To say Kingdom Come: Deliverance‘s down-to-earth approach to RPGs was a success would be a grand understatement. Eight million copies sold and thousands of positive Steam reviews suggest a healthy appetite for less streamlined games that do things differently.
From Czech developer Warhorse Studios, Kingdom Come: Deliverance took players to 15th-century Bohemia in a slower-paced RPG that revelled not in instant gratification, but instead in the mundanity of medieval life. Slicing down opponents wasn’t a button-mashing affair – it required patience and deliberately poised swings of steel.
With the upcoming sequel, now releasing one week earlier, Kingdom Come: Deliverance 2, Warhorse promises a bigger scale, more meaningful narrative choices, and a streamlined – but not dumbed down – approach to combat.
Warhorse Studios Global PR Manager Tobias Stolz-Zwilling, affectionately known online as “Sir Tobi”, recently visited Australia to demo the team’s new game and explain just how challenging it is to depict realistic swordplay in a video game.
Hitting the gritty
Warhorse Studios prides itself on “making games with grit”, but what does that actually mean? As explained by Stolz-Zwilling, it’s about creating a game built with tangible depth that players deeply engage with, like making decisions that impact whether characters live or die.
“We want you as a player to step in and not just consume another superficial product but really go with the flow and really deeply roleplay,” he said. “Being authentic, immersive and epic – that’s the ‘grit’ part where we challenge the player a little bit too.”
Even at a systems level, Kingdom Come: Deliverance 2 eschews modern design traits of generous checkpointing and endless save states. To save your game, you need to consume a potion, making you think twice before saving.
“But the point is not that we punish the player here,” Stolz-Zwilling said. “The point is that we want you to have this minimum [level of investment]… we want you to live with the decisions.”
That’s not to suggest Kingdom Come: Deliverance 2 is unapproachable. Even though it picks up after the first game, roughly 90% of the characters are completely new, and the story stands as a self-contained experience. And, according to Stolz-Zwilling, the sequel’s learning curve is flatter, without compromising on depth and complexity.
Expanding the kingdom
Advertised as an 80-100-hour game, Kingdom Come: Deliverance 2 is larger than its predecessor in various ways. Its map is twice as big, for starters, crossbows are among the new weapons, and the population density of areas is also higher.
As mentioned during the game’s official reveal, Kingdom Come: Deliverance 2 is viewed internally as the realisation of the studio’s original vision for the series.
“There were features that we couldn’t add in the first game because of time, money, resources and so on,” Stolz-Zwilling said.
One example was a blacksmithing mini-game cut from the first game because it was “not enjoyable” but is now in the sequel. Another is the increased scale afforded by better technology, paving the way for Kutná Hora, a city populated with thousands of NPCs.
Buoyed by the success of the first game, Warhorse Studios doubled down its efforts on authenticity, working with more experts to verify the quality of the team’s work.
Stolz-Zwilling described the process as not seeking a “stamp of approval” from advisors as such, but more of a way to make informed development decisions.
“It’s more like trying to really work with all kinds of people, giving us feedback on all kinds of stuff and actually listening to them and then change according to that feedback,” he said.
“Some of the stuff is not always possible – that’s just a fact in video gaming. There must be some limitations here and there.”
Swinging swords
Sword fighting is perhaps where Kingdom Come: Deliverance and its sequel deviates most from reality. Despite the series’ realistic approach, creative liberties were taken to translate combat into an enjoyable gameplay experience.
When developing the first game, Warhorse Studios enlisted a local sword-fighting expert to do motion capture and consult on how fighting with a sword works in real life. The advice given was that fights are quick and unpredictable, swiftly ended with a single stab.
This wouldn’t translate well to the screen, however. Stolz-Zwilling explained that while the slower and broader movements depicted in-game might not be as realistic, they’re important for visual readability and generating more satisfying feedback for players.
Relying on one expert for combat created another issue; no matter which weapon you used in the first game, they all looked and felt similar.
This time around, Warhorse Studios brought in more weapons masters. Each one specialised in a different style of combat, adding more realism to the in-game weapons handling. Now, a mace handles like the bludgeoning armament it is.
“You just whack the enemy in the head because that’s what you do with this thing, right?” Stolz-Zwilling said. “The weapons should all feel differently, play differently, have a different weight to them.”
Kingdom Come: Deliverance 2 places more emphasis on adaptability. With an increased capacity to quickly juggle weapon types, you can fire arrows as foes approach you, and swap to a sword for lightly armoured combatants or a mace for those in heavy plate armour.
With a sooner release date than anticipated, it won’t be long until everyone can see the changes in action. Kingdom Come: Deliverance 2 launches on 4 February 2025 for PC, PlayStation 5, and Xbox Series X|S.
Read more gaming news on GadgetGuy
Chris Button travelled to Sydney as a guest of Plaion to attend a preview session of Kingdom Come: Deliverance 2.
The post Why Kingdom Come: Deliverance 2’s swordplay differs from reality appeared first on GadgetGuy.
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