Come Get Yer Armour In Kingdom Come: Deliverance
Kicking knights
This is a grown man being kicked in the chest while wearing a full suit of armour. The folks behind Kingdom Come: Deliverance [official site], the medieval RPG that is replacing magic, goblins and fantasy with realistic combat and rotting food, have released a development diary showing off the armour system while playing dress-up. It's extensive. While most games of its ilk would be satisfied with offering helmets, chest plates, boots and gloves, here there will be four layers of armour, with a grand total of 16 slots for all the wearable bits, including a coif, which is something I just had to look up.
(It's a head thing.)
Since Warhorse Studios are going for realism, the armour will also fall apart. Weakened, dirty or bloodied armour will make you less effective and even sully your reputation. "If you are too dirty, you will have troubles in the city or while you are shopping and people will not talk to you," says Viktor Bocan, lead designer.
If you wear the correct sets of armour and "are convincing enough" you can also fool NPCs into thinking you are one of their own, sneaking into bandit camps in their "uniform" or getting more information out of a beggar by donning rags. It is also possible some characters will attack you simply based on how you look. I very much like this idea. It brings to mind the possibility of tramping into a village exhausted from a fight, soaked in gore and rust, only to have the villagers panic and poke you with pitchforks.
Here's the breakdown of what you will be wearing as you lug yourself through quagmires and hit men in the face with sword hilts.
6 body slots (cloth, chainmail, plate, sleeves, gloves, coat/hood)
4 leg slots (trousers, chainmail, armor, boots)
4 head slots (coif, chainmail, helmet, necklace)
2 jewelry slots (ring, spur)
And here's the full development diary video (skip to 8:10 to see the developer wearing four layers of armour getting kicked in the chest, in scenes reminiscent of how badly we treat robots).
There's also some talk in there about the skills you'll get and what kinds of interactions you might have with NPCs. It looks like the old triumverate of RPG persuasion techniques - threatening response, smarmy response and bribey response - are all present and correct. Still no precise release date but we do know it will be out some time in 2017. That is if it doesn't get delayed again.