Last week, Warhorse announced it had a new game on the way. Most assumed it would be a sequel to its 2018 cult hit Kingdom Come Deliverance. Those assumptions were correct. It was indeed Kingdom Come Deliverance 2.
Kingdom Come Deliverance 2 is set in 15th-century Bohemia, right in the middle of a civil war in progress. You play Henry of Skalitz on a quest of revenge, betrayal, and discovery as he rises from “a humble blacksmith’s forge to the court of Kings.” It’s a similar arc to the first game, a rags-to-riches hero’s journey that works well in video games but tends to annoy history buffs. The depiction of rapid class mobility irritated hardcore history buffs in the original and will likely do so again here.
Once again, Kingdom Come Deliverance 2 focuses on realism in medieval combat. Warhose says it is evolving the systems from the original in ways designed to feel better, more fluid, and more realistic than before. Fans will certainly hope they lock it down.
The game will be once again directed by Daniel Vávra, a man who remains a dangerous figure among those in the games media. Vávra was, rather infamously, a vocal supporter of the original Gamergate harassment campaign that targeted women, minorities and games media figures in the mid-2010s. His views led to what I still feel is one of the most interesting features former Kotaku U.S. EIC Stephen Totilo wrote during his tenure, My E3 Meeting With A Pro-GamerGate Developer.
Vávra’s connection to Gamergate was legitimately unknown to me until Aftermath’s Luke Plunkett pointed it out to me on Twitter. Legitimately, I don’t know how I missed it. Maybe I did know and blocked it out. Or worse, I forgot about it entirely in all the tumult of that era.
The trailer you’ll see on YouTube and across social media this morning was shown to press in a remote online screening last week. Once you’ve seen it, you’ll have seen everything we’ve seen so far. It’s a cool trailer! They’ve obviously put some money behind it. Vávra appears in the trailer, and sticks to talking points prescribed by the marketing department.
I hope Vávra’s changed his mind on a few things in the intervening years (though a quick check of his Twitter shows his feelings on what he considers censorship have not). For whatever it’s worth, I hope he makes a cool game that people enjoy and that he’s proud of.
Kingdom Come Deliverance 2 launches later this year on PC and consoles.
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