I rode around every inch of the world map today in search of anything at all interesting. The main quest has totally lost me, and there were only a handful of sidequests left on my map. This is an OPEN WORLD RPG, so it seemed like there must be something to find in the open world. Starting at Trosky Castle, I did a full sweep: clockwise, all along the road, scouting to each invisible wall, revealing every bit of fog of war.
There was nothing. I found one small village with one quest, a town full of NPCs called "coal burners" (literal kinds I think) who randomly attacked me, and ONE bandit camp. There was also a cuman on the road who I killed for obvious reasons. There were no ruins to explore, no crypts to go into, no emergent narrative to find. Once I stumbled upon a corpse labeled "noble" beside an overturned cart. Thinking I had finally found an event or sidequest, I got off my horse and looked around.
But there was nothing to find. It was just a corpse placed there without any reason.
I guess this is to be expected in a "realistic" medieval RPG. What would there be to find, except wild animals? A good writing team could have come up with something more interesting than this, like actual outlaw gangs and groups of deserters, renegade knights, poachers, all with their own faction mechanics and stories tied to them and locations that need to be cleared. But really, the whole world is just empty. There's nothing to do except busywork and chores. No wonder the quests are so padded. The game has nothing in it.
At some point you apparently go to a second map. Presumably it's just as vapid and empty as this first one. I won't be able to stomach getting that far, I don't think. But I was shocked by how little I found, and how little the game uses its open world to its advantage.
