Czech video game developer Warhorse Studios confirms upcoming Kingdom Come: Deliverance 2 game will feature a “wide range of ethnicities and different characters.”
A screenshot from Kingdom Come: Deliverance 2 (2024), Warhorse Studios
On April 18th, Warhorse Studios revealed the sequel to their hit game, Kingdom Come Deliverance. The company revealed the game will continue the story of Henry as he journeys through the Kingdom of Bohemia, an Imperial State of the Holy Roman Empire. The Kingdom of Bohemia was located in what is now modern day Czech Republic.
In an interview with IGN to promote the game’s reveal, Warhorse Studios spokesman Tobias Stolz-Zwilling was asked by IGN’s Kat Bailey, “Kingdom Come: Deliverance’s philosophy on historical accuracy was debated quite a bit at release, particularly in regards to its lack of people of color. Has Warhorse’s approach or philosophy changed at all with Kingdom Come 2? What new historical data will Kingdom Come 2 be incorporating, if any?”
He responded, “The story and plot of KCD has evolved—it’s darker, deeper, and more cinematic, yet also crueler with pivotal decisions and plot twists that challenge the players’s conscience. Nevertheless, it retains its humor and down-to-earth approach.”
He added, “As mentioned already, Henry is embarking on a journey from the countryside and local quarrels to a relatively cosmopolitan city that is besieged and occupied by the invading king. Naturally, in a place like this, people can expect a wide range of ethnicities and different characters that Henry will meet on his journey.”
A screenshot from Kingdom Come: Deliverance 2 (2024), Warhorse Studios
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As showcased in the reveal trailer, a significant portion of the game will revolve around the city of Kuttenberg. Stolz-Zwilling commented on the city’s role, “Kuttenberg is playing a very important role in Henry’s story, so I can’t really tell you too much for spoiler reasons, but as I mentioned before—in KCD I, Henry grew from a boy to a man, and now in KCD2, he is growing from a man to a warrior. However, he can’t do this by himself, and he needs a strong cast of friends to help him on his journey.”
“We are trying to depict a realistic, immersive, and believable medieval world that is being reconstructed to the best of our knowledge. And naturally to achieve that we are not only having our own in-house historian, but we are very closely working together with universities, historians, museums, reenactors, and a group of experts from different ethnicities or religious beliefs that we are actively incorporating into development as external advisors,” he added.
A screenshot from Kingdom Come: Deliverance 2 (2024), Warhorse Studios
Earlier in the interview he also discussed Kuttenberg and how massive it is, “Kuttenberg is a huge metropolitan city that at the time competed with Prague (the capital of the kingdom) – probably even outshined it in most aspects.”
“In KCD II, we don’t spawn NPCs—everyone has their home, job, fun activities, and so on. So you can imagine that a city that now has hundreds of NPCs populating it—with all the features I mentioned—is a challenge in itself,” he continued. “As a little fun fact… we ran out of beds for people in the city, so some need to leave the city by night and populate the outside areas to find shelter.”
He then shared, “But generally, Kuttenberg is an important silver mining city, and a big part of the KCD2 questline takes place there so players can really look forward to a huge playground of mystery, excitement, adventure but also danger!”
A screenshot from Kingdom Come: Deliverance 2 (2024), Warhorse Studios
The original game faced a vocal backlash regarding Warhorse Studio’s decision to maintain a historical accuracy. Daniel Vávra defended the game in an interview with German website GameStar back in 2018.
He informed the outlet, “Probably the most serious accusation in the current debate revolves around the accusation that we are actively denying the presence of people of different skin colors or ethnicities in our game and are thereby promoting a racist worldview. That is wrong.”
“I personally do not deny this fact nor does Kingdom Come: Deliverance limit itself to any ethnic group. Over the course of the story [of the game], based on our knowledge of the historical events, there are Czechs, Germans, and Jewish residents as well as the largest group in the game Cumans (in German also Kipchak), a Turkic-speaking tribe from the Eurasian steppe, who found their way to Bohemia at this time as a result of the migration and the displacement by the settlements of the Hungarians,” he shared.
A screenshot from Kingdom Come: Deliverance 2 (2024), Warhorse Studios
Vávra continued, “The nationality of other characters reflects what we know about Bohemia around 1403. Thanks to intensive research, this knowledge includes entire family trees and property rights. As already mentioned, the plot of Kingdom Come: Deliverance is limited to a limited area of today’s Czech Republic (16qkm), an area that lies far inland from the European continent. Based on our sources, the region was mainly populated by people whose regional origin is in present-day Czech Republic, Germany, Poland, Belgium (Walloon). In addition, the sources speak of a few people of Italian origin, who worked mainly as stonemasons and architects in the big cities and a Jewish community.”
“Of course, the situation at the time looked more heterogeneous in some other countries,” he said. “Countries whose coasts have been heavily traveled, for example, through maritime trade. The people of Bohemia were certainly also aware that there are people of other skin color or descent, not least thanks to the representation of biblical persons or other works of art, however, it is more than doubtful that under their normal living conditions in rural areas, in the KCD is authoritative, ever had direct contact.”
“We have already dealt extensively with historians and historical sources while preparing for the work on the game. When the first allegations were made, I reiterated and intensified this discourse to make sure that we do not portray history in any altered form,” he asserted.
A screenshot from Kingdom Come: Deliverance 2 (2024), Warhorse Studios
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