Crusader Kings 3 is trying to get better at bringing you on board

The meeting rooms at Paradox Studios are all named after paradoxes. It's a bit cute, sure, but I do like how it means you keep saying things like "let's go to Buridan's bridge - Schrodinger's cat and the problem of evil are busy." And it's a nice reminder of where you are. This is a studio that makes games about history, and science, and building and managing societies. Its next major game is Crusader Kings 3, a follow-up to a huge hit with a cult following, and it has to juggle expanding that audience while appeasing an especially ardent old one. It's also a game releasing at a different sort of time to Crusader Kings 2, with a different moment in history waiting for it. It would help if there were some very clever people walking around the studio - and if that means the office humour's a bit professor-at-a-dinner-party, so be it.

Crusader Kings 3 itself is essentially Crusader Kings 2, but tall as opposed to broad. I visited Paradox to take an early, hands-off look at it, and the two points repeated to me were that it's "way deeper" in a lot of places - despite Crusader Kings 2 having a good seven years of DLC to it - but is filled with far more "usability" in a lot of others. The series is notorious for its impenetrability, at least on first glance, and despite an especially ardent fanbase keen on retaining the challenge, the studio seems intent on tackling it. Everyone from Ebba Ljungerud, CEO of Paradox Interactive, the publishing arm that oversees the developer Paradox Studios, to the game director Henrik Fåhraeus spoke about this awareness that players will open up a Paradox game, take one look at the UI and close it again. They knew it needed improving.

There was less agreement on what you call the thing they're trying to improve, mind. Fåhraeus and others were oddly put off by the word "accessibility", preferring "usability" instead. Some noted that players can mistake complex UI for complex systems. Others referred to the old UI as like an "archaeology dig" - because there should be prestige in the thing itself, not in the act of digging away layers of stone. But the point, however you put it, remains the same: Crusader Kings 3 is trying to get better at bringing you on board, and make it a more pleasant experience once you're there. It just has to stay a deep one too.

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