Battle Brothers Hits Early Access

Oh that’s sad to find out. Boooooo.

Brothers,

I have a dumb question. Do I need to turn on Ironman to earn achievements? Asking this because it seems that achievements for failure have lower global achievement rate while quest achievement like getting a full company is significantly higher.

I’m suspecting it’s either I’m really terrible at this game or Ironman isn’t a prerequisite to earn achievements. I have been playing with Ironman On since day 1.

I just restarted on the PC base game and NOT on Ironman and have been getting achievements.

Not to belabor the point, but I was digging into the event trees a little bit to see about actually making that mod, and this discovery struck me as the worst of the ones I’ve seen so far.

In the event called Pimps and Harlots, you come upon a group of prostitutes. This might be the second stage of the event, but at this point you can:

1 - Sleep with them all, which raises your morale
2 - Kill them all, which gets you some gear and gets a lot of your fighters hurt.
3 - Pass

If you pass, a few of your fighters lose some morale, but here is the flavor text:

Despite the protests of some of your men, you decline the pimp’s offer. She (the pimp) shrugs.

“Damn, I knew I should have invested in little boys. Well, suit yerself.”

Ugh, I’ve had this one on the wish list for quite a while, but now I’m really reconsidering. I’m usually not hugely bothered by this kind of stuff that seems pretty easy to ignore, but the extra background provided by @strategy above just sits wrong. And you know what? There are so many games out there these days, no need to sweat it over one.

I really like the game itself as like a fantasy x-com, but I haven’t read any of the event flavor texts since the tutorial so I hadn’t noticed these gross things. But there’s so many good games out there that I would have gone with had I known.

It’s the usual split between creator and their work. FWIW, I’d note that I’ve never heard anything particularly critical about the developers of the games themselves - though, as mentioned, I think their continued collaboration with the writer, their being OK with the level of writing in the game, and their excuses to consider adding “battle sisters” (which has been requested a fair number of times) hints at their attitudes.

It’s a 9/10 game with 2/10 writing. As @Zilla_Blitz notes - it’s not just the attempts to be “edgy”; it’s that the writing clearly tries so very hard to be. And everyone’s threshold for how much of that they can look past will be different. I’ve played the game a fair bit, but I do think I’d have played it a lot more (and gotten some of the DLC) if the writing was better, because the core of the gameplay is extremely solid.

I’ve been through most of those events a couple times at least. I noticed the terrible writing and began to just click through all event dialog. I don’t think I ever read the entirety of the “prostitutes” event as I skim that kind of stuff in every game because I care little for any sort of flavor test. That they haven’t gone in and made changes even with a Switch release is pretty ridiculous.

If I had realized to what extent it was so terrible, I would have stopped recommending it or at the very least said more than “there’s some stuff in poor taste”. So apologies to anyone who bought it based on my recommendation and wish they had not.

Battle Brothers has been setup with a low-magic medieval Germany setting from the beginning. The writing can be off-putting and uneven at times but that mysogynistic prostitute part is in theme I’d say. They could have gone for other, noble responses in those events but then again; you ain’t playing with a company of care bears. I even think the game understates the true horror of medieval society. If the current written events are upsetting then I don’t think you want to know what a real medieval mercenary company did in their time between battles. I also don’t see why the addition of some fantasy and monster folklore elements obliges them to discard their grim historical setting choices. This could have been a licensed old Warhammer fantasy game which also used German medieval society as a background for the Empire.

It has always been hinted at that they would do other regions in DLC so I understand why they didn’t went for coloured people or other cultures like northern barbarians so they focused on medieval Germany for the populated regions of the standard base game map. Better to do it right with all the nuance and context like in Blazing Deserts or Warriors of the North DLC’s. Some folks (including myself) would like an Asian region DLC as well but I don’t think that’s on the horizon anymore after the Switch port.

Battle Sisters isn’t a concept that resonated with the standard medieval mercenary company feel they wanted to emulate. Some female fighter choices would certainly have been logical though but again, I can see why they left that to the mod community in the end. Probably for the same reason they haven’t been able to make translations or mounts or owned bases or legs or whatever: they haven’t structurally set up their debut game for easy adaptations on the fly and it’s just a 2-man developer team. It took a very, very long time to get battle maps with logical props that actually resembled what was on the world map for example. I’d say: cut them some slack. Those missing translated versions have easily hurt them the most in terms of success so I don’t believe they are doing this on purpose. They are learning lessons for their next game.

Personally I would like better stats in-game and a more balanced end-game. I get that the game is hard but it’s a flaw in balance / game design / UI if you need to read extensive guides which all point to the same types of end-game warriors with a limited selection of the same perks every time. It’s almost the same feeling as reading Diablo II character guides, too few builds to be viable.

As much as I don’t like to use analogies I am going to anyway, to me that is like saying “People had slaves during the time in which our game is set and so we are going to have a realistic depiction of that in our games complete with appropriate dialog in the treatment of those slaves in the events”.

It is unnecessary and especially in a game like BB. It can be argued that it sort of sets a tone and/or feel, but it could do that in a thousand other ways that movies set in that time do without the terrible treatment of women among other choices. The event text is skimmed and then eventually ignored. It may be a realistic depiction of what happened, but women were unwilling participants and I think it past time to stop using that treatment as entertainment.

I prefer my entertainment unsantitized of realistic depections of unsavory things. There are plenty of games with nothing but sunshine and lollipops and I play those 2. Choices are good. Doesnt mean I want to play a game strictly about owning slaves or being a pimp but having both of those in a game is fine. I just traded slaves in the new Rome total war remastered. Am I going to hell?

Were there jokes about beating them?

But no, I am not telling anyone to do this or that. I am saying in some cases it is unnecessary and gratuitous. I find the dialog in places in BB to be so

If I could like your post Tyjenks I would because I had drafted a response earlier that I had scratched, it just came across too aggressive as a response. There is no place in our society for degrading women, no matter how history was back then. And importantly, events in the game that try so hard to be edgy, to delve into tasteless sex worker tropes are not needed. Yeah, I liked the little events like having an apprentice give an arming sword, or the silly one of racing the old horse; those events aren’t needed either, but at least they are not outright pushing an agenda that is gross. I don’t give a fuck how brutal life was back in medieval Germany, I care about how we function in society today and how the entertainment I consume reflects that.

It isn’t the same. I can trade slaves in Warhammer 2 as well, but that is part of a game system for the Dark Elves. I can similarly enslave whole species in Stellaris, or crack in the whip in Civ IV to speed production. Those are all game systems that I can elect to take part in, it isn’t some superfluous event that has little to no actual impact on the game.

I dont disagree a few lines were juvenile/icky but your post was a bit extreme in calling to white wash games/entertainment of taboo subjects. That’s equally as icky imo.

Basically all of the horrible things brought up in the Battle Brothers text happen to this day in the world. Adding flavor text to The Sims that your neighbor is a child molester doesn’t make the game unsanitized or more realistic.

Huh? So slaving as a gaming system is totally cool but some of color dialogue about group morale and prostitutes is too much? Color me confused on your moral outrage. Is it because objectification of women is currently still happening but slavery is mostly ancient history that makes one ok and the other not. They are equally deplorable, no?

I tried to give it more context in adding the bit about “realistic depiction”. In my mind I meant the specific parts that are egregious, but I see that wasn’t clear.

I am not boycotting the game and will still play. It is disappointing and angering that this is still funny and acceptable to people. I don’t expect everyone to share my views on everything, but for me this is something that could be easily removed. It is all the little bits of poor treatment of women that add up to a toxic culture and I think this is one of those bits.

100% on board with that. I had never read the text quoted in the game and am pretty disappointed as I really like the game.

For one, slavery is not ancient history, it still happens to this day. And yes, they are both deplorable.

Implementation matters. I would be just as annoyed if the text were about slavery and being light-hearted about the dehumanising aspect of it. To my recollection, there is an event in the game about a wildman in a cage; I seem to recall having the option to free said individual and the narrative does demonstrate the dehumanising component of his capture.

Even just looking at the wildman event now, there’s a line about “a harlot streetwalking a particularly pious town.” What kind of similie is that? I still don’t know how the character approached the cage.

This is a good discussion and couldnt be had on most forums these days, kudos to QT3.

I am seeing the difference better when taking into account the totality of the “tone” of dialogue throughout the game. Honestly, the first line quoted is in character at least and fine in a vacuum. Just once you add the rest it starts to feel more intended and unnecessary.