Even though the year has just started, the gaming industry has been in an ongoing uproar. Publishers like Electronic Arts are reporting extraordinary losses off the back of not only a disappointing live service launch in EA Sports FC 25 but also a single-player-only RPG, Dragon Age: The Veilguard from BioWare. Ubisoft delayed Assassin’s Creed Shadows again, and though it’s received extensive amounts of polish since its November showing, there’s still a big question mark on whether it can deliver.
Then there’s Warner Bros. Games, which recently stopped support for Rocksteady’s Suicide Squad: Kill the Justice League and Player First’s MultiVersus. Both titles impact revenue for their parent company by hundreds of millions, which explains why president David Haddad recently stepped down. However, a new report by Bloomberg has emerged, indicating that things are allegedly even worse than one would think behind the scenes.
Amid all this is Kingdom Come: Deliverance 2. It sold over one million copies on launch day and saw over 159,000 peak concurrent players on Steam. Just a few days later, it toppled that record with more than 256,000 concurrent players, ranking 49th on Steam’s most-played games in history. Granted, it’s the first week, and this is a massive role-playing experience. Furthermore, it’s building off the success and brand recognition of the first game with a healthy amount of marketing over the past several months.
However, it is, for all intents and purposes, exactly what the development team promised. Kingdom Come: Deliverance 2 is indeed like the first game but with double the content and numerous refinements to its core systems. There’s no significant shifting in focus, a complete overhaul in mechanics or ditching what made the first game so popular (for better and worse). The goal was to present a bigger, better and more packed sequel that adhered to its predecessor’s tenets while expanding on them in all the right ways.
Story-telling and characterization were already strong suits for the first game. So, instead, the developer focused on making them more nuanced. From the get-go, the presentation is massively improved, especially in the cutscenes and animation. Characters don’t just deliver lines to you – they react to your appearance, reputation and choice of words. And you’re pretty much in the gutter for two out of three in the beginning, even lacking proper clothing to make most citizens think anything more.
Even as you invest in better stats to succeed in speech checks and whatnot, observing and understanding the other person is key to success. Of course, there’s plenty to note early on with the extensive attention to detail that’s been poured into the world. The overarching goal is to deliver a realistic medieval adventure in reactive environments, and it’s a success. You’ll overhear conversations and watch arguments break out as people engage in their own activities. This is amplified further when you reach larger places like Kuttenberg, which is simply brimming with life.
That sense of nuance and attention to detail also applies to the protagonist, Henry. He’s grown up significantly from all the skirmishes and tragedies seen thus far but is still in the process of truly becoming a hero. Events still haunt him, as seen in the opening cutscenes, but his disposition won’t stay for long. As he’s exposed to the greater world and deals with various individuals through the player’s choice of occupations – be it blacksmith, alchemist, or wandering warrior – the perception towards him develops further.
The intertwining of gameplay and story choices is key here, as with any role-playing game. While Henry’s personality remains the same as the first game initially, it’s possible to become beloved or reviled depending on how you play. If you want to become a remorseless figure, the world will treat you like one.
That’s in addition to all the interesting side quests, some of which don’t have hard starts and stops and can intertwine with other stories. Yes, you’ll still have random encounters while fast traveling and can be put off by fights against wolves that leave you dead.
As off-putting as they can be, especially with the save system, they’re in keeping with the setting (though becoming more combat-proficient will doubtless help along the way). Even with some of the more brutal, tedious and slower elements, it’s laser-focused on the type of experience it wants to offer without compromising on the fundamentals, presentation and story-telling.
It’s all the more endearing when you consider that the title also faced a delay for several months to improve on the performance and polish. The developer sought to avoid a repeat of the first game’s disastrous launch, and, lo and behold, Kingdom Come: Deliverance 2 runs very well on all platforms. There are still bugs and glitches, as expected with any open-world title, but compare this kind of experience to something like, say, Starfield. The difference is staggering.
All of this just makes the title stand out even more when compared to the efforts of bigger publishers with thousands of developers spread across the world in multiple studios. Skull and Bones shifted focus numerous times over its many years of development, never quite sure of the experience it wanted to be, opting for “live service.”
Even as Ubisoft attempted to deliver a more single-player-focused experience with Star Wars Outlaws, it was hampered by various technical issues and gameplay shortcomings. Many of those have been ironed out after months of patches, but it’s too late – now the company is doing its best to ensure the same fate doesn’t befall Assassin’s Creed Shadows.
Warner Bros. Games is even more tragic, throwing the talent of Rocksteady (and several other studios) at something like Suicide Squad: Kill the Justice League to a rousing failure. A recent report by Bloomberg alleges that the studio is indeed returning to the Batman franchise for a new single-player experience, but it’s years away.
The same apparently goes for Monolith Productions’ Wonder Woman – a title announced in 2021 and set to deliver a Nemesis System-driven experience, only to reportedly be rebooted early last year. It’s seemingly unable to coalesce into the desired experience and has been described as a more traditional action-adventure game whose release is now up in the air.
While live service has been a harsh lesson to these publishers (and many others – see Sony), it’s not the be-all, end-all. Many of their issues are also centred around not knowing what kind of experience they want to deliver. Granted, they’re at the whims of higher-ups – let’s not forget all the twists and turns BioWare underwent before The Veilguard even came close to materializing. At the end of the day, making a single-player game isn’t enough, and fans will see through any nonsense presented before them.
It’s yet another reason why Kingdom Come: Deliverance 2 has succeeded. Despite its gameplay idiosyncrasies, it’s all in the service of an epic role-playing experience where your decisions matter. Not everything is resolved perfectly due to technical issues or because that’s how the story-telling pans out, but the experience feels real and significant – it matters, even if you’re looking to have dumb fun. Perhaps that’s something big-name publishers should focus on more over the bottom line.
Note: The views expressed in this article are those of the author and do not necessarily represent the views of, and should not be attributed to, GamingBolt as an organization.
