Early Thoughts on Kingdom Come: Deliverance

There’s only one dead cert videogame for me this year: Dragon Age Inquisition. But, there’s another which has caught my eye (pencilled in for 2015).

Kingdom Come: Deliverance is an RPG billed as “Dungeons and no dragons”. It aims to be a highly realistic game set in medieval Europe, with landscapes and castles based heavily on reality. Similarly, the clothing and combat is designed to be as accurate as possible.

The game’s development has been backed by a private investor, but when no major publisher would back it the makers went to Kickstarter. Thankfully, their target was reached and the game is planned to be released for PC and the most recent consoles in 2015.

The initial dialogue is fairly Shakespearean. It’s not impenetrable, and I rather like it, but it seems they’re likely to modernise it a bit. If you want to hear what it’s like, the dialogue’s part of the hour or so streamed here:

Clothing seems highly customisable, with 16 slots for various bits and pieces (including neckwear and rings). It’s reminiscent of Dragon’s Dogma, which had some good layering and armour that looked good right from the start. Unlike Dragon’s Dogma, I don’t think silk underwear will be available.

Combat involves six areas to be targeted (body, head and the limbs) with timing being useful for parrying (opens the enemy up to attack). It sounds like fights will be less common than in many RPGs, and more serious.

As well as fighting, cooking, alchemy (not in the magical Skyrim way, but in the way people actually tried to use it), fishing and forging/improving your weapons and armour will all be possible.

The world will be open, and you can ride horses. It sounds like they’re going for a first person version of what Red Dead Redemption did (ie making the horse control like a horse rather than a four-legged car). It’ll also have some limited intelligence, so you won’t be able to make it charge off a cliff.

I really like the look of Kingdom Come: Deliverance, and it’s slightly surprising and depressing no major publisher would back it. If it can live up to expectations it will sell by the cartload. I hope it does, and that way we might end up with more such games.

Thaddeus