Kenshi 2 - What We Know So Far and What We Can Expect

[Music] what's going on my guys you absolute mad lads hero and his head back again and we're gonna take some time today to go over everything we know currently as of march 2021 about kenji ii now for those of you who don't know or have not seen my original review video on kenji or the subsequent videos about the lore of kenji's first and second empires i really recommend that you check those out first as they're going to give some added context to some of the discussions involving kenshi too as it's supposed to be set during or immediately after the second empire itself so i'll post links on the screen now uh probably in the top right corner there but for those of you who have not seen them and don't really want to bother know that kenshi is an open world sandbox style rpg on pc with very deep lore intricately detailed design and mechanics and is just glorious in like every sense of the word and if my 1200 hours in game hasn't shown that i don't know what will now kenji ii was announced shortly after the wild success of its predecessor and while it does not have an official release day i will be throwing out some of my own speculation later on as to where i think we might see a release date or at the very least get a tentative date as of right now however it is up in the air from what we know about kenshi 2 it is taking place roughly a thousand years before the events of kenji's first game which for the game that emphasizes freedom of choice and pushes the you aren't important you are not the chosen one and you don't matter narrative i think it was definitely a step in the right direction because sequels usually require the dev team to establish a concrete cannon and legitimize only one narrative with games like dragon age obviously being the exception to that rule but by putting the game into the already established canon it really keeps the concept of no matter what you do this shit's going to happen how it happens which is one of kenji's most unique selling points now first and foremost the biggest change to kenji 2 is going to be the adjustment from its previous use of the ogre engine into the unreal four engine now when i heard this i was giddy as all holy hell because the unreal engine has been largely considered one of the best engines for tripoli in indie game design for quite a while now due to its versatility and its ability to employ sophisticated graphical enhancements smooth fps and high processing power allowing the game to run far better and with far more stability while in many ways not requiring as much beef on the consumer's end in regards to their pc and this is going to be a huge advantage to those who can't really afford high-end equipment and as you're going to see throughout the video the graphics in the screenshots and concept art and videos that lo-fi has released so far are gorgeous is all holy hell now aside from all of that if the 1 000 years before day is in fact correct and clear we're going to see a totally different kenji as established in my video on the second empire the army king stated that 937 years prior to the events of the first installment he started his store in the booming town of catch this means that not only was the empire still alive and acting as the primary governing body on the continent but was also still economically thriving at the time as such a thousand years back should show a very active but likely starting to crumble second empire as catlon began to lose grip on his territories to me this is really really exciting because we should see a more serious transition from the desert dwelling independent city-states in the future to something more unified and technologically sophisticated this idea is semi-legitimized by some of the concept art screenshots that actually have been posted by lo-fi on the screen right now the buildings in the concept are have a much less scrap metal hovel look and show a much more industrialized concrete and are a lot grander in scale to the buildings that we see in kenshi one the layout of the buildings almost mimic a futuristic style template while not crossing into that hyper advanced line that we would expect from say the first empire but it shows a clear increase in the technological capabilities of the second empire over say the scattered city-states of the first game this is even shown in a less sophisticated small prairie-like home on the screen right now you can see that while there's a slight decline in the right building's design in comparison to the left there is still a level of quality and sturdiness to the buildings that kenshi one just didn't have uh very industrialized and utilizing concrete buildings and shapes that are less random and more reflective of an age where resources technology and manufacturing were farther along than in say the post-post-apocalypse that was the first installment of the kenshi series plus like who doesn't love a concrete quanza hut and in fact you know actually guys comment below i love concrete quonset huts so much give me more of them hashtag kwanzit city that's what i want to see the majority of my comments to be down there let our mad lads over at lo-fi know where we stand with this the age of the quonset huts has begun it's a common my guys now along that same avenue is lo-fi actually recently released a video on their official youtube channel with link in the description below and that video shows the entire process of designing and modeling the walls and gates they've been showing off in their concept trailers and again it fits perfectly with that industrialized concrete heavily manufactured design that appears to be the primary theme that's going to be featured in the second empire which is a solid transition from high advances of the first empire and the hobbles of modern kenji that we know it's a solid middle ground really really good looking stuff and i am so excited to see how the world looks in this altered landscape which actually will lead into the next little bit of info that i have on kenji 2. currently major known planned features include a larger expanded world and new and old landmasses to explore more dynamic faction interactions as well as a major new game-changing mechanic that is being kept secret which is a quote directly ripped from the kenji to wiki and actually came right from chris hunt himself now this is super important because for those of you who have watched my second empire video they know that the skeletons made regular references to the water levels being significantly different back in the age of the second empire and the boats were actually a huge source of travel and movement back in the day as well as pirates being a huge problem and actually the threat of the pirates contributed greatly to the collapse of the empire itself this to me coupled with numerous concept arts all depicting some kind of aquatic vehicle as shown on screen now is a solid indication that we can expect significantly more bodies of waters like rivers lakes seas as well as my own personal theory that this game-changing system is going to involve some kind of aquatic transportation on boats and maybe even pirate encounters which would be tits if you ask me now again this is purely speculative on my part but lo-fi has seemed to include a large number of boats in all of their concept arts and i don't think that can be a coincidence that for so many official lo-fi concept arts for kenji too there seems to always be some kind of boat involved in the art um just it plays out too well and i i don't think that it's it's a coincidence um something else of note is that it could easily just be a secrecy thing i definitely wouldn't want to give away too much too soon if i was low five but a lot of the content they've put out save the occasional armor design and the one video of the skimmer a lot of the content they put out tends to be focused largely on base building and settlement related content there's a lot of screenshots which i will take a minute to cycle through on the screen as i'm talking as well as numerous videos of the advancements made to the placement and grid snapping and all that stuff in the build menu so because of this i think that it's safe to say that the building mechanics are going to be really improved in terms of functionality and general purpose from kenshi one and they really do seem to putting in a ton of effort into the settlement system or at the very least making it appear that that is one of their prime directives now one thing of note however is that while they've been showing a lot of settlement work settlements have never been the prime purpose of kenji chris hunt himself has even gone on to say that the primary purpose of kenji has never been the settlement system it has always been about the adventures with your group and having a base to fall back to but not micromanaging a city so i don't think that the settlement is going to be a huge part of kenji too i think that's just what they're showing the reason why i say that is that a lot of the items and furniture in the screenshots that they're showing are still untextured the buildings are good the terrain is good the characters are good the items are still untextured so if it was a primary thing that they're focusing on you'd think that they would put more time developing the textures for the uh the items and they're not to me all of this points to a misdirect and the majority of the resources are actually being put into world building while we see the scraps as they come out for the settlement system which is probably how i honestly would handle it myself too but that's just me now about a year and a half ago chris hunt the man behind the curtain actually did an ama on reddit regarding kenshi and some of the questions he received were about kenji too now while chris is a man of very few words he did state that any answers about the second installment are not set in stone and to not hold him accountable for the things that he is potentially saying down the line which is totally fair but there is still cause to look at some of the more in-depth and interesting comments for what we can potentially see in kenshi 2 so i'm going to read off some of the ones that i found the most interesting our assumption this game currently is that it will be like the last days before the collapse of the roman empire as opposed to a century or millennia later as in like fallout how will the advanced technology of the past affect weapons and combat in the new kenshi more range combat focus power armor whatever this thing is and there's a link the main factions in kenshi one are famed for their lack of holding the moral high ground you intended for players to be the robin hoods but a highly requested feature was for players to be more like fallout new vegas caesar's legion and do the same things will players have more control over whether to be lawful evil and the third question was player cities please and chris's response was ranged weapons will likely be more dominant than ken she won technology level is generally a little higher and i'll think about it in regards to the um moral ambiguity of the player and giving them the ability to have more of an impact in the world and then number three was i prefer to spend more time focusing on other features being a mayor as a whole rabbit hole of features and bugs to go down which he actually explains later on um about micromanaging so i'll get into that in just a minute next will kenji 2 reveal more details about the hive's origins this is one thing which i think we know least about regard regarding lore so i'd love to know he said there will be more revealed about the lore and past history including the hives which is really cool because if you notice in my kenji lore videos in both the first and second installment i had nothing about the hives it's because we just know nothing all we know is that they showed up and and that's that's about it we don't know anything about that i have my own speculations and theories but i'll save that for a different time um because they're incredibly out there and really baseless but i don't know we just don't know um next is there any consideration to add more survival aspects to kenji too specifically along the lines of heat and water it seems semi-unrealistic that we can wander through the scorch desert surviving off bone dry sandwiches secondly will the stage of kenji to be set a thousand years before the current game take away from the derelict and ruined aesthetic of the game that we all love and three i'm sure you get this a lot but will the next version of the engine slash kenji ii allow for more extensive modding modding will turn these games truly immortal in my opinion think the elder scrolls and fallout and which he responded with i tried to make the hunger system as unintrusive as possible when you have a lot of characters you have to avoid micromanagement that's why they eat automatically and infrequently but at great cost to allow you to forget about it as much as possible adding more aspects means more micromanaging i could add water but how would it be different from hunger the idea is that water is abstracted within the hunger system i could have add heat and cold but do you really want to carry around more spare clothes and have to dress 30 characters every time the weather changes so unlikely on that end um two if anything it will increase which is uh in regards to the aesthetic of the game which is fantastic because we're more likely to see more ruins from uh the first empire which is outstanding a highly technologically advanced society so i'm really excited to see that i hope we get more on the betrayal at obedience and the behemoths that would be fantastic and lastly number three um unknown at this point in regards to the modding and the allowing it to be more extensive and that is largely due to the limitations of the engine because the unreal engine is largely in c plus plus and it makes modding slightly difficult in many ways so uh we'll see about that and so the next question we have is will kenji 2 be more advanced kenji is all fine and all but the world isn't alive so to speak there's no dynamic economy no global politics no dynamic population just a bunch of npcs and they're sand castles plus what the player can actually do is very limited i would disagree uh your faction doesn't matter you can't set up a thriving city own a true faction of your own take over cities open trade routes so again will kenji to expand on or at least some of that or will it be rather similar to the old one so i would actually disagree with a lot of that before i even read chris's response i think the game has very very open-ended gives you a lot of options and i think that doesn't let you do all of those things because it would conflict with the core basis of the game which is that you don't matter and that you are not supposed to be the person that changes the world but the more dynamic a game gets the more unstable it becomes exactly the game world is already pretty unstable like when hordes of spiders wipe out towns dynamic economies are a nightmare to balance imagine playing for a few game in-game weeks and finding out the united cities now own every town which is cool at first but then exploration becomes boring maybe you never got a chance to visit any of the other factions mountain blade for example apparently had an artificial limit in place to stop any faction from being defeated or taking over the world if one started winning or losing too much then the tide of war would change it's also a matter of game focus i never intended the game to be a city manager which is where my original idea in the beginning came that the settlement system is being what were is what were being showed because it's the least important thing it's supposed to be about your squad and their adventures having a safe fortress to retreat to but not being a mayor that said i do want to take a look at making the faction warfare more dynamic in the next game next we have what is your priority with the next kenji game what is one thing you really want to include in the games and then i and i am sure many others too are full of ideas for kenji where is the best place for us to relay our ideas to you um his response was the big feature the big amazing secret one which i already told you i think is some kind of aquatic traveler something to do with an aquatic nature but that's purely speculative and we're not sure yet but that's that's what i believe there were a lot of small features i missed i wanted animals to poo everywhere and mating in the wild and people's hair to growl which we might get in the sequels um two i have so many features that will never make it already the thing that is useful is detailed specific reasoned feedback based on your play experience things you were lacking or felt out of balance and why and then the last one were you expecting the game to spawn such a huge modding community also can we expect more hairstyles or faces for character creation in kenji ii or possibly more races his response was yes it will look a lot better which the screenshots and concept are have already showed we haven't seen any character design but i'm so excited because he says we have a new character artist who worked before with ubisoft and we also have the famed concept artist callum alexander watt who worked on star wars which is huge so at the very least um with the graphical enhancements we can definitely expect some solid character creation from people who have worked with really big names and worked on presumably really big games too um and they know what they're doing and they know how to create really detailed and custom characters so so far that's uh what we have in terms of what chris has directly told us and again this is all purely speculative it's a lot of reaching on my end a lot of connecting things from my old previous videos but this is generally what i think we know about kenshi 2 and what we can look forward to now in terms of a release date i can say that we are not going to be waiting another decade seeing as that lo-fi has more employees it's not just chris and he has significantly more funding this time around which also means it's more likely that we're not going to get that open beta that we got last time because they don't need the funding to finish the product there may be a bug testing phase towards the end that is open to the public but that is too far out and in the dark for me to speculate and honestly it's just up to what they want however given what we've seen and the quality of the work and the models that are finished and the textures that are not the screenshots the videos all that stuff i would honestly give that we will receive a tentative release date by late q4 early q1 of 2021 2022 so by the end of this year beginning of next and a potential beta release by q4 2022 and q1 2023 so i'm thinking about a year and a half to a three year time range before the release and this is largely due to chris's decision to avoid publishers which is a fantastic decision because it means that we're getting quality instead of a game early on like we got with um say you know cyberpunk but that is purely speculative and we could receive more information any day in which case i will be the first to jump on it with the news and tell you guys what is going on so that's gonna wrap everything up i know this was a longer video i usually try to stick with the 10 minute range but we had a lot to go over um so this is this should get you guys all up to date on everything we know about the world of kenji and the state of kenji too um if you guys know something that i don't or i left something out please leave it in the comment section below please remember to smash that like button subscribe and join the mad lads guild and i will catch you guys in the next video

Channel: Hero In His Head

Views: 86,855

Keywords: virtualreality, vr, augmentedreality, #gaming, ar, technology, virtual, htcvive, vrgaming, virtualrealitygames, oculusrift, art, virtualrealityworld, mixedreality, oculusquest, vrgames, gamer, games, game, vrgame, videogames, ps, digitalart, tech, vrchat, commentary, review, kenshi, Welcome To, pcgaming, pc, rpg, simulator, samurai, army, Desert, planet, gaming, PC, survival, difficult, narration, lore, voiceover, story, reddit, Kenshi 2, News, Gaming news, Development, lo-fi, theory, game theory

Id: gkm2gQ7g30M

Length: 19min 23sec (1163 seconds)

Published: Fri Mar 12 2021