Ged’s Existential Nightmare 2
A Note on Crusader Kings III
Well now, here we are again after…could it really be one whole year? Time has certainly flown by. The world has changed drastically. Darkness looms once again as the colder seasons return to our shores.
And Crusader Kings III is still, very much, a cosmic horror show.
Many of you will remember this, from the last time we took some unwise and unsteady steps down the launch-day version of the game’s tutorial section. Who could have predicted what we would find? A competent teaching method? An effective albeit sadistic taskmaster? The frankly ugly as sin grey on grey text boxes that continue, for some reason, to exist a year later?
Of course, that is not all we found. There was a game there too, one I was already uneasy about having come from the overstuffed sandbox of CK2. And yet, we all fell deep into the pit, and liked what we found there. Here was a masterful patchwork of historical simulation, familial dynamics, chaos, human idiocy and brilliance. The game is most certainly a Paradox childe, albeit a heavily favoured and well-looked after one.
And we all remember what happened next. A ridiculous amount of launch sales. Hundreds of gaming awards and player acclaim. More people than ever discovering grand strategy, and CK strategy, for the first time.
Which leads us to AARs.
There was a lot of new people looking for more about their new favourite game. And they showed up in droves to read any and all stories about the wild and wacky things people were putting their poor characters through. Many even decided to spend hours of their life reading a story about the tutorial character.
These people have since been medicated, and gotten the help they so desperately needed.
There was controversy of course. Not only from players of CK2, which was to be expected, but also from AARland (which is a thing, if you did not know). CK3 was many things, but connected to the old Paradox forum system…it sorta wasn’t. This did not in fact spell the deathblow of either CK3 AARs or the wider AARland space, but it took a great deal of time for tempers to cool on both sides.
Now, of course, we are one year into what promises to be a long development cycle of DLC and expansion. Paradox have thus far shown restraint, releasing many large and far-reaching patches, and only one paid expansion (the Northern Lords, which we will get into later). However, soon (very soon in fact), another will drop, and the market will be truly established.
Will this game be warped and changed as much as CK2? I do not know, but I suspect so. Where will that take us in three years’ time? China? The Americas? CK2 has threatened such things before and never delivered entirely…but one thing is for certain.
CK3 is only just getting started. As are we, dear readers. The Nightmare is, as ever, only just beginning…
‘…I commend your pains,
And every one shall share i’ th’ gains.
And now all about the cauldron sing,
Like elves and fairies in a ring.'
'...By the pricking of my thumbs,
Something wicked this way comes…’
-Macbeth, Act 4, Scene 1
