this game is so shitty though imo . You don ' t get to make any choices that actually impact the story <| sep |> Well , bows weren ' t more deadly . Like yeah , muskets were incredibly useful because of the fear factor but early muskets were leagues better than bows for the needs of the time . Even bodkin tipped English longbows could not penetrate the armor of the time . There ' s a reason those pikemen and such of the early modern era didn ' t use shields they didn ' t need them . The armor was so damned good . Shit , as early as the 1200 ' s during the later crusades we have reliable , and numerous , accounts of Crusaders simply eating dozens of arrows from horse archers and it just bouncing off of the armor or getting stuck in the armor and the Crusaders just mashing them off like straw . Guns were so good because they could penetrate armor . They didn ' t fire as fast , and they weren ' t as accurate , nor were they as fast , and they were complex tools that couldn ' t fire in the rain until flintlocks came widespread in the 1700 ' s . However , they shot their small little rounds at over 1000 fts and could penetrate or severely damage e . g . destroy the insides of the wearer a plate chestpiece at 100 yards , whereas even the strongest , most legendary longbow ever needed to be within 30 or 40 yards to do so by the 1500 ' s and there were only a few hundred of them left at that time in active service in England only acting as mercenaries by all accounts , most bows that most armies had available were just utterly incapable of harming soldiers anymore . random history nerdism