Fallout is obviously not sword-and-sorcery, but if you install Fallout 2's Restoration Project mod, you might get to meet a character who bears a striking resemblance to a famous pulp hero.
Among the content that was cut from the original release of the game but restored by the mod is a primitive tribe living on the California coastline in Fallout's post-nuclear setting. The hero of Fallout 2, the Chosen One, can meet a member of this tribe named Sulik while exploring the settlement of Klamath. Sulik is a "tribal" who comes from the Umbra Tribe and after recruiting him as a companion, you can travel to their small village. After arriving, you can meet the tribe's head warrior, a fellow named Krom.
The game's description of Krom: "This sun-bronzed giant looks as if his corded muscles were carved out of granite. Beneath a mane of black hair, his smoldering blue eyes pierce into you." Krom goes on to ask you about who you are and what your purpose is. Krom is well-spoken and supportive of your quest to find the Garden of Eden Creation Kit to save your village, although he scoffs at the concept of the GECK itself in favor of man toiling against the earth with his own natural gifts. He also makes it clear that he's well-travelled and the village is just a temporary home for him before he decides to move on and see what else the world holds for him. You can continue to interact with him while staying with the tribe and he'll put you to work on solving some simple tasks the village could help with.
So Krom is an expy of Conan himself, transplanted cleanly into Fallout's world. It goes to show in a very minor way that despite the differences, post-apocalyptic fiction and S&S are cousins of sorts, both genres about people battling strange forces and hostile environments as much to just survive as to vanquish some great evil.
No sorcery in this one, just sword, but a lot of classic S&S does have a strong historical element. And even as history-minded as this game is, it does brush up against a sense of weirdness in a couple of spots.
Kingdom Come: Deliverance was Kickstarted in 2014, released in 2018. The player takes control of Henry of Skalitz, the son of a blacksmith living in a Bohemian village in 1403. The king, Wenceslaus IV, is a bit of a disappointment compared to his father, Charles IV, who presided over a golden age for the country. In response to Wenceslaus's frivolous ways, his half-brother Sigismund leads an invasion of the country to presumably sort things out. What this means for humble citizens like Henry is that his village, a valuable silver-mining center, is sacked by Cuman mercenaries who take liberties with the locals in the process, including killing Henry's parents. Just before the invasion, Henry's father had forged an exceptional sword for the local lord, Sir Divish, and in the early portion of the game the sword is stolen by the villains, so Henry's quest becomes to recover the sword while taking revenge for his parents and village. Henry will become a knight in Sir Divish's service and will travel across a region that includes the towns of Sasau and Rattay.
The game is a first-person RPG, built on the CryEngine, with very good graphics that emphasize realism over art direction and mood. Henry has basic needs for sleep and sustenance that have to be monitored, although they aren't too difficult to maintain. Injuries have to be looked after. Not bathing or taking care of your clothes and armor will draw insults from other characters. The fighting system involves having to practice to level up strength and skills so Henry will have more endurance and ability to parry, strike, and counter attacks. The combat system is interesting but disappointingly falls down in major battles where Henry is part of larger forces clashing. It simply becomes a mess of men flailing at each other and the most effective technique is probably to just run behind the enemy shield wall and start backstabbing people while your fellows keep them occupied in front. Not exactly the blood and thunder one would hope for in such situations.
KCD had to be crowdfunded because historical games, especially ones in as obscure a setting as medieval Bohemia that require a hefty budget, terrify game publishers that would greatly prefer to stick to tried-and-true settings like Tolkienesque/D&D-flavored fantasy or space marine-centric sci-fi. As much as possible, KCD is based on real places and events, peppers its story with several actual historical figures, and generally tries to present its setting with as much accuracy as a video game could reasonably allow. A writer like Harold Lamb might have found it interesting. Accessing the game menus will allow the player to read brief encyclopedia entries on medieval society, enough that playing the game will give players an elementary-level foundation of Bohemian history. The game also is generally even-handed in how it depicts its setting, eschewing Monty Python-like images of cruel nobles mercilessly beating idiotic peasants covered in mud and excrement. Instead there's a range of personalities shown, with nuanced examples of people all along the social strata. Some lords are entitled brats but others are serious-minded and dedicated to their duties on behalf of subjects, while peasants might be hardworking, lazy, or opportunistic depending on their minds and circumstances.
The story is linear but the player is free to define Henry however they like. He can be a selfless do-gooder or a complete psychopath or likely somewhere in between. He can specialize in fighting (and particular weapons) or have a silver tongue or be a stealthy type. The game is open enough to different playstyles that there are usually multiple valid ways to overcome situations. Come across a bandit camp and don't think you're strong enough to simply walk in and massacre everyone? Perhaps try waiting until midnight and then sneak into the camp so you can take out watchmen silently in the dark and then murder the others in their beds. Or slip poison into their food and let it do its work.
Even at his strongest, Henry isn't a cartoon hero. Travel on the roads can be very tense, especially in the earlygoing, as Henry can run into highwaymen, stray bands of Cuman raiders, or be baited into traps by people claiming to be in distress. Henry's odds of winning a fight drop significantly with each extra man added on the other side - one-on-one isn't too bad; one-on-two is doable; against three, four, or especially five, though, and he might be in real peril and simply trying to escape or even surrendering might be the best play.
As mentioned above, the game does touch briefly on more fantastic aspects in two notable sections. First, there's a sidequest that can only be completed if Henry is able to access a cabinet of forbidden books in the Sasau monastery's library. The particular book he needs is Lovecraft's Necronomicon, although somewhat disappointingly, the presentation of the book is a bit drier than might be anticipated. Nothing about its authorship by Abdul Alhazred, and even looking over its pages makes it seem like nothing more than just another book, albeit slightly more esoteric than some. But at least it's something, and the lighter touch in how it's presented is probably more in the spirit of classic S&S than the overkill most games go for.
The other episode is a somewhat more standard one in which Henry is tasked with uncovering witchcraft in one of the villages. His investigations will take him to a secluded woodland spot where some of the women are trying to commune with Satan by using psychedelic drugs, and, after confronting them, when they smear the drug on Henry's face he starts hallucinating, seeing men with the heads of beasts.
KCD ends on a bit of a cliffhanger, but the sequel has yet to appear despite the game turning out to be an unexpectedly big hit. Considering how actual history went and the allegiances of the main characters in this game, it doesn't look good for Henry and his friends having a triumphant ending, but perhaps he will slip through the cracks and land on his feet somehow.
A bit of an odd choice this time but an interesting contrast in how games are marketed in different regions. Kid Niki the game is a cute action-platformer with a goofy sense of humor. For the North American cover, the company went with this more realistic and fiece image of the hero facing down his enemies with his sword already running with blood, with the damsel in distress at the center looking like a swipe from Frazetta's Egyptian Queen. Not an uncommon occurence in the marketing of 8-bit video games, as we saw with Deadly Towers.
