Every character has an adjective-noun descriptor string extrapolated from their personality values, but I could tell he was a blackguard just by looking at him - he’s got a stooped, glowering demeanour, and massive Resting Bitch Face. “Bold Blackguard” reads the text next to the name of one bloke I’m shown. They’re animated without being gaudy, and one look at a character gives you the measure of them. These portraits make it into the game too, replacing the 2D portraits of CK2 and their occasionally weird ageing. Art is a long way from done on CK3, but the models already look clearly related, their hair and facial features showing off the sims-esque genetic modelling built into the game’s back end.
This is clear right from the game’s menu screen, which renders three members of the dynasty you’re currently playing, standing around looking medievally shifty. This is one of the game’s fundamental design principles: as game director Henrik Fåhraeus puts it, “this is a game about characters, so characters should matter in every single feature”. More than in CK2, however, all of them are affected by who your ruler is as a character. And the mechanics used to manipulate it are as varied as they ever were. Four times the size, in fact, which brings it to a par with the vast map of Imperator: Rome. Crusader Kings 3 is about exploiting a range of interlocking systems - from military power to succession law to church doctrine - to grab big metal gauntlets full of power, and rise to the top of the medieval world. Let’s be clear: it’s still very much a strategy game. But from what we’ve seen so far, it looks like it might just have edged over the line from “a strategy game with RPG elements” to “an RPG you play on a map”. Crusader Kings 3, its freshly-announced sequel, has this same mix of ingredients.
It mixes Paradox’s grand strategy formula with a big bucket of RPG flavour, creating something that’s just as playable as an emergent storytelling toy as it is as a wargame. Crusader Kings 2 isn’t the easiest game to define.
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