Daniel Vávra interviewed by the Czech edition of Forbes.
https://forbes.cz/uspeje-kingdom-come-2-na-druhy-dil-mame-vic-lidi-i-penez-rika-daniel-vavra/
Your colleague Martin Frývaldský said that keeping silent about the development of the second part was not easy for you. How did you fight it?
Mainly, it was annoying for me that we did interesting things that could be promoted well, and we did it that way in the first part. For example, we filmed with interesting actors, we have videos of it, and if we did it like back then, we would release it on the Internet and it could get a lot of views.
On the other hand, people would probably be upset if they watched videos for four years and the game still didn't come out. It's double-edged sword, but the decision was made not to announce it earlier.
How did you approach the concept of the second volume?
We looked at what worked and what didn't. We told ourselves that we would improve something, and halfway through we found out that it was actually impossible to improve, that we wouldn't be able to do it, that it would be too demanding. We put our goals on paper and fine-tuned the concept of where it would go for maybe half a year.
So what is the concept?
The outline of the story was actually given, it was invented from the beginning, but I can't talk about it now. It is also due to historical circumstances that somehow turned out and we take them into account. So it's coming to them and now it's just a matter of how it happens.
And in terms of game mechanics, we have some combat system that we wanted to improve. We have things that we didn't make it into the first part, so we're adding them there. We found out that something wasn't quite fun or could have been better.
That's pretty general. Can you be more specific about something?
For example, we had a complex clothing system for the protagonist. And we've improved it significantly in the sense that
now you can make sets of clothes, like three different outfits that you can change into with one click.
If I want to impress someone, I'll take an outfit like some charismatic speaker with one click. And I don't have to walk like a knight all the time. It took some time to get dressed in the first game, so people didn't take advantage of the features that different outfits gave them. So we edited it. Seemingly small, but in reality there was a lot of work behind it.
So why wait six years to announce a new game?
We worked on the expansions of the first part, it took us about a year. And then there was the technological problem – new consoles came out. So you have to make a technological change that took more time than any of us expected.
And besides, the game is big and there is a lot of work behind it. Everyone was working on it the whole time. It's not like we take time off and don't give it much.
We started development on July 1, 2019, so it's been five years. Almost.
You developed the first part as a start-up studio, now you have over two hundred employees and a large publisher, Embracer, who bought you out. How is development different?
We have more people and more money. It is the basis of. But we still dealt with the problem of lack of people. There aren't many people here who have experience with something like this. So it's very hard to get someone.
In the second part, there is supposed to be a big city, an even more reactive world, crossbows and early firearms... What are you proud of that you managed in the second part?
There are a lot more actors, more better actors. They have better faces, better animated. We were developing our own system just for facial animation. We needed to make five hours of film and hundreds of hours of dialogue, and we wanted it to not look bad in either part. And that's where the upgrade is significant.
Have you developed with less nervousness when you have the success of a number one and a strong publisher?
One has some sort of fan base after six years and six million copies sold. It's probably a pretty good starting position. On the other hand, the world is such that, for example, Ubisoft (a large French development company, editor's note) gets a lot of trouble because the special edition of their game from the Star Wars world is too expensive.
Market can be hard to read. Some games are actually good but get a lot of smoke for doing something wrong or monetizing something that shouldn't be monetized.
After all, you have your own experience with it. The first installment of Kingdom Come caught criticism for not having any black people in it. What about part two?
We can't talk about that yet.
For many people, number one was also too complicated. How will the second part be?
A lot of people claim that we are some kind of hardcore simulation where they go somewhere, take a wrong turn and suddenly someone shoots them. It may happen that you go somewhere in the forest and you are ambushed by a bunch of bandits. Going against them alone probably won't go well, but you can escape.
Or you have to sleep and eat…
Oh well, but if you don't, you'll just be sleepy or hungry, nothing terrible happens.
Yes, but this is not usually the case in games. Will the two be more user-friendly?
Already in number one, you didn't have to solve a lot of things if you didn't want to. Two will be more accommodating, but not at the cost of our complexity.