When you die in Chivalry II, several things happen. For one, you are treated to a death animation that almost inevitably resembles a crash test dummy in a dynamite factory. The game naturally informs you who killed you (his name is g00chl0rd69) and how (a battleaxe to the arms, head, and groin). What’s interesting, though, is the prompt that appears above this information, which reads (on Playstation) as “Press X to commend player.” Commending someone gives them a little bit of XP – but I think that its most important effect is more communal.
I’ve commended people for everything from murdering me with a literal town bell thrown at my face to bludgeoning me to death with a fish. It gets a little egregious at times, I’ll admit. Commendations lose a bit of their meaning if you’re just handing them out willy-nilly, after all.
I can’t really think of any directly analogous features in games I’ve played (although there are almost certainly other examples to be found), but I think the system deserves a bit of love. The addition of a single button prompt really makes a huge difference. Giving us the ability to give a quick hat tip to the guy who just decapitated us with a halberd makes us feel just a little bit better about the aforementioned decapitation – after all, it was a commendable display.
Not that I’m against a good, old-fashioned teabagging, but there’s also a place in games for less, shall we say, confrontational methods of interaction. Chivalry II really pulls it off well, but I’m hopeful we’ll see even more examples in the future.