Katherine: Aye, there's always some "we must" with you fellahs!

Katherine: Men, men! As if everything revolved around you! Henry: There's a war on. We have to fight. Katherine: Have to? You have to keep killing?

This pretty much comes out of the blue and continues for the rest of the game. It's completely understandable why Katherine would hate men, but she hasn't expressed it until this point and never explains why she's voluntarily hanging out with a band of men. It made sense when her character was highly motivated by revenge; she was willing to stay with Zizka's band to achieve that revenge. But now that she suddenly hates killing and revenge… why is she here? And why is she acting like war and violence is men's silly business, when she was enthusiastically participating a minute ago?

(Klara, interestingly, has some very similar dialogue about silly men and their wars. Same writer, or just an easy hackneyed line to grab when you don't know what your female character should say?)

Frustratingly, you can ask Katherine why she's here ("I keep wondering why a woman like you tags along with blokes like us…"), but she refuses to answer. Henry can try to bond with her by suggesting that it's because she's the same as him: he has nothing left and the Pack is his family now. You don't get a rep decrease for this like you do from saying she's here for "no reason", but Katherine still gets angry, insults the Pack ("Murderers, drunks, fornicators and gamblers led by the Devil himself…"), and finally says "Look, I'm simply here. Does it bother you? Would you prefer if I wasn't here?".

Why do the writers shy away from having her talk about revenge here? Obviously they don't want Katherine to spill the beans about her backstory until the end of the game, but where is the bloodthirstiness she displays in her sidequest, the hardness she displays in Trosky? This dialogue also implies that Henry is right (and that Katherine just doesn't like this description of her), but bearing in mind that the Pack already dissipated yet Katherine still stayed with Zizka and even opposed getting some of the Pack back, I still find this explanation weirdly lacking. I felt that this conversation was a cop-out where the writers couldn't give a coherent answer or perhaps felt uncomfortable giving a (romanceable) woman a violent motivation so just avoided the question instead.

In the post-game conversations, Katherine is conflicted about Brabant: Henry: I killed Brabant. Katherine: Good. Henry: Good? Katherine: It's good he paid for what he did. It's good he can't harm anyone again. Katherine: But I'm sad for every horrible deed we do to put right other horrible deeds. It's wrong. Katherine: Even so, I think there was no other option.

Compare this to the dialogue in her sidequest:

Henry: So, do you still have no regrets about how things turned out? Katherine: Why should I have? That bitch deserved what she got. And she even thought what she did was a righteous thing! It makes me want to cry. And kill her again! … Katherine: I know very well killing her was against the law, but also just. Henry: But what if…? Katherine: There's no buts here. And it wasn't a mistake. I'd kill her again in a flash! Henry: If you're so sure about it… Katherine: I'm well aware of the kind of justice you can expect in this world. Katherine: You've killed a lot of people too. Can you be so sure that all of them deserved it? Well, I'm sure about this one!

If Katherine had a consistent character concept, she ought to have similar reactions to both Brabant and the sidequest murderer. If Katherine is supposed to have had a change of heart somewhere during the course of the game, they needed to actually show some events that plausibly caused that!

Is Katherine a medic?

Near the end, the game apparently forgets about Katherine's established skills and relegates her to sitting around being guarded or to the infirmary at Suchdol. I've seen several fans recently refer to her as a combat medic/healer/nurse as if that's her main role in the game. In fact she seems to have no specialised knowledge about medical care - she isn't involved with, say, healing Zizka's eye or torture wounds, and in the infirmary she can only bandage Henry, tell him to make his own healing decoction, or tell him that she has decoctions made by Musa.

By Suchdol, what has happened to her knowing about siegecraft? What happened to her being able to actively spy and get into places she's not supposed to be? What happened to her being able and willing to kill? What happened to her being a stealth skill teacher? Why can't she, for example, give Henry advice about infiltrating Sigismund's camp or offer him poisons to help? Instead she's stuck crying about it in the infirmary!

I wish they had stuck with Trosky-and-sidequest-Katherine for the whole game: a woman who actually wants to kill, who's willing to put herself in danger for vigilante justice, who's unfazed by torture and death. Much of the rest of the game pushes Henry away from revenge and gives the message that revenge is a cycle which should be broken. It would have been really interesting to have a romanceable character who convincingly argues for revenge and rewards Henry's darker actions.

[prism-mirror-lens]

Not a big fan of the Larian director of publishing having a pleasant little teehee with the homophobic-KCD developer about this

https://nitter.net/Cromwelp/status/2014263902951858297

[actualmermaid]

So you want to learn about the Middle Ages in a little more depth, but you're intimidated and you don't know where to start

Welcome to

Accessible, intro-level, hobbyist-friendly information sources that will interest KCD fan creators and other curious people from all walks of life

As usual, I am not a historian, and this is not a comprehensive list of sources on anything. This is a list of sources that I have found especially user-friendly and easy to dig into on my own adventures into the deep, dense world of medieval history.

Some questions you might have, but are too afraid to ask:

"I don't know jack shit about the Middle Ages, or I know a bit, but I'm concerned I might be working with old myths and misconceptions. I want to read one book that will get me on the right track."

The book you want is The Bright Ages.

"I want to know more about the way people lived in the Middle Ages. Not just the nobility, but the common people too."

Look for the authors Joseph and Frances Gies, a married couple who began their careers as a magazine editor and a schoolteacher. They wrote something like 21 books focusing on aspects of medieval society and culture in a readable, accessible style. Most, but not all, of their work deals with England and France.

"I don't want to read a book. How about a podcast? Something with good information, short-ish episodes on a variety of topics, and solid production value?"

Listen to The Medieval Podcast or Gone Medieval.

"I write smutty fanfic, but I want it to be historically-informed! I want to have a solid informational background for how sexuality worked in the Middle Ages."

The book you want is Sexuality in Medieval Europe: Doing Unto Others. It's an academic title, so you might need to dig around for it if you don't want to pay full price, but there's no good substitute for it as an introduction to the field. The book also contains a substantial bibliography on more in-depth sources.

Happy reading/listening/creating!

[prism-mirror-lens]

More tales from the KCD2 modding tools

(Part 1 here)

The main characters are all internally called Henry's 'Best Friends Forever'. (BFFs will ignore Henry doing crimes right in front of them.) So yes, your fav character really is officially your BFF.

People who let you sleep and eat at their house are called 'friends with benefits'. This includes Bozhena and Pavlena, Vostatek, Barnaby, Leopold from Katherine's quest, Arne and Menhart, and a bunch of other people… Henry really gets around.

There's a 'decapitated' Capon outfit (UC_CaponDecapitated). He's not actually headless while wearing it! Maybe Hans' hanging was originally supposed to be a beheading?

Vavra has left quite a few review comments on dialogue and many of them are, let's say, in his usual blunt style:

(I THINK the 'je to gay' one is complaining about word choice or something, since the final Czech line uses chlapi rather than hoši, but I don't speak a word of Czech so don't ask me to explain!!!)

The 6 horse genders of KCD:

(remember the three human genders are male, female and Henry)

Dead skinned horses are actually… wearing underwear? Putting the carcass_horse 'underwear' on a normal horse makes it a skinned legless carcass.

I didn't notice this in the actual ending cutscene, but Sigismund has his own unique undies!

[suiine]

Is he slinging shit at himself and Mutt or does he just really really want to name that dog?

Henry: "Monarch" is too regal a name for a mangy dog like that from the arsehole of the world!

Henry: mangy dogs from the arsehole of the world are named "Henry" or "Mutt the 2nd" 😊

[kcdconfessions]

hello! welcome to the 2nd edition of kcd confessions! this one is being admined by a different person :) but i wanted to thank the original creator of the, now deleted, kcdconfessions, that blog was a lot of fun to read and i miss it. so: here it is! kcdconfessions.... 2!

Rules & Tags to be added :)

[prism-mirror-lens]

May I posit that one reason the hansry romance is enjoyable for female players is that it involves a person in a privileged social position by birth which you can never hope to attain vowing to “surrender… even though [he has] the upper hand” in order to treat you as an equal

[rednightmare18]

I admit it annoys me that the critical coverage of KCD, when it even mentions romance, just shaves off a sliver of comment like, "Oh and you can be gay too so jot that down [suck it Bioware!]"

This is obnoxious of me, but that's such a weird and disrespectful undercut. I don't know if it's the inherent discomfort of Warhorse's dev team being a political mess or if it's the discomfort of a fanbase that has historically been heavily comprised of 30+ y.o. men, but it's very noticeable to me that I don't see mainline critics even brushing up against mentioning that no big production game - well, kind of ever - has pulled off a 2-installment protagonist-deuteragonist progressing romance in this way, as in weaving it inextricably from the main story, let alone for this audience, let alone a sincere love story between men set in a time period infamously co-opted & resculpted by today's extreme right wing. When KCD2 was in earlier stages of development, media coverage obsessed over the "continuing bromance" of these characters, and now with game in hand it's dead silent on the storytelling choreography, the quality of that choreography, and the dynamic itself. Did not see such a noticeable silence on similar titles in which lighter-hitting, side-questier romances were often nattered about to the point of media obsession. Do we think we're just like too cool as gamers to acknowledge the feeling aspect of story-writing, even when it's doing something critically noteworthy & distinctive, or is it the bigotry in the baking mix here? Are we just gonna really intently not look at it together? C'mon now.

[prism-mirror-lens]

Agree, I’ve never seen any ‘optional’ relationship in an RPG structured like this where it adds many layers of subtext to the main story rather than being a siloed sidequest. Even leaving aside the quality of the romance itself, it’s incredibly interesting that they told two different stories with 90% of the same script, and it’s something that only the medium of gaming can really do. If you choose the romance, the entire game is recontextualised to make this romance a large part of Hans’ coming-of-age story which takes up a lot of the main plot of 2 (Hans is the character who grows and changes the most in 2). But I don’t see the romance being talked about as if it’s much different from a Larian/Bioware romance where you do some flirting and get a sex scene and nothing else changes.

The skittishness of critics to talk about it reminds me of how the media couldn’t shut up about how Mass Effect 1 (2007) had BLUE ALIEN LESBIAN SEX but it was politically unthinkable to have a gay male romance in the same RPG until years later. A queer relationship in a game can be talked about and even celebrated as long as the straight male audience can still regard it as a titillating novelty, a joke, or an ignorable five-minute sidequest with YA-level writing. Beyond that there is the uncomfortable feeling that if critics talk seriously about it, the game will be relegated to being ‘a gay game’ (excluding it from all other genres and from a general audience).