Kenshi - Meet the makers

I had never seen Chris Hunt talk about Kenshi - he is pretty much exactly how id imagined him. Doesn't do a lot of talking, dialed in on getting the thing made, ain't sayin shit about what he's up to until it's ready to go. Not surprised at all they basically told folks nothing about Kenshi 2. I hope they stick to that and just turn it loose when it's ready, because that feeling of both discovering a huge place and of slowly becoming something within it is best experienced knowing nothing about what is out there.

Death being difficult to achieve is core to that, and it's interesting to me how something so opposite to reality ends up making an experience more relatable. It is actually fairly difficult to die in Kenshi if you're not doing special rules/difficulty options. You can get completely smashed by a gang of robots and wiggle limbless back to home base - can't relate to that specifically (thankfully?) but it does do a great job of serving in place of the idea that sometimes you really get your ass handed to you, and have to regroup. That happens in other games, but in say a TES game, its far more common to die and reload, so whatever regrouping you do doesn't directly connect to the event in the same way. In souls you just fade back in and do the same stretch again. You can feel like you took revenge, but it's more of an imaginary. Kenshi allows for the full experience/history to play out, and from that comes a deeper sort of self-crafted narrative if you just roll with the punches and keep on keepin' on.

Few games accomplish the same mix, where the story of what you do is as much a function of the world turning as it is the moves you make. It took me a while before I got into playing it but pretty quickly it made me realize I am right on board with how it approaches doing a big roleplaying game. Good gameplay reigns supreme so I'll happily play a well made power fantasy, but I agree with Chris on the unrelatable aspect of that sort of storytelling. I can't really relate to being a hero and changing the world, or being charged with saving anything. As much as I enjoyed a game like Elden Ring, being the person charged with breaking the cycles of history feels like a sort of buddhist-y, maximal version of that kind of setup. It's a bit more relatable in that you get to it through much struggle, you grow and change and that is definitely how life can be, but the very end (as much fun as it is to get there) tends to be kinda simple and not really very satisfying, and imo every souls game was like that. You get told a basic idea of what happens, but you're shown very little, and your character is just over. You can repeat the cycle if you want, but you can't see what happens after you break it. Kenshi lets you keep going, pretty much no matter what happens. There is no transcendent moment, you never become anything more than another weird dipshit on the sand planet. You just do what you do, things rise and fall, and eventually you come to your own conclusion and begin again.

You can become an unstoppable cyborg warlord and conquer the world with a cannibal army but even in reaching that it is made abundantly clear, best you can do is be an Ozymandias. With time all becomes dust, so take risks, steal the robot leg and see if you can keep it when the alien guys all come out to beat your ass over it. Retreat, hack off one of yours and return, bechromed and angry over folks defending their own property like that. Be an ancient robot and roam the wastes with the skinwalkers. Raise a pack of animals and build a farm. Buy a house, make friends, be a ninja gang. Learn how to make weapons, do trade caravans and see the world. Totally up to you, and the story will only grow as you keep going. Eventually, between doing things, angering people, and finding cool stuff you'll come out with a fun story.