KickStarter Kingdom Come: Deliverance - Dan Vavra's medieval chad simulator

Gay-spot, in this case.

 

Climbing trees or holding a trumpet protects you from arrows in KD ?

 

They know their audience.

 

Can confirm. I know one of the guys who worked on making a whole city for the game (don't remember what city it was, but I know it was supposed to be in Cuba, so Havana, probably?), apparently they all busted their ass crunching to get it finished, and finish it they did... only to then have it scrapped entirely by upper management. He said it was one of the most crushing things he ever experienced and left soon after.

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It was really hard to resist saying "Don't feel bad about it, it was going to be a shit game anyway."

 

So KCD2 is possibly a direct sequel to the first game, taking place just a year later.

If true...sigh. I thought now that Warhorse has actually some money they'll jump straight to the Hussite Wars that everybody actually cares about. Or at least do something different, something new and bold and even more awesome than KCD 1. While in reality the sequel might be just KCD 1.5.

 

I'm more than fine with a KCD 1.5 with more polish and improved game systems to be honest. KCD never was about large scale conflict. The mass battles were the worst part of it.

 

Dull Henry: The Sequel, how exciting...

 

The point is not the wars but the setting. I don't know about you but I'm more than ready to move on from a modest plot about a village yokel from a dungy shithole and his stupid sword to something more....significant.

 

That can't be right... I mean surely they wouldn't spend ANOTHER game just setting up the stage for the Hussite Wars, right? Surely it'll just be some prologue chapter taking place a year later, after which the plot will move onto the big event. The fact they didn't at least start the Hussite Wars in the first game was strange alone, doing it in the second game as well would be just incredibly stupid.

Exactly. Not to mention Hussite Wars would bring about the possibility of factions (not just crusaders vs Hussites – Hussites themselves were split into a couple competing (sometimes violently) factions. And we'd finally get different opponents than fucking bandits and some horsefuckers from the boonies in Hungary.

 

Kingdom Come: Deliverance already suffered from the writer's insistence on cramming into it as much as possible of a predetermined storyline, with the later sections of the main quest relatively dull, repetitive, linear, and/or buggy. Henry of Skalitz could easily have reached a satisfactory conclusion to his story by regaining his father's sword, from the bandit leader who had stolen it, at Pribyslavitz. Some of the material occurring later in the main quest could have been repurposed as optional side quests occurring earlier. I expect a sequel with Henry returning as protagonist will be even more prolonged and feel redundant.

 

I really liked how KCD focused on what it looks like for a single individual to navigate the feudal system and the harsh shittyness of medieval life. Henry was dull and whatever as a character, but the role that he played in the plot allowed you to experience and observe feudal life, not just the feudal system, in terms of the ordinary villager, the war-torn refugee, (briefly) the footpad, the noble's hanger-on, etc.

The ideal would have been a fresh plot reset where a now-noble Henry is a peripheral NPC, and we have a new narrative more closely related to factional intrigue but still with this unique focus. The problem with a direct sequel the way I see it is that the narrative was very much cheapened with the 'big reveal' of Henry's provenance. That said, everything about the cliffhanger hints at a direct sequel dealing a lot more with nobility and international intrigue, joining Radzig as they try to dig deeper into the royal plottings.

 

I want a woman protagonist

 

In KCD3 you'll take on the challenging mission of raising Henry's babies while he's away fighting in the Hussite Wars.

 

tbh i'd want to see if a historical game dare to add a woman as high difficulty mode at least combat wise. enemies hits harder, your status in political negotiations are often patronized, etc

 

Play Kwan fantasy Hollywood garbage like Assassin Creed then.

 

Theres a DLC in KCD that lets you do exactly that.

 

You should be perfectly aware by now that this is Vavra's "signature style". His only redeeming quality is that there are good movie-like moments like in Mafia I where Paulie Sam approaches Tommy and reaches into his inside pocket after the first mission.

 

So you don't actually want an historical game.

 

Office trumps sex / gender.

 

Fixed.

KCD's cutscenes are generally enjoyable whenever Henry isn't an active participant in them, like that scene in Rattay where Sir Hanush and other important figures are introduced. There are some other really nice moments as well, like that piece of dialogue with dad at the forge that neatly shows you the relationship between Henry and his father. I think issues arise whenever the game starts making choices for the player, like the tavern scene where you clash with Hans Capon — it'd have been a great opportunity for some reactivity, having to choose whether to follow your orders or risk pissing off a nobleman, but the game simply railroads you into a specific outcome. The further you get in the game, the more distracting it becomes when Henry acts like something more than an emotionless block, for example preaching about how stealing is wrong when you've cleaned half the houses in the province of their valuables. The endgame pretty much befomes a linear cutscene-fest, but that might be partly because of the general lack of time from the developer's part.

The storytelling aspect is defnitely one that I'd like to see improved in a sequel, but I do think KCD does a pretty good job with it from time to time. The side quests are generally low on invasive cinematics and often have pretty open structures, and many of the early main quests give you a nice bit of freedom about how to do things as well, with the critical story beats being quite far apart from each other. That's what I want to see more of.

 

I laughed so hard when Johanka said what a notorious thief Henry was, said something like "they say you steal anything that isn't nailed down" very casually Women's Lot DLC is a step in the right direction with the amount of reactivity within the quest and to the main game, but Vavra wasn't involved with it so we might see another linear cutscene galore MQ from the sequel. Hope the DLC team can convince Vavra to give us some narrative choices.

tho I never got caught stealing but I finished all the millers' quests, don't know how Henry became notorious

 

Are DLC's worth the price? I finished KCD long time ago and have some itches to try it again but having additional content would be nice.

 

Woman's Lot definitely, the others not so much; in one you build a town forget it exists, in other do a few quests for Capon; optionally deliberately prolong one of them for comedic & evul effect, in another do a short series of quests with a medieval motorcycl...I mean horse-gang(I think they were inspired by GTA IV's lost and damned DLC a bit)

 

A Woman's Lot is the best of the bunch and features possibly the best quest in the game. Band of Bastards and Amorous Adventures are pretty short but fun. From the Ashes is nice although totally game-breaking, and you might as well pick it up if you can get it bundled with the rest.