At PAX West 2024, VGG got the honor of going hands-on with Kingdom Come: Deliverance 2, the highly anticipated sequel to the historical fiction open world RPG from Warhorse Studios. We had a chat with the "face of Warhorse," Sir Tobi, and played an exclusive segment of the game at PLAION's booth. Read our hands-on impressions below!
Hands-on with Kingdom Come: Deliverance 2 & interview with Warhorse Studios spokesperson Tobias Stolz-Zwilling
Developer: Warhorse Studios
Publisher: Deep Silver
Genre: Open world action RPG
Release Date: February 11, 2025
Platform(s): PC, PS5, Xbox Series
When we arrived at PLAION's booth at PAX West 2024, we were quickly intercepted by a jolly stranger with a brilliant beard, a stunningly groomed mustache, and a... dagger?! This mustachioed dagger-wielder was none other than Sir Tobi (or Tobias Stolz-Zwilling if you have no joy in your heart), the PR manager and self described "face of" Warhorse Studios.
He served as our guide for our appointment, both setting us up with a proper presentation about what the team is setting out to do with Kingdom Come: Deliverance 2 and nudging us in the right directions once we got hands-on with the press-exclusive demo. It was a warm and joyful reception, particularly for being one of the last appointments of the day, a few days into the show, when he'd already seen dozens of journalists and content creators. It was a true sign of how passionate the team is about this project and made for one of the more polished appointments we had at the show.
So, Kingdom Come: Deliverance 2. What's it all about?
It's a historical fiction open world RPG that takes the dragons and magicks of The Witcher and Skyrim and replaces it with high-stakes monarchies and nitty-gritty systems that ask you to keep yourself clean and presentable so as to not be jailed on the streets. It's a game that makes swordfighting, ranged bow work, and general survival visceral and difficult, as it would be in reality. The series never sacrifices fun for realism, but it ends up offering some of the most involved systems compared to any RPG before it.
This game, a sequel, picks up directly after the events of the original Kingdom Come: Deliverance — a story about young Henry, a blacksmith's son who lives peacefully in a small village in 15th century Bohemia. When the army of the rampaging King Sigismund demolishes his town, resulting in his parents' deaths, Henry is set on a path of vengeance and throughout the game learns how to exact it.
Where the first game is his journey sees him go from boy to man, the second game sees him shift from man to warrior.
"I always say that in the first game, Henry becomes the champion of the Sunday League," Stolz-Zwilling described, comparing Henry's journey in the first game to some bloke going out and being part of an amateur football league. "And now in the second game, he's invited to play in the Premier League. The stakes are higher. Before, he was fighting bandits in the forests for local lords. Now he's being invited to the court of kings to sabotage armies."
In the special segment I got to play, Henry roams the streets with status. No longer desperately finding a place to sleep on the streets, now he seeks out opportunities to offer his hand to help his fellow man — like the German master swordsman, Menhard, who's yelling on the streets and gathering the attention of all passersby. He tells Henry a story of having been invited to town by the now-missing King to open a school to teach his craft, but with the King gone he has only been met with confusion and dismissal.
Where the first game is his journey sees him go from boy to man, the second game sees him shift from man to warrior.
To give Menhard the chance to prove himself, Henry agrees to witness the man's skills in a practice duel and promptly gets bloodied in combat. (I swear it's Henry's lacking swordsman skills and not mine.) One of Kingdom Come: Deliverance 2's changes from the first game is a light simplification of the swordplay and its precise aiming of weakpoints, as detailed to us by Stolz-Zwilling demonstrating vividly with his plastic dagger. Where before the game featured a six-point star allowing players to target the left and right sides of an enemy's top-half, bottom-half, and head, KCD2 bumps it down to four by squishing the bottom half into one point.
This is a perfect example of the team's emphasis on taking everything from the first game and leveling it up for the sequel — not reinventing the wheel, but adding a bit of polish.
"Pretty much everything has improved," Stolz-Zwilling beamed. "I know that sounds like a phrase, but we took all the elements, all the features, everything we know from KCD1 and really tried to build up on that. Quest design, combat, level design, even the dice minigame got an upgrade. We really tried to make it a nicer, more fluid experience. This is the game we always wanted to do, and now, six years later, we can do it. And that just feels great."
After the duel with Menhard calls the attention of the local guards and officials, Henry and the swordsman find themselves having to put on an act to explain away why they're making a scene on the street. The government officials have disliked this loud German man for far too long and are ready to be rid of him, but leaning into the silliness of the series, I decide to respond by letting the guards know that the two of us were dueling because Henry had slept with the man's daughter and Menhard was simply defending his honor. The series is built on historical accuracy and realistic tales of medieval living, but it's also incredibly cheeky.
"The humor is extremely important to us, the silliness is extremely important. That's what make a KCD a KCD, just as much as those huge moments of castles being sieged and wars being fought," said Stolz-Zwilling.
Once some smooth-talking disperses the crowd, the swordsman invites Henry to the pub to chat about his predicament. And I take that as my opportunity to wander the streets of Kuttenberg, the much talked about sprawling city in the first game that we finally have the opportunity to explore here in the second.
The first thing that catches my eyes is how much more alive the city is than the towns and hamlets from the first game. Kuttenberg is bustling and folks are walking the town and going about their days with so much more variety.
At one point, I stumble into two strangers drunkenly arguing and shoving. Having never seen an interaction like this in the first game, I stick around for a bit to see what happens. A crowd gathers, they start punching, and a guard eventually comes to break it up. Stolz-Zwilling makes sure to keep me from getting involved so I don't miss out on the quest I'm on, but it's fun to see a moment like this pop up organically with seemingly no real quest or task attached to it.
Once I have my fill (and I clean up the blood from our fight at a random fountain), I meet with Menhard and his squire to hear out their situation, and quickly a plan forms. The two want to spread the brilliance of German swordfighting and are sick of the locals bullying them out of it. If they won't willingly come to the table to defend their honor, they'll force them. Henry's recruited to steal the local swordfighting guild's ornamental blade and hang it on the town hall, signifying that the guild is taking on all challenges — giving the Germans the opportunity to show themselves as more capable than the local guild.
Time to stealth.
Equipped with only a torch and a dream, I clamber over a carriage parked against the tall stone walls of the local guild and break in through their kitchen. The only soul I run up against is a drunken man passed out at the dining table, and I'm in and out with the sword. No one's the wiser. It's smooth, easy, and a sign of Henry's growth since the first game.
One thing I found interesting about the jump from KCD1 to 2 was the idea that a lot of the fun of the first game was seeing Henry learn all these skills for the first time, and how closely linked the RPG progression was to that learning journey.
Since this carries through directly from the first game, Henry in KCD2 is already set up with all the skills and lessons from the first game, and it skips past the clunky baby steps and gets you equipped with the more skillful person he's become. It's more about building upon what he's already learned and leveling up even further.
The next day, the sword's hanging in the square and the challenges are levied at the local guild. But of course, there's one issue... the Germans don't have enough members for the fight. And so Henry's asked to join their guild to represent their side in the coming fight. To join, Henry must be initiated via another duel, but this time I was prepared to take in the new swordfighting system, and I quickly dispatched the master's squire.
Gone away are the more gamified elements of swordfighting from KCD1 — slo-mo when you dodge attacks or parry moves is gone, for example — and it weirdly makes it much more fluid and enjoyable as a result. I'm inducted into the guild and we're ready for the fight.
Before we're able to enter the big day, the full-on tournament between the two guilds, Stolz-Zwilling came to tap me on the shoulder and the demo was finished. And I was devastated. Getting this small taste of the greater open world of Kingdom Come: Deliverance 2, seeing how much smoother the game is overall, and experiencing a small strand of a tapestry of stories that'll turn the blacksmith's son into a soldier? I just wanted more.
Kingdom Come: Deliverance 2 will see the stories of Henry, Hans, and the mad kings taking control of the Kingdom of Bohemia come to a head on February 11, 2025, and you know I'll be there to get my hands dirty, keep Henry's belly full ("I feel quite hungry" gamers log on), and generally enjoy medieval living like no one else can. If you want to be part of it, wishlist it today and follow the development in the leadup to launch!
Want to see more like this? Check out all of our PAX West 2024 coverage.
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