But soft, what light through yonder window breaks? Why, it’s poetry, of course – the kind that the deranged characters in Crusader Kings III come up with, anyway. The latest dev diary for Paradox’s medieval grand strategy game explains how the poetic trait will work when it arrives, but it also informs us that everyone is getting a pope hat.
First, let’s talk about rhyming, Middle Ages style. Unlike the Crusader Kings II version of the ‘poetic’ trait, Crusader Kings III’s incarnation will involve procedurally generated verses, which can be used to impress, seduce, or even torture other characters. Crusader Kings III’s poems will be built around five themes: romance, legacy, mourning, strife, and incompetence (that last one is for when the poet is particularly vexed with someone they know doing something particularly stupid).
Paradox says at present, the poetry system takes into account characters’ biographies and then picks an appropriate theme, which it will then use to select intro and outro lines for a nice little couplet, as well as a title for the work.
As mentioned above, poems can be sent to other characters to help improve their opinion of the poet, but that can backfire badly if the recipient doesn’t care for the verse – in which case they may make a point of publicly mocking whoever wrote it.
Poetic characters can also use their body of work as a method of torture – imprisoned characters can be subjected to hours-long recitations of the poets’ favourite passages and rhymes. The horror.
𝐃𝐞𝐯 𝐃𝐢𝐚𝐫𝐲 #𝟓𝟎 – 𝐏𝐨𝐞𝐭𝐫𝐲 𝐭𝐨 𝐦𝐲 𝐄𝐚𝐫𝐬 🎶
The Poet Trait is back with new features + Patch Notes teaser!
► https://t.co/OyKDhtFbJf pic.twitter.com/zxXqcoIyZL— Crusader Kings III (@CrusaderKings) March 2, 2021
Perhaps the best news in the dev diary, however, is about hats. Crusader Kings 3’s 1.3 patch is going to include a lot more than poetry, and the post provides a hint at some of that.
“All formerly inaccessible Religious Clothes/Headgear are now accessible in the Barbershop. You want to wear the Pope’s hat and Steppe Pagan robes? Go right ahead!” reads one item.
Imagine sitting in a musty dungeon, listening to your arch enemy reading his horrible poems while wearing the the papal tiara – utterly monstrous, and it’s all going to be possible once update 1.3 comes out. Paradox says it will be revealing more about the patch over the coming weeks.