After nearly seven long years, Kingdom Come Deliverance II is almost upon us, and fans of the original game have been holding out to see just how much bigger and bolder Warhorse Studios has taken the franchise. With a reputation for prizing historical accuracy and attention to detail above all, it’s safe to say that there’s a lot of anticipation for the upcoming release.
The game is set to pick up the story of Henry of Skalitz, the humble hero of Kingdom Come: Deliverance whose yearning for revenge set him on a path from blacksmith’s son to something far greater. With so much on the table for where his journey could take him, the possibilities feel endless.
Late last year, GamesHub got hands-on with the game, seeing first-hand how significantly the franchise had increased in scope and detail. Despite only checking out one quest in our preview time, it was clear that the scale of the world and the impact of the player’s choices were thoroughly magnified.
Leah J. Williams said of the experience, “This is a game that won’t take shortcuts with its depiction of life in Medieval Europe. It encourages you to be prepared – to think through your actions, and your strengths, and to find a strategic path forward based on your own morals and intuition. It’s a rare game that breaks with tradition, and houses itself so firmly in a satisfying, wonderful realism.”
We also had the opportunity to sit down with Warhorse’s global PR manager, Tobias Stolz-Zwilling, to discuss the realities of scaling, legacy, and evoking a vibe.
“We always wanted to have an evolution of Kingdom Come: Deliverance, not a revolution,” said Stolz-Zwilling. “So first and foremost, we wanted to tell a great, cool story – that it’s funny, that it’s memorable, with great characters, with great story beats and so on, but we are in a war situation. There are bad things happening – Henry has a mission, and his personal motivation is revenge.”
But how do you take a humble revenge story and make it even bigger? It’s simple: take the most organic perspective, and explore the growing, changing world through their eyes.”You can’t change history, but in the first game, Henry loses everything to war – his village gets attacked and ransacked, his parents die, and so on,” he said. “In KCD2, you are now part of a group, and you are on the bigger stages – there’s more at stake, you’re part of a group that is trying to do guerrilla warfare against the invading king, and you perceive this invading king as the biggest baddie there is in history.”
Read: Kingdom Come: Deliverance 2 preview – Life in a medieval town
The scale and legacy of Kingdom Come: Deliverance II
There’s a certain level of expectation when you deliver a sequel. Will it build sufficiently on the original to keep existing fans happy? Will it attract new audiences to the series and expand its reach to new horizons? Will the weight of anticipation be manageable in the often gruelling process of development?
These questions are tough to answer regardless of how successful your first game was, and it’s safe to say that the original Kingdom Come: Deliverance set a tough bar to clear. But the team weren’t always sure that would even be the case.
“What you need to understand is that we had several sink or swim situations at Warhorse – first of all, the Kickstarter could have failed,” said Stolz-Zwilling. “Then, it was the release of Kingdom Come Deliverance 1, because even the day before the release, we weren’t sure if it would actually land and hit.”
“Press liked it, but the community we were mainly talking to were the ones that were coming from the Kickstarter, so they were biased, and we didn’t know how ‘regular Joes’ would react.”
In the first few days after the release of the original game, it sold a million copies. In the years since, that number has grown substantially, with around eight million copies sold. It’s a hefty target, so it was important to the Warhorse team to ensure that Kingdom Come: Deliverance II builds on the legacy in a way that makes sense.
“We took a lot of feedback and from KCD1 and tried to incorporate it in Kingdom Come: Deliverance II,” said Stolz-Zwilling. “We didn’t change anything majorly, but we tried to fine tune everything – make it smoother, make it better feeling.”
Often it’s these small tweaks that can make the most impact on things like complexity vs. simplicity, and more notably, accessibility. “We also saw, for instance, which mods were downloaded most,” he said. “So okay, let’s address that some things are there by design, and we will not change these things – we are stubborn there – but at least, we can make it more accessible.”
It goes without saying, though, that the sheer scale of the game is staggering. According to How Long To Beat, the first Kingdom Come: Deliverance game clocks in at just over 40 hours of gameplay for the main story, and roughly 80 for completionists. According to reports, the sequel adds much more, with nearly 100 hours of content available to players across both the main story and a range of side quests. Planning for an increase of that magnitude is daunting, but as it happens, Warhorse had the benefit of already having a clear breakdown in mind.
“The scale, or division, of Kingdom Come: Deliverance was already existing when we did the Kickstarter in 2014,” said Stolz-Zwilling. “We initially thought that we would do three acts, each of which will be like a 20-hour game or so, and then we’d release them in 2015, 2016, 2017 – which obviously didn’t work, because when they started to work on the game and actually come up with the plot, we quickly found out that it’s really hard to make a good cut in those smaller parts.”
According to Stolz-Zwilling, KCD1 is somewhat of a blend of that original Act One and Act Two, and Kingdom Come: Deliverance II features elements of the end of Act Two/Act Three – but it got way bigger than originally expected over the course of development, largely because of how much the studio scaled up in the process.
“It’s a huge game – maybe too big in some senses – but it tells the story we always wanted to tell, and it and then there’s some ending there as well,” he said. “Kingdom Come: Deliverance 1 had, I think, 110 or so developers. Now we have more than 250 and we are trying to grow even further. With more people, we have more ideas … and so I think this is the thing we always wanted to do with all the possibilities – more finance, more people, more creativity, and so on.”
What’s next?
Kingdom Come: Deliverance II is set to release on PC, PlayStation 5 and Xbox Series S|X on the 5th of February 2025, and we eagerly await the opportunity to see how fans and newcomers alike respond to the sprawling, historical game.
Whether you steer Henry in the right direction, or make choices that incur consequences far later down the line in a dramatic fashion, it’s safe to say that there’s a massive experience on the cards for players – a true evolution of what they know and love from Kingdom Come: Deliverance.
Check out the official trailer for Kingdom Come: Deliverance II here.
