Are you craving the open-world full of interesting quests that Skyrim offers? What about the political intrigue of Game of Thrones? Are you feeling a title with all “the dungeons and no dragons?” Then look no further; Warhorse Studios has you covered! Kingdom Come: Deliverance is all of the above and much, much more. This is an indie title that I have been looking forward to for some time; and after talking with the developer, February 13th, just can’t come soon enough.
Kingdom Come: Deliverance tells the story of Henry, the son of a simple blacksmith. His homeland of Bohemia is being torn apart due to a civil war between two ruling brothers: King of Hungary, Sigismund the Red Fox, and the new Emperor, Wenceslas. Because of a mercenary raid ordered by the King himself, Henry’s entire village is burned to the ground. As one of the only survivors, he quickly finds himself in the service of Lord Radzig Kobyla, a rebel leader. It is then your responsibility to avenge your father and fight for the future of Bohemia.
From there, it is up to the player as to how you play the game. According to the developer, “Your reputation is essential: your behavior will attract individual inhabitants.” The way you interact with people in the world (whether you choose to be the hero or the villain) will affect the way they treat you. Crimes will be reported by NPC’s while fruitful conversations will ultimately end with numerous allies on your side. Whether by words or with weapons, Kingdom Come: Deliverance gives you the option to play the game how you want!
This is the first title from the masterminds at Warhorse Studios, a new development team based in the Czech Republic. Warhorse got its start back in 2011 when, “Daniel Vavra and Martin Klima, co-founders of Warhorse Studios, met together at a pub (where all good Czech ideas begin) because they both wanted to make a medieval, realistic RPG set in Bohemia (modern day Czech Republic) that didn’t involve magic or dragons. A first of its kind!” Thus, Kingdom Come: Deliverance was born. Their Kickstarter passed with flying colors by obtaining over 35,000 backers. The team stressed just how important support of their community has been from the very beginning.
While this is their first project as a team, the people at Warhorse Studios are all incredibly gifted individuals. Known for his award-winning work with Mafia and Mafia II, Dan Vavra is the Creative Director at Warhorse, and they pulled a lot of inspiration for Kingdom Come: Deliverance from his previous works. The team also includes a handful of talented writers, programmers, and artists: Martin Klima, Viktor Bocan, Tomas Blaho, and Roman Zawada.
During our interview, the team behind Kingdom Come: Deliverance continually brought up one unique aspect: realism. The team has worked incredibly hard to bring players an open, unique experience that is as realistic as possible. Their ultimate goal is “to immerse you in an authentic medieval Bohemian experience.” And from everything I’ve seen so far, I’d say they are doing just that.
The team at Warhorse wanted to leave our readers with these thoughts:
Kingdom Come: Deliverance is a game where we want every player to carefully think about the choices that they make, as many choices will produce different results, even to the point of triggering different cut scenes. We won’t tell you how to solve quests. You will have to figure out what you are going to do and how you are going to approach every situation.
There are time-sensitive quests as well, which mean that our game is not necessarily going to wait on you. Fights, raids, investigations and more can take place with or without you, so be sure to pay attention to the environment, your surroundings and what the people are saying around you.
Put this all together with a historically-based RPG video game and you have something pretty special.
Kingdom Come: Deliverance is set to release on February 13th, 2018; or, according to the countdown on their site 10 days and 19 hours as of this writing. It is set to release on PlayStation 4, Xbox One, and PC, and pre-orders are available now on their site and Steam.