Kingdom Come: Deliverance – The Past and Future of Czech RPGs

Years ago, a Czech developer had a dream: to create a realistic medieval RPG, ideally rooted in Czech history, with no magic or dragons. That developer was Daniel Vávra—a designer, screenwriter, free speech advocate, and a man who knows how to stir the pot with his opinions. He is a controversial figure, sure, but he excels at one thing: making games. He proved it with Hidden & Dangerous and the legendary Mafia.

The idea for a medieval game was original and intriguing at the time. In 2011, Vávra teamed up with Martin Frývaldský and Martin Klíma to found Warhorse Studios, where they began developing Kingdom Come: Deliverance.

The Start of a Thorny Path

The first major challenge was securing funding for such a massive project. The team started pitching to publishers. Most liked the idea, but no one wanted to put up the money. When push came to shove, nobody believed in the project. Unfortunately, they hit a period where big players thought the video game industry was in crisis and consoles were on the decline. We all know now that they were wrong.

Warhorse didn't give up and turned to crowdfunding on Kickstarter. It turned out that players really wanted this game. They initially asked for £300,000 and ended up raising over a million pounds (36 million CZK)! While that sounds like a lot, it still wasn't enough to develop a game of this scale. According to Forbes magazine, the final cost climbed to 750 million CZK. Dan himself disputed this, claiming the final costs were around 400 million CZK. Regardless, the Kickstarter success gave them leverage with investors, eventually leading to the involvement of the somewhat controversial investor Zdeněk Bakala.

After all the hurdles, the game finally found a publisher: the Austrian company Deep Silver, now part of the Embracer Group.

At the beginning, Warhorse promised a lot. It was originally intended to be a story split into three games. The game finally launched on February 13, 2018, in the form we know today.

What Happened After Launch?

The first few days after release were definitely not smooth. The game was quite broken and full of bugs, especially on consoles. Vávra’s past mockery of other broken games came back to haunt him like a boomerang… Fortunately, the developers managed to fix the game over time. By 2024, over 6 million copies had been sold, proving it was definitely worth the effort.

Personally, I fell for Kingdom Come almost immediately. I ended up spending 320 hours in the game and finished it on PS4 the day before the first patch was released… It was an amazing experience, even though I struggled with the technical state, had to repeat parts of the game because my save file got corrupted, and only managed to pick one lock throughout the entire playthrough.

What drew me to Henry's story? Probably its grounded, intimate approach. Henry isn't some chosen one destined to save the world. He is talented, but essentially an ordinary person thrown by circumstances into events he can barely influence. Even as he works his way up, he remains low on the medieval food chain.

The setting also played a huge role for me. Medieval Skalitz and the surrounding Central Bohemian landscape act as a second main character. Wandering through the beautiful and familiar nature was an experience I won't soon forget—even though I played on a standard PlayStation 4 and couldn't enjoy the polished HD textures and HDR effects of the PC version.

The gamble paid off for Warhorse. The studio eventually joined the aforementioned Embracer Group and turned its founders into well-deserved millionaires.

The Sequel is Here

Almost immediately after the first game's release, Warhorse began working on a sequel. This time, in silence. When they announced Kingdom Come 2 in April 2024, it had already been in development for several years, and the team had nearly doubled in size. It was a surprise when they announced the game would launch by the end of 2024. There was a small delay, though—the game will be out in February 2025.

What can we expect? Primarily, a continuation of a well-established story. The location will change, with the city of Kutná Hora and its surroundings taking center stage. Back then, it was a fairly large city, growing wealthy from silver mining and coin minting. The map will be larger (nearly double the size of the first game), and combat and mechanics will be more refined. We'll get more cutscenes, more story (there's only a two-day gap between the first and second game), and official Czech voice acting. While the quality in the trailers is debated, it will certainly make many players happy.

Final thoughts? I'm excited! I can't wait to meet Henry again, walk around the picturesque pond, and head into the deep woods to hunt rabbits. I'll be nervous about getting ambushed again. Every fight will be a challenge again. And I'll be proud once more that even Czechs can pull off such a demanding and unique project.

author Karel Krajča