I sit down with an early build of Kingdom Come Deliverance 2 and chat with the developer about the upcoming medieval RPG game.
Kingdom Come Deliverance 2 is shaping up to be almost everything that returning fans could want from a sequel. A follow-up to the 2018 medieval role-playing game (RPG) Kingdom Come Deliverance, it offers not only a direct continuation of its predecessor’s story, but a significantly larger world and noticeable mechanical improvements across the board.
With an adventure that spans two massive open-world maps — one based on the beautiful landscapes of the Bohemian Paradise and the other encompassing the medieval city of Kuttenberg — I spent almost four hours with an early build of the game to get a taste of what’s in store. This involved getting to grips with its dramatic opening chapter before jumping forward to a point much further on in the story to discover what life in a medieval town has to offer. A new(ish) beginning
Henry once again returns as the protagonist, having fully transformed from an everyday village boy into a medieval hero over the course of the previous game. The narrative picks up mere moments from where it left off, with Henry traveling to a castle to deliver an important letter with his friend Hans Capon. As you can probably imagine, things don’t go to plan and your party is soon attacked by bandits. With their allies killed, Henry and Hans are able to narrowly escape but suffer serious injuries.
These dramatically affect your combat abilities, not to mention other key stats, setting Henry back and ensuring that he still has plenty of development ahead of him. You’re no longer the skilled soldier, master persuader, or cunning thief that you might have become by the end of the first game, but you’re also not starting again from zero. Henry can still read, for example, and still remembers the basics of swordplay.
Although very much made with players of the first game in mind, I was pleasantly surprised to discover that Kingdom Come Deliverance 2 makes plenty of accommodations for newcomers. Flashback sequences provide some key context, though don’t explain many of the finer details of the first game’s plot. Eager to discover how developer Warhorse Studios is balancing the act of creating a satisfying sequel with the need to attract new players, I chatted to PR manager Tobi Stolz-Zwilling about the development process.
He says that “when developing the game we had to keep in mind that we have a big community, six million people have played the game or at least bought it, so they want to have a continuation of a game that they love.
