u/n4vybloe

She took almost two weeks but she finally made it! (I know there are approximately 44,432,432 posts like this on this sub. Not without reason, as it turns out.)

I want to preface this by saying I nearly quit. A million times, probably.

I died to >!Straw!< approximately a thousand times. I forgot to distill the >!fever tonic and only realised when Henry muttered it to himself before planing to sprint through Trosky Castle as the bells were tolling.!< I couldn't find the right tower. I couldn't sneak past a single guard, I couldn't stealth kill, I didn't even own a dagger, I had no idea where to put bolts or arrows, my vitality was 5. FIVE. Unsurprisingly, I died twenty-odd times at For Victory and eventually (tearfully) reloaded a save from before the balcony conversation and just... went back out into the world.

The European heatwave came. I've locked myself in. And then, slowly, something shifted.

I didn't just grind. I started actually looking at things; listening to the small dialogues; reading journal entries. Reading the codex and falling down a rabbit hole about 1403 Bohemia (after officially going to bed, mind you, not being able to stop thinking about the game) that I did not see coming because this is a game that apparently checked the actual night sky of early summer 1403 to get the star constellations right. Simply because it's... true, I guess.

Turns out the world our boys move through is real in a way I couldn't have imagined; not a backdrop for some knightly story, but a specific place you can now enter. >!Hans Capon is based on a real nobleman. Jan Zizka is real. The village of Skalice really was razed by Sigismund's forces.!< (I know, I know. Getting ahead of myself. But guys, I've bought books on this. BOOKS.) Our guy Henry is only fictional because blacksmiths' sons usually don't make it into the chronicles.

Long story short: I let Henry's hair grow out. Let him become whoever he is, or whoever he is in my version of the story anyway. I won groschen at fistfights. Both of us surprised, honestly, that he's any good at it. I learned to rob and lockpick. I stole when I had to, but never without reason, or at least never without a reason I (or my Henry) could live with. I walked everywhere overencumbered like an absolute idiot until I wasn't an idiot anymore.

And then today, finally: Mutt my beloved! The reunion sequence. And when Henry sent him off and drew his sword without hesitation for once, without that old familiar panic, I had to put the controller down for a second. But no rest for the wicked, right, because on the way home: ambush. This time, no running. Fighting, triumphing, looting as the Lord intended.

So here we are, friends. This is it. This is what a game can actually do. Sincerely and with much love, a lit major, humbled, in Bohemia, who had no goddamn clue.

You've got me now. Jesus Christ be praised!

Small personal note, because it feels somewhat relevant. My longtime partner and now ex for years never let me play (Witcher, Zelda, what have you), always with the explanation that I'm a girl and inherently bad at games, so I'd better watch and cheer instead. It left me genuinely scared of combat, of failing, of even trying. I was so close to giving up on this one too. I can't put into words how glad I am I didn't.