Kingdom Come: Deliverance Developer Interview

Kingdom Come: Deliverance Team

It's everyone's dream to create a game they are passionate about and quite a challenge to get a team together to fulfill that goal. Today we're interviewing the team of Kingdom Come: Deliverance about their upcoming game to see just how their journey is going.

GamesPlanet: Hi, thanks for taking the time to do this interview about Kingdom Come: Deliverance. Before we get started can you tell us your name and role in the company?

Warhorse Studios: Thank you very much for reaching out. My name is Tobias Stolz-Zwilling and I am the PR Manager at Warhorse Studios.

GamesPlanet: How long has Kingdom: Come Deliverance been in development and what game would you compare it to?

Warhorse Studios: This is a tricky question because technically the idea was born in 2011 in a downtown Prague pub. So from the initial idea of a medieval, realistic RPG set in Bohemia it took several months of work to produce the first prototype. Back then and with a different title, the idea was to find the right publisher to help us enter the videogame market with a quite unique game. Unfortunately the idea of “Dungeons & No Dragons” wasn’t successful among publishers all around the world, the studio and the idea was destined to fail. No funding – no studio – no game. But we had luck... a Czech Investor jumped on the sinking ship and offered help... if we could prove there is a market and that players will wait for this game.

On January 2014 we decided to go on Kickstarter! It was sink or swim... and we swam! From initially setting a goal of £300,000 we got more than £1.1 million by the end, this huge but surprising success was the actual Kickstart of Kingdom Come: Deliverance. So from March 2014 when the Kickstarter project ended we began the full development of the game. From one person that had an idea to 25 who tried to create the first prototypes, we're now a team of 90 awesome people!

GamesPlanet: What can you tell us about the story of the game, how historically accurate is it and is it based on anything or anyone?

Warhorse Studios: The story takes place in Bohemia in the year 1403. You play as Henry, a young man that has lost everything to war. You are no hero, but driven by the will to avenge your family and fulfill the dying wish of your father, fate will lead you to play a major role in a violent civil war waged by two kings for the control of Bohemia’s much coveted silver mines. This game is less about what you look like but more about what you do and how you shape Henry's character. In Kingdom Come you’ll get the chance to tell your story in a historically correct story. That means you can’t change history, but you can influence it and be a part of something that really happened. Because nearly all events, most of the NPCs, all castles, churches, villages, cities really existed and some are still standing today.

GamesPlanet: Kingdom: Come Deliverance has a big focus on the combat system, how do you feel about this being one of the main points of your game and is the game going to be something anyone can learn or will it require time to learn?

Warhorse Studios: The combat system is/was one of the most anticipated features we have in the game, however Kingdom Come: Deliverance is not just about combat. The combat we show is just part of the game and you can either go out and kill anyone on sight or you can be the negotiator, trying to solve quests with diplomacy. It’s about how you decide to solve quests, different approaches might have different outcomes - on the other hand our combat system is something very special. We tried to show real historical fencing, therefore we studied different books as well as working closely with universities and real sword masters. A good display of our effort and enthusiasm is seen in a video we released.

GamesPlanet: There has been a recent market for Virtual Reality, is this something you'd like to do in future? Would you also be open to moving the game to console or will it remain PC only?

Warhorse Studios: VR is something the CryEngine supports, ergo it also works with Kingdom Come: Deliverance. We tested it already and it looks really interesting, but we most likely won’t optimize the game for VR. Regarding the platforms, we want to release the game for PC, Playstation 4 and Xbox One. However we are focusing on the PC Version and the Beta will be for Windows only.

GamesPlanet: When you move further into development, do you see yourself launching on Steam Early Access or is that something you'd like to do in the future?

Warhorse Studios: This is something we don’t know for sure yet. The good thing about being an indie developer is that you have many options available, now it’s on us to find the best one.

GamesPlanet: Can you name some of the highlights creating the game? What are you most proud of about making the game?

Warhorse Studios: There are many things we are proud of such as the combat system, the A.I System, that we managed to adjust and push the CryEngine to its limits. But the special thing in this project is the motivation. The setting is the region of Sazava which is located 50km south of Prague, so we have the chance to visit all those castles, churches and sites to learn from them and transfer them into the game. We went even further since we purchased a 16km2 real satellite hide map which we use to recreate the lay of the land. So we not only visit structures but also fields, forests, river and streams.

Everyone who works here does it either because the want to tell the world: “Look how beautiful this region is, look how many stories it has to tell” or because we love the concept of creating a realistic game that resigns magic and fantasy elements. It’s a special challenge and we are extremely motivated.

GamesPlanet: Do you have future plans for DLC in the future?

Warhorse Studios: Of course we have many cool ideas, but right now we're just focusing on the main game.

GamesPlanet: Regarding your most recent technical Alpha, what features are already in the game right now?

Warhorse Studios: It’s important to understand that our Alpha is slightly different than most other Alphas. It’s more a technical showcase of features that are in the work so we can basically display the direction we are going. So exactly as you said, we update the Alpha from time to time to show new features and discuss them with the community.

Right now there is the Alchemy System, the Combat System, the Horse Riding, several quests with branching dialogues, an Adaptive Sound system that reacts to the player’s actions, the first survival elements in form of hunger and exhaustion as well as many other graphical and technical details. So you see... there is already a lot to see and to test. And people can still participate on our website.

GamesPlanet: Being crowdfunded, do you feel added pressure to deliver an experience for not only the fans but the backers?

Warhorse Studios: No, since I wouldn’t call it pressure. It’s more a special form of responsibility. We are a crowdfunded company, we gained the trust of our Backers so now we are creating their and our vision of a realistic medieval RPG. That’s also why we decided to use Tech Alphas, this way we can actually gather a lot of feedback from our backers to maybe adjust some elements before releasing the game. Also in our forum we ask a lot of game changing questions and give the Backers the chance to contribute.

Actually we just passed the 50,000 Backers mark and this is awesome because without those Backers there wouldn’t be any Kingdom Come nor Warhorse Studios. We want to say THANK YOU!

GamesPlanet: Are you targeting a release date for the final version, roughly how long do you think the game will be before beta/final versions are available?

Warhorse Studios: Right now we are in the Tech Alpha 0.5 stage which will be the last Alpha. The Team is already working on the Beta which will be the next step of development and the finished game is scheduled for Summer 2016.

GamesPlanet: Thanks for the answering the questions, is there anything else you'd like to mention about Kingdom Come: Deliverance?

Warhorse Studios: I really want to thank you for this interview and encourage all readers to visit us on our social networks and check for new updates. And if you want to jump on the Alpha train, you can do so by visiting https://www.kingdomcomerpg.com/ and being a part of the community.