Kingdom Come: Deliverance Gamescom Preview

Tobias Stolz-Zwilling, PR manager at Warhorse and his colleague Jaroslav showed us Kingdom Come: Deliverance. The session started with the trailer, that was made in the engine of the game.

Kingdom Come: Deliverance is a historical medieval RPG for which they did a lot of research to make it as authentic as possible. The game takes place in Bohemia 1403 and shows a real history and real story. You play as the son of a blacksmith in a time when there is a very bloody civil war going on.

Warhorse visited all the places in the game and took pictures of what they look like now and reworked them to what they would (or could) have looked like in 1403. They also did this for the forests and rivers to make them look as realistic as possible in the game. They have a full time historian on their team who makes sure that everything is correct from the perspective of the story, but also for the weapons, armor, the vegetation that was there, the food they were eating, etc.
They also made the map in such a way that it would look like a map from a historic book on Bohemia. I'm certainly not a map expert, so I'll just take their word on it as the map looked quite good and they mentioned it quite a few times.
The overall map of the game is around 16 square kilometers (for those who are stuck in a non-metric system, that is about 6 square miles). You can also visit the entire map and they have not placed any artificial obstacles on it, like large water masses that are inaccessible, to reduce the terrain somewhat.
They use the CryENGINE for the game, which is made and mostly used for first person shooters. To make it fit for this game they had to change a lot to the engine together with the CryENGINE team.

Every NPC in the game will have its own routine. They get up in their own house and have breakfast there, go to work and pick the tools he or she needs. The NPC won't be carrying these tools with him or her all the time as is the case in some other games. When the working day has finished the NPC will go home again or go and do something else, like hang around in the bar. A NPC has several options of what they can do in their spare time. The choice they make is based on experience. If the blacksmith is in the pub and something nasty happens there, he will remember that and the next time, he will go and do something else. This would also mean that the NPC in the games of two different players could end up doing completely different things in their spare time.

You are not seen as someone special in the game and are just seen as a regular guy, Henry the son of a blacksmith. You can however intervene in the behaviors of other NPCs. If you take the hammer of the blacksmith, he can't work anymore, so he needs to buy a new hammer. If you would rob a caravan, the shopkeepers in the city will not receive new supplies and will raise their prices. If you kill a bartender, the bar might be closed after, as there is no bartender anymore.
Not only the NPCs have their own AI, also the animals have one. A horse for example is smart enough to not jump of a cliff and not crash into people and more importantly it is smart enough to stay on the road. The horse will follow the roads automatically, without you needing to control it, which allows you to look around to watch for hidden dangers.
As a side note to the horse, Tobias mentioned that the animations of the horse are not perfect yet as their animation studio is on the fifth floor and it is not very easy getting a horse in that studio.

Time for a history lesson (click the links for a very long history lesson). In 1378, Charles the fourth passed away. He was the ruler of the holy Roman empire and the king of Bohemia and Italy. He passed his crown to his son Wenceslaus the fourth, who was more interested in whoring around, drinking and hunting. Because of his inability to rule he got disposed by the lords of the Holy Roman empire as king of the Romans, but remained king of the Bohemians. A few years later, his younger brother Sigismund, who was king of Hungary at the time, imprisoned Wenceslaus in 1402 and shipped him off to Vienna.

With this situation the game begins. The city you live has been attacked by the army of Sigismund and they killed everyone in the city (minus you). So you are alone without family and friends. You enter into the service of a nobleman who is planning a counterattack against Sigismund. This is the start of a civil war within the holy Roman empire. As a soldier you are standing next to other soldiers and play your part. Your story will not influence the historic story as you can't change history, but you will be able to create your story within that overarching story.

That brought us to the combat in the game, which has been somewhat hyped by Warhorse in the last months, so my expectations were high. Again it was emphasized that they wanted to make the combat as historically realistic as possible and also hired the necessary experts for that.
The combat system is, in the opinion of Tobias, the most complicated, but also the most kick-ass feature they have and is the perfect match between historical accuracy and gameplay.
According to Warhorse, it is historical accurate because they use real medieval sword techniques and it is realistic because it is connected to stamina, so you need to manage that as well. Just running in a battle and hack and slash at your enemies will get you killed, because you run out of stamina early. The more you are hit, the less you can fight back as your stamina will be depleted faster, so it is not just about hitting the other one, but also to block attacks and to step away if needed to avoid being hit and get your stamina back. According to Tobias the combat is easy to learn, but hard to master.
In addition the armor you are carrying plays a role. Against someone with a full-scale armor a sword is useless. You need a blunt weapon for that. This means you need to be proficient with different weapons in order to be able to defeat opponents with different armor types.

To achieve the armor system they wanted, a 16 layer system was created. You can place 16 pieces of armor over each other. They are also physically over each other, so you can see every part you put on yourself. A helmet for example is good against swords, but for blunt weapons you need something softer under the helmet (I know those are only two layers, but they didn't provide a 16 layer example).

After the presentation I got to try the combat out myself. In combat, you see in the center of the screen something that looks like a flower with five petals. You have to move your mouse around to select one of the petals (or the center of the flower) and click, which will make your sword go from that direction towards your opponent. I found selecting the correct petal with a mouse not always that easy, but perhaps it is just me. It is also possible to block an attack, by selecting a petal and pressing Q. Your sword will block an attack coming from that direction, so you have to watch what your opponent is doing. If the sword of your opponent is not coming from that direction, you are doing it wrong and will be hit
You can use a combination of attacks by clicking the petals in a repeating order, followed by a different type of attack to catch your opponent of guard. There are also ranges of sequences that invoke different special attacks. At close range you can also use the pommel of your sword to hit the other guy. On top of that you can side step or back away. While doing all that you need to keep an eye on your stamina bar, as without stamina you're attacks are worthless.
To be honest that was a lot to take in and try out and as I was continuously busy with selecting the right petal, watching my stamina and the opponent. I didn't feel it was fun. It felt like hard work to try and achieve something instead of it being an exciting experience. I was busy with clicking the right petals and not the strategy of it all. Perhaps it is me or perhaps the time was too short and I would need more time to be able to enjoy it. In any case I left feeling somewhat disappointed.

The presentation of Kingdom Come: Deliverance revolved about the game being historically correct in all ways possible. The maps, the buildings, the terrains, the NPCs and the combat to name a few. On top of that it looks great. It is now in version 0.4 and holds a promise of becoming a really great RPG. Unfortunately I have not yet seen that in the presentation (nor experienced it when it comes to combat). Perhaps if I would have played the alpha version before, I would have seen something from that and appreciated the game and especially the combat more. For now I think I'll just wait a bit longer and see what the next versions bring, before doing that, as I do think in the next versions there could be a RPG in that game.