Kingdom Come: Deliverance - News Roundup

Couchpotato

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An IGN Editor by the name Meghan has a new post about having a female warrior.
When developer Warhorse Studios recently showed their game Kingdom Come: Deliverance to media outlets, they explained all the options available to your protagonist. You can explore a large open world, create your own weapons, build relationships with characters (including seducing the local ladies), lead an army, and even customize your armor and play style. Yet there is one option that isn't available: a female avatar. The absence of a female protagonist in light of a customizable hero (as opposed to a preset one) seems rather puzzling, but Warhorse Studios insists that Kingdom Come: Deliverance is meant to be as true to life as possible, and a chevalière simply isn't "realistic."
Next a german site called combobreaker interviewed Warhorse Studio.The site provided an English script for those that can't read German.
CB: How did you agree on the title? Is there a background?

Dan : During the time in playing our game, people believed that the end of the world would take place very soon. Many revolutions started because the people believed that the end is near and if they would do something, it would come faster. Or would it go to heaven. Our game is about these days. Therefore, Kingdom Come ("Thy Kingdom Come" from the Lord's Prayer, editor's note). And Deliverance (liberation) because our game is about also. From physical liberation of a character by our hero, and the inner liberation of our protagonists.

CB: How will you story and sandbox balance so that the two things are related yet and do not present themselves as two separate elements, such as was the case in Skyrim?

Dan: The main story is always waiting for you and you can do so, as in Skyrim, if you do not want to move forward in the history of all the open-world things. But we try to bring the story centered approach of The Witcher or Red Dead Redemption with the open-world aspect of Skyrim.

CB: What are the big battles and sieges work?

Dan: They serve as a high point in the story, which means there are only a few of them. You are also only one of many that can therefore give no commands. But still the player to see all the things that were part of large battles and sieges that time.

CB: combat systems in RPGs are always a critical component. You've already said you were proud of the combat system. Can you explain this a bit and show us the differences between fighting on horseback, on foot, and so on to explain?

Dan: The fight on horseback is easier, because you still have to control the horse at the same time. On the other hand, you can use the horse as a weapon need - it has its own attacks. The fight on foot is actually like in any first-person shooter. Your Bewegungnen are totally free, but you're just closer and have a larger goal.
More information.
 
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And here I thought I was the only one that was frustrated at a lack of a female protagonist. :)

It's why I'm not backing the game. It's a bit of a copout, not having the option for a female avatar. I understand 'realism' and all that…but women did exist in the Middle Ages, and they quite often did incredible things - we weren't as invisible as chroniclers of the period would like you to believe. If you want to immerse *everyone* in your game experience, then you need to do a little bit to create a world in which a woman can experience the Middle Ages as well, even if you need to make the world stand up to you and say "well you're just a woman. prove me wrong." in the name of realism.

Hopefully this still ships mod friendly, so that some skilled modder can help make this game immersive for the other half of the population.

Thanks for including that, Couchpotato. :)
 
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I don't really understand why the "young blacksmith" in the story can't be a female. Even if the sex of the character is important in some way, couldn't they just add male/female options to those particular pieces?

Maybe the unspoken reason is that they would need to create new character assets? No idea.
 
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No problem Aubrielle. I understand what she is trying to say but I think the problem is the game was designed for a set protagonist.

They probably could add the option but at this point it probably would take more work their not willing to do. They at least offered a compromise.
Character customization

There are many questions about possibilities of your character customization. Our game is story-based and the hero is a specific character, whose background, personal history, etc. are already developed. You cannot change his gender, voice or face. However, you can change almost everything else – we have a very sophisticated equipment/clothing system, you can change hair styles (in-game, not before starting the game), there are no class limits on attributes.

Females


A specific type of character customization question is the one about option to play as a female. This is unfortunately not possible, as explained above. However our stretch goal will allow you to take the role of a female character for a while.
 
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I don't really understand why the "young blacksmith" in the story can't be a female. Even if the sex of the character is important in some way, couldn't they just add male/female options to those particular pieces?

That would be the easiest way to do it. Also the most unrealistic. Blacksmith apprentice is the traditional backstory for the young peasant boy to learn about weapons even though he's a peasant, and also the route for the budding peasant hero to become freakishly strong. These guys care so much about realism they're creating virtual replicas of actual historical locations. And they're giving away hand made swords and shields as kickstarter rewards. Doesn't surprise me they don't want to go that route and just plug a female character into a male's origin story. If they decide to add female protagonist option, they'll likely come up with something that works better.
 
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Step 1. Write a female protagonist origin story if they're so dead set on the idea that women can't be blacksmiths.
Step 2. Make that origin story a stretch goal.
Done.

My general feeling is that Warhorse needs to stop being such little bitches about it. Maybe I'm just irritated cause it's early in the morning but I feel like retracting my funding. Not that they'll care most likely.
 
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I don't know what their feelings about it are, Lemonhead, but if they are aiming for historical accuracy, then women cannot be blacksmiths. Blacksmiths are the biggest, roughest, toughest and strongest guy in the village. Blacksmith is the absolute last peasant-type job a woman would have in a medieval village. I don't really see why this needs to be an issue, though. There are plenty of plausible backstories for a woman warrior in a medieval setting, including the cliche one of a tomboy raised by an indulgent nobleman. See Arya, in Game of Thrones. See Brienne in Game of Thrones for another plausible backstory. Hell, even from history I can think of one notable example off the top of my head:

https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/0/02/Boudicca_Statue.png
 
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I think the main problem is elsewhere. It's not the realism, new origin or character assets.

Even tough there have indeed been women being fighters and/or commanding troops in the european middle ages, the general status of women in society was very different to the men's. It's not necessary to go into details here.

So I think the main problem for designing a female main protagonis is modeling the NPCs reactions. Women have been treated completeley different in these times in almost every aspect of social life. Imagine the main protagonist having to gather companions, make them follow him/her into battle. That's a task that was much harder for women in these times as the possible followers (in general) simply weren't accustomed to be led by women. I think that's the same for various other actions, resulting from the different roles in society. If you want to have a historically realistic game with authentically acting NPCs, you need to have very different NPC reactions. So I think this was a tremendous amount of additional work. (To be clear, it's roughly the same work for male or female protagonist, but a lot more if you want to have both.)

In other games/settings, this problem is quite smaller. If you think of Mass Effect, Dragon Age, Baldur's Gate or TDE, the society is much more open-minded concerning the women's status' equality. The NPC reactions don't need to differ that much here.
 
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I see this game in the same way as I see The Witcher games: set male protagonist because of the story.
 
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If you are going for a realistic setting then I guess playing as a woman will require a different story with different reaction and stuff from the game world. Same will apply for playing as black man or other ethnic male etc …
 
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From Meghan at ign: You can explore a large open world, create your own weapons, build relationships with characters (including seducing the local ladies), lead an army, and even customize your armor and play style. Yet there is one option that isn't available: a female avatar. The absence of a female protagonist in light of a customizable hero (as opposed to a preset one) seems rather puzzling

That seems a bit misleading. From everything I've read, the character actually is a preset one. Customizing armor and weapons has nothing to do with creating a custom character. Neither does leading an Army or seducing ladies. She didn't mention it, but even choosing skills and abilities doesn't have any bearing on the base character you start with. Anyway, I just checked their kickstarter and it looks like with 45k more (almost certain to get there), they are adding a playable female main character with a different storyline:

https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/1294225970/kingdom-come-deliverance/posts/728375

http://gematsu.com/2014/01/kingdom-come-reaches-funding-goal-stretch-goals-revealed

$600,000 will bring in a new playable female character who saves the lead character in the beginning of the game.

I guess that means the male character will still be in the game, only not controlled by the player? Maybe they had to do that to maintain the storyline. Interesting solution, if so.
 
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As far as I understand it, the story and gameplay with the male protagonist remains untouched, when this stretch goal is reached.
The story about the female protagonist will be a short episode in prolog.
 
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As far as I understand it, the story and gameplay with the male protagonist remains untouched, when this stretch goal is reached.
The story about the female protagonist will be a short episode in prolog.

Oh... well, that doesn't quite resolve the issue, does it? No wonder people were still complaining.
 
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