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Videogames—RPGs in particular—just love to make us go for a wander with an NPC. Whether it’s the tiresome MMO mainstay of an escort quest, following an NPC to a bandit camp where their mate’s being held, or simply sauntering down a road having a chat, we are expected to give up a significant chunk of our lives to this most mundane task. Which wouldn’t be that bad if NPCs walked at a normal pace. But they almost never do—because game devs delight in tormenting us. Presumably.
The consistency with which NPC and player walking speeds fail to match up suggests some sort of global conspiracy. Nothing else makes sense. It’s such a simple thing, you’d think, given that designers know that there’s always going to be a specific speed range that players are moving within.
Sure, you might have a sprint, or a sneak, and you might be able to control your speed more precisely when playing with a controller, but there’s still always a minimum and maximum speed. Yet so many games are filled to the brim with NPCs that willfully ignore this, walking or running at a pace that’s too fast for the slowest player speed and too slow for a faster one, making it impossible to match the NPC’s pace without constantly stopping and starting.
This is just annoying enough for it to be distracting—you become more focused on keeping pace with the NPC than hearing what they have to say, turning even the most leisurely stroll into a big ol’ chore. And we’ve been very vocal about hating it, yet it crops up all the frigging time. It is an ancient issue that has multiple demonstrable solutions, but rarely do games bother trying to rectify it.
Kingdom Come: Deliverance 2 does not fall into this camp. It’s one of the rarities—the type of game we should treasure—that finds a nice, clean solution. Instead of NPCs having to take into account all the possible speeds the player might move at, and instead of players needing to find a sweet spot where they can match the pace of the NPC, the process is automated. You hit a button and you simply follow the NPC without any further input.
Now you can just enjoy the conversation and soak in the sights of Bohemia without a care in the world. Well, except for the civil war, the mountain of injustices and the very real possibility that you might get stabbed in the face. Walking with a pal, though, is no longer a concern. This extends to trips on horseback, too, and if you’re riding with multiple people you can choose who to follow.
This is just one of several ways that KCD2 makes travel less frustrating. The fast travel system is one of the best around, for instance, and finds a sweet spot between convenience and maintaining interesting journeys. And even when you’re riding alone, you can command your horse to follow the road, so you don’t need to worry about your speed or direction until you hit a junction or hop off the beaten track.
You’ll cover a lot of ground in Henry’s shoes, and meaty journeys are part of KCD2’s appeal, so it’s such a relief that it cuts out a lot of the bullshit, instead just allowing you to enjoy exploring its gargantuan pair of maps without fiddly systems interrupting the good times. In huge games like this, it’s often these small details that make all the difference.
We’ve seen other solutions, too, though. Some games simply—and I know, this is madness—have NPCs move at either your slowest or fastest speeds, so you just follow along behind them. Others, like older Assassin Creeds, allow you to match the speed of the NPC when you get close enough, letting you sync up due to your proximity. These are not out-there solutions. They’re just common sense. And they’re not new ideas, either.
So yeah, I don’t think it’s too radical to suggest that devs who continue to force us to stop and start and stop and start and stop and start until we just break down and start screaming at NPCs should do jail time. By willfully tormenting us for years they have broken an important social contract and must be punished. They won’t learn, otherwise.
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Kurt Indovina
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