[Kenshi 2] WASD/Simple Movement Controls Revisited

[Dragon]

Not a 3rd person hack-and-slash feature. Combat remains AI-controlled, just forward/back/left/right controls for the selected character. Basically the same as other similar games, in which movement orders, combat and interaction is still mouse-based but selected characters can also be controlled via "WASD" controls.

So why do I bring up this topic for Kenshi 2? The nay argument has always been that it is impossible, or may require a lot of coding time. And yet I, with zero coding experience or programming skills, managed to do exactly that in Kenshi 1, using nothing but a small third-party program or two. I think people just tend to overthink and overcomplicate technicalities when the feature is requested.

I believe my first post all those years ago was about tweaks to play Kenshi in hands-on third person. These days I use an Autohotkey script for a full-on WASD control experience, or I use a combination of JoyToKey and Xpadder configurations for controlling a selected character directly via a gamepad. It does have it's quirks when moving around in confined spaces but, in the open it works great. It feels completely natural. In fact, the controls and animations actually feels and looks better than many other dedicated 3rd person games.

I wasted hours just running around the map with my main character, getting ambushed, getting lost, sneaking through a gulley past a cannibal horde, enjoying the views... It's a completely different hands-on experience from the usual scrolling around with an eye in the sky. You get much more involved in the game world rather than just right-clicking at your destination and accelerating time. You actually start to appreciate the scope, variety and attention to detail of the game world even more, it's not as flat and barren as it appears from a bird's eye view! It gave the game a new breath of life when I started to burn out on it.

So why not add such a feature to Kenshi 2? Since it's pretty much already possible in Kenshi 1 by using simple gamepad configuration programs or copy-pasting a few lines of code in a script. Basically, Kenshi 1 already has direct character control. You can zoom in to a 3rd person perspective and control the character directly via right-click, the request is simply to add a secondary set of keyboard controls to supplement mouse-based movement controls for Kenshi 2.