Stolen from myself 6 months ago at https://lemmyverse.link/lemmy.zip/post/35616522
I know I remember seeing some people talk about how nice some of the environments in Hitman were, and that they’d just walk around as a tourist from time to time, treating it like a walking simulator/virtual tourism thing instead of the stealth assassination game it is. Curious about other things like that, where you play a game totally differently than it was meant to be played.
Well, given that a lot of people in this thread are basically just saying " go sight seeing / abandon storyline and embrace roleplaying "…
I’m gonna go with basically “do anything” in Kenshi.
There is no thing you are supposed to be doing, beyond possibly ‘don’t die’.
There is no main storyline to follow.
You… just exist.
You can sure find a lot of things to do, places to see, and people to meet, basically quests to undertake… but that is all entirely up to you.
So there is no wrong, or right way to play Kenshi.
The world just kind of… happens to you, and then you react.
Or, maybe you have some notion of what you want to do, and then you try to do, and then the world happens to you during that.
Imagine either a single player MMO, or an immersive sim that focuses on an immerisive world of factions and individuals, which can play out many possible ways, which you can guide and steer those outcomes… but nothing ‘has’ to happen, there are no threads of prophecy that cannot be severed.
Theoretically, you could kill basically everyone… maybe?
You could build a city, run some kind of farm or mining operation, become a warlord, raise and command an army, wander as a trader or trading caravan, hunt for lore and artefacts, become the strongest warrior, best thief or assassin…
… or be eaten by cannibals or beak things, experience robot racism, be taken captive and forced into literal slavery at a prison camp, have your limbs peeled off, replace them with robot limbs, get incinerated by a misfiring orbital laser platform… or befriend a mentally challenged … sort of bugmanthing who has been outcast from his hive, but is very endearing…
Or just be friends with a bonedog.
I have actually seen one Japanese youtuber basically just turn their playthrough of Kenshi into a kind of semi-improvised anime.
They’ll have 15 to 30 minute episodes and write in some dialogue for their 2 person party, and then have a vocaloid type thing speak it, and they’ll do like ren py visual novel framing / blocking, overlaid on top of the game, with more detailed drawn art of the characters.
Unexpected shit happens fairly frequently, and they just roll their characterization along with it, into a semi ad libbed plot/narrative.
That… is a ‘way’ to play Kenshi.