Back in January, Fextralife community member dn1nd wrote apreview articleabout the upcoming historical RPGKingdom Come: Deliverance. In the preview, we took at a look at this game rooted in realism and the historical setting of 15th century Bohemia. We recently had the pleasure to sit down with Tobias Stolz-Zwilling, PR Manager at developer Warhorse Studios and gained some insights into the development of this very unique game.
FL: Can you tell us about the history of Warhorse Studios?
WS: Warhorse was founded in 2011 by 2 guys in a pub drinking beer which is kind of the regular approach in the Czech republic for good ideas! They sat and talked about creating their own studio and creating a game that is realistic and historically accurate. One of the guys was Daniel Varvra who was responsible for Mafia and Mafia II. He felt if you want to do a game and you’re good at something like making cars you’re doomed to always make cars because people say you are good at making cars. He decided to do his own thing and created Warhorse Studios. He gathered people from the Czech gaming sphere who worked on big titles and the initial idea was to lock themselves for 2 years in the basement, come up with a game and sell it to publishers. But when it came to publishers all they got was mostly a no or a neck breaking contract. They were not willing to do risky stuff. They eventually found an investor in the Czech republic who said he would invest in this project if we can show him our business case, so they decided to enter Kickstarter, setting a goal of 300 thousand pounds raised as proof for investing. On Jan 22nd 2014 we entered Kickstarter and by the end of February we had 1.1 million pounds and this was the kickoff of Kingdom Come: Deliverance. It was 3 years of struggling, wondering “should we close this studio?” The Kickstarter was a sink or swim for us, luckily we swam! So we started development in Feb. 2014, in Oct. 2014 we released the first alpha version, now in Jan 2016 we are on the 5th alpha version and we are about to release the beta version.
FL: Wow, that is pretty fantastic!
WS: Well, it basically shows you that you need to have the balls to piss against the wind. Sometimes people tell you that no one wants your project, that no one is interested in your thing. We have a pretty specific topic here, we are covering Bohemian History or European History from the early 15th century. It’s basically a story about the holy roman empire but people have said “Who is interested in that?” or “No one is interested in Czech history” and it’s not the right time for taking risks, it’s not the right time for doing this or that and Daniel Varvra pretty much proved that it’s always the right time for taking risks and it’s always the right time to go after dreams and do what you think is right. And as I said, pissing against the wind, sometimes it works!
FL: That’s a great box quote right there.
WS: Hahaha, you see before Kickstarter it was 2 guys, around Kickstarter it was 25, after Kickstarter we were 40 and right now 2 years after Kickstarter we are 100 people. We are still growing, we are still hiring, we are still on speed. That is our struggle or success story, but i wouldn’t call it success yet because we still didn’t release anything yet except the alphas!
FL: So you mentioned both the setting and realism as being a risk. What is it about that time period and realism that was such a strong motivating factor in creating this game despite the risks?
WS: Basically it is Daniel Varvra’s dream. He is a Czech patriot he wants to tell the story of the Czech republic, he wants to show that Bohemia was the most important country in the Holy Roman Empire and he wants to talk about a story that really happened that is full of bloody war and intrigue and no one ever covered this period before in an RPG, nor the realism part. You have all these samey slightly realistic games where you have a real life setting like Assassin’s Creed but there’s always this slight addition of fantasy elements where the Assassin can jump from the tower and survive. Varvra wanted to tell a story that is really kickass and interesting. We all believe if Mel Gibson wouldn’t have shot the film Braveheart, no one would know Scottish history and we think this story is even more interesting than that. So why not try the Braveheart effect and see what happens. This time period was also full of political struggle. A love/hate relationship between what became Germans and Czechs, and there were already cultural classes. It was very interesting to research and to tell the story. Nearly every event, NPC, building, and natural landscape feature existed back then.
FL: Yeah some of this history is new to me.
WS: See what I mean!
FL: How hard is it to maintain that historical accuracy?
WS: It isBRUTAL. In the first place it sounds easy to make something realistic because you can just take something that existed in put it into the game. But then we realized quickly in development creating something realistic is way harder than fantasy. Because fantastic stuff can always be explained somehow, and if you don’t know how to explain it you can say it’s magic or the hero tripped and forgot everything. But in a realistic game you need to come up with reasonable explanations for everything. We also want to be as historically accurate as possible. That is why we have a full time historian on the team and she is double and triple checking all the game elements, weapons, armor even vegetation, food, words and she is in an everyday struggle with Daniel our creative director but we think we’ve found a good balance. We know that we are not doing a medieval simulation. We are doing a game and a game is supposed to be fun so there are some compromises but we are still trying to be the most realistic and most historically accurate RPG on the gaming market. It’s a huge challenge that requires a lot of research, you don’t have only the technical sphere but you have the cultural sphere. Our historian is reading manuscripts, talking to experts like sword fighters. We also have the academics sphere with the game’s AI which is being designed by university students from the Czech Republic as their Phd project.
FL: If you’ve been drudging up the past have you made any discoveries or things that have been forgotten?
WS: No 1 historian wants to give you clear answers. If you ask someone what a house looked like, they don’t want to tell you what it looked like, they want to tell you what it didn’t look like. They’re afraid of saying something wrong so they are always saying what didn’t happen. So we have to do a lot of research and self understanding of history. We know Sigismund’s army attacked Bohemia but not from which direction. But one person found an old Hungarian letter that Sigismund was sending back home deciding some matter, dated a specific day and location so we knew where he was at that time so were were able to reconstruct something that was not perfectly documented. We are also reconstructing paintings and buildings. A lot of them are still standing but a lot are no longer here. We have a real painter in our studio who is reconstructing church paintings, using old manuscripts to recreate the destroyed works. It is a reconstruction of Bohemia in the year 1403.
FL: Not only a reconstruction but a reclamation of history.
WS: Well the interesting thing is all those things we can’t properly describe leaves creative freedom for us and the player. So if something is not 100% sure, we can give the player the opportunity to decide what happened.
FL: So within these creative gaps, are there instances where you have to compromise and do something unrealistic?
WS: Most of them are because of technical reasons like if you have an escape tunnel they tend to be really small to prevent an army from following. We had to enlarge them because NPCs couldn’t walk past each other. We also had to enlarge the houses a bit to let the NPCs properly move inside. We had real sword fighters help with the animations, but in real combat you have to be fast and unpredictable. In the game the combat has broad motions and animations so the player can see what is happening. If the fighters were using small steps and were too quick, the players would always lose unless they had trained for years. For the map, we had to bring buildings closer together to make the area more densely populated. It’s mostly technical stuff.
FL: What about healing and wounds? How is that handled?
WS: We have an alchemy system which is what the people used which is an herbalism that can be compared to today’s alternative medicines. So their potions will work the same way they used to, only with the time sped up. So you don’t have to wait a week to be cured but it does the same thing it was supposed to do back then. You gather ingredients, grind them with the mortar, boil it for set turns of the hour glass and read the recipe book and follow the instructions to get a good result in the end.
FL: Ok, so it’s still rooted in history.
WS: Yes, mostly. Not all of them, we have an archery potion which makes you better at archery for a short time but in the end it is still just a game. So there are compromises we have to do but we still attempt to at least use the real ingredients and herbs that would be put inside these potions.
FL: So how do you balance that unchanging history with fun?
WS: You can’t change history but you can decide your impact on how things happened. This game plays itself, every NPC has its cycle; they will get up in the morning and wash, take their tools, go to work. Everything is dynamically running in the background and it plays itself. The NPCs can freely decide what to do in their free time and they choose by experience. If Farmer Tobi goes to the pub and something good happens there he will remember that and the next time he has to choose where to go, he will go to the pub. But you can mess with this. You can beat up Farmer Tobi in the pub and he will remember this and not go there anymore. You can steal the hammer of the blacksmith he needs to complete his daily cycle, so he will need to get a new hammer. These are the small impacts on the world you can have. The questing system is dynamic where your decisions will bend the story. Imagine a quest where you have to find someone and you know that even bad guys are looking for him. You can find him first and save him, you can find him too late and he is already dead or you can find him just in time and you can decide to help him or help the bandits or do nothing. No matter what you decide everything will have an impact on the story and future outcomes. So every action the player does should have a proper reaction. You will always play Henry the son of blacksmith, there is no character customization but you will always decide how you behave and can solve quests in several different ways and there is a reputation systems where rumors will spread. There is no class system, but you will develop how you want to play by your actions.
FL: Are there plans for a sequel?
Of course! Even before we release Kingdom Come: Deliverance the team will already be working on the second part of the game which will most likely be called Kingdom Come: Something but it also depends on the success of the first part. The initial idea was to have a huge game, but we decided to split it into parts because it was too huge for Kickstarter, it would be too expensive. So we decided to do 3 acts. The first part is already way bigger than expected so all 3 together will tell the story. This is still on the horizon because we are still working on Deliverance and then will focus on the next thing.
FL: Will this come to consoles?
WS: Right now the alpha and beta will be on PC only but the finished game is definitely planned for PS4 and Xbox One.
FL: Is there anything you want the average gamer and RPG fan to know about Kingdom Come?
WS: Well what we do is something completely new and totally different from most of the games people are used to. What we want to do is achieve the highest level of immersion possible. We set a huge graphical standard, single player only, first person only. We want the player to believe that he is really standing in a medieval forest or that he tastes blood in his mouth when he gets smacked in the face. We want players to understand that rushing into 10 guys to button smash won’t work. You will always have to concentrate on the person who is standing in front of you. You will never be overpowered, you will always have to struggle to fight, you need to be fast, quick and reactive. Only tactics and patience will lead you to victory. What you get is the most realistic and historically accurate RPG ever made and you will get the chance to see historical events unfold with your own eyes. Our alpha is just a small playable area that gets updated with new features and we are always asking the crowdfunding community for feedback. The beta will be the first introduction to the story and will have the first larger skirmish.
It was a wonderful interview and those are some interesting insights into the process of game development and the new crowdfunded model that is causing a revolution in indie gaming. Thank you to community members dn1nd and vahn_narsamee for collaboration on this! Those interested in checking out the alpha can visitKingdom Come’s Official Siteto gain access. We’ll continue to keep you updated on the development of this game, which is scheduled to release sometime this summer. Keep checking back for more!
