'Kingdom Come: Deliverance'
A bird's eye view of the open world of "Kingdom Come: Deliverance." Warhorse Studios (used with permission)

In January 2014, a young independent Czech developer named Warhorse Studios launched a Kickstarter campaign to secure £300,000 in partial funding for an incredibly ambitious medieval RPG project named "Kingdom Come: Deliverance." By the end of the campaign, Warhorse had raised over £1 million from over 35,000 backers, all eager to see the studio fulfill its vision of creating a historically accurate open-world RPG sandbox game with period accurate melee combat.

International Business Times Australia recently had the chance to sit down with studio Public Relations Manager, Jiří Rýdl to discuss the story of "Kingdom Come: Deliverance," the PS4 and Xbox One versions, elements of gameplay including upcoming alpha builds accessible to backers, and the game's intriguing reputation system.

Warhorse released its first technology alpha to Kickstarter backers in October 2014. Since then, the studio has updated the alpha twice, adding alchemy and lock picking minigames. Another alpha update is planned for June 2015, which will add highly anticipated combat gameplay. Further down the line, toward the end of 2015, a much larger slice of the game will be released as part of a beta version, with the full game scheduled for release in the summer of 2016.

Rýdl went on to add the team isn't showing off everything in the playable versions currently available to backers, as they would like to keep some secrets for the final game. He adds the technical alpha has been immensely helpful in gathering feedback for the game.

Discussing what makes the game "Kingdom Come" unique, Rýdl pointed to the game's emphasis on realism. Where so many of its contemporaries embrace magic and the lure of dungeons and dragons, "Kingdom Come" focuses on period-appropriate historical accuracy.

"In our RPG, we offer a realistic approach to every aspect of the gameplay including environment, weapons, clothes and architecture," he explained. "Our alchemy is far from creating magic potions but more about being an herbalist. Sword fight is tough and dangerous, you can be dead pretty fast. You need to rest and eat to keep walking. You are not a superhero from a fantasy world and players who tend to kill and loot everyone around need to change their tactics."

The backdrop against which this action is set is no less engaging than gamers might find in titles like "Skyrim" or "Dragon Age." Rýdl explains real-world events from the studio's own culture have helped inform the story and setting.

"The 15th century was a time full of changes – there was a clash between ideas in the Catholic church, which unfortunately ended up with Jan Hus burned to death and that was the start of the Hussite wars," said Rýdl. "These events were especially important to us, people from Bohemia and Central Europe in general. They are an important part of our history and culture. That's why we have a lot of history sources to study and also lot of ideas for the game," said Rýdl.

Of course, any open-world game worth its salt features quests to undertake and side activities for the player to enjoy. Rýdl said gamers can spend their time gathering herbs to make potions or alcohol, hunt wildlife, visit local taverns, engage in a bit of smithing and even help solve crimes for NPCs. He gave the example of a merchant whose wagon had been attacked by robbers and whom the player might decide to assist.

"If you help people, they will tell each other and help you. For instance, when you help to catch the robbers who attacked the merchant wagon, you help all people in the village, because they get goods they are waiting for," explained Rýdl. "Some of them can offer you a small reward, some of them start to talk to you because you gained their trust and the merchant will certainly give you a discount! On the other hand, there might be a brother of a robber you sent to the prison, who can name a price to your head. Travelling at night can become even more dangerous."

Discussing what comes next for backers, Rýdl said the team has been hard at work on implementing melee sword fighting into the tech alpha in time for E3. He added the studio had done a lot of research into real-life dueling, speaking to subject matter experts and actual swordsmen.

A quick glance at "Kingdom Come" and its obvious the CryEngine-powered game is quite a stunner. Since the game is headed to Xbox One and PS4, gamers might wonder what sort of performance they can expect. Rýdl stated there was still a lot of optimisation work to be done on the console builds but shared the development team's current performance targets.

"On consoles we aim for 900p/30fps for now," he said. "We will work on the optimisation in close cooperation with Crytek and aim for 1080/30fps or even higher later in the development."

On the subject of the game's PC system requirements, Rýdl reiterated there was still a lot of optimisation work left to be done before the game's release in mid-2016. He did say, however, that if gamers were able to play titles such as "Star Citizen" and "The Witcher 3," they'd be able to play "Kingdom Come: Deliverance" comfortably.

But what about modding? Does the team at Warhorse have plans to create a game-specific toolkit, similar to Bethesda’s "Skyrim Creation Kit?" "Everything that helps you to make your own content for games is great! We definitely want to support modders if we have the time and resources to create such a professional tool; it's hard to tell now," said Rýdl. He added modders familiar with CryEngine would be able to use the engine to mod the game without issue.

Discussing the possibility of VR integration in the game, Rýdl was coy, stating only that the team recently received Oculus Rift dev kits. He went on to add that more news on the VR front may come at a later date.

In the earliest days of "Kingdom Come," the fledgling studio was in search of independent backers and potential publishers. Unable to find someone to back its vision, the studio turned to Kickstarter to drum up support. Originally scheduled for release in December 2015, Warhorse recently announced a delay to mid-2016.

Rýdl explained a large part of the reason for the delay is that despite the fact the studio had a working vertical slice when it was shopping the game to publishers, it had to start nearly from scratch after the success of the Kickstarter campaign. "The number of people working on the game almost tripled. We built up the motion capture studio and started to mocap new animations and we also added new stretch goals from the Kickstarter on the roadmap," he explained.

"The overall progress may be slower than expected, but we are going the right way and you will have your chance to see for yourself in the next technology alpha update with combat, horse riding and one new location. Thanks again to all the backers for making this possible!"

(Credit: YouTube/GameSpot)

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