Kingdom Come Deliverance 2 is coming in 2024 and it's wildly ambitious
Following several leaks and a cryptic teaser from Warhorse Studios, the Prague-based team has revealed that it is indeed working on a direct sequel to Kingdom Come Deliverance - and it’s coming later this year.
The first KCD game arrived in 2018 as a refreshing medieval take on the tried and tested RPG formula. With a realistic combat system and some fairly punishing survival RPG mechanics thrown in there, it found a solid audience among players. Well, at least enough to inspire Warhorse Studios to continue the Deliverance story with a direct sequel.
In a recent behind-closed-doors preview, Warhorse shared a first look at the project it’s been working on for the last several years. From what we’ve seen so far, the sequel is set to be bigger, better, and a more realised version of what the studio set out to create in the first place.
Picking up where we left off
Make no bones about it, KCD2 is a direct sequel to the first game. It features the same protagonist and shares many key characters from the story - Henry makes his return, the previously impoverished son of a blacksmith who’s on a quest to find purpose in the middle-aged realm of Bohemia.
He returns alongside his partner in crime, Hans Capon, a young nobleman who shows Henry the ways of what it means to climb the hierarchy. In the early footage that we were shown, it appears that the relationship between Henry and Hans will continue to develop and be a focal point in KCD2 as the stakes become higher than ever.
Raised stakes
Where the first game mostly saw the player dealing with trials and tribulations involving bandits and scallywags, KCD2 is much grander in its scope. This time, things have escalated to the point where the player will get involved in the ructions of Kings and Queens.
This is all reflected in the game’s design as well as its story. We’ll travel to Kuttenberg, a real city in Czechia that was in the first game by name only. Here, it’s realised as a fully urban environment - well, as urban as it gets for the Middle Ages.
By Warhorse’s own admission, building Kuttenberg for KDC2 was by far the biggest challenge for the team. Not only for optimisation’s sake but likely to ensure that the new systems all work flawlessly. A big advancement here is a reactive social system that sees the world react to your actions. Steal something in plain sight, and you could see yourself shunned by the community, for example.
Other new additions include new ranged weapons in the form of a crossbow, and even some very early firearms to experiment with. All of this remains historically accurate for the time period, and is incorporated into the same obtuse-but-learnable melee combat that debuted in the first game.
Warhorse had a bunch of stats at the ready to compare how much bigger the project was this time around. The map is twice as large, there’s more than double the amount of narrative cutscenes, and the team size has grown exponentially from just 11 people in the office to over 250 staff. Especially given how downtrodden life seems to have been like for game studios over the last few years, it’s fantastic to see Warhorse thriving ahead of its latest release.
Kingdom Come Deliverance 2 is set to launch later this year in 2024 for Xbox Series X|S, PlayStation 5, and PC. With 2023 proving to be a massive year for RPGs (think Baldur’s Gate 3, Diablo 4, Tears of the Kingdom), this year might just follow suit with what looks to be an exceptional offering so far.
