Realistic single-player RPG set in the medieval Europe. Open-world sandbox with period accurate melee combat. Dungeons & no Dragons.
A first-person, open world, realistic RPG that will take you to Medieval Europe in a time of great upheaval and strife. A humble, young blacksmith loses everything to war. As he tries to fulfill the dying wish of his father, Fate drags him into the thick of a conspiracy to save a kidnapped king and stop a bloody conflict. You will wander the world, fighting as a knight, lurking in the shadows as a rogue, or using the bard’s charm to persuade people to your cause. You will dive deep into a sweeping, epic, nonlinear story from Daniel Vávra, an award-winning designer from the Mafia series. Our unique, first-person combat system lets you wield sword or bow in both one-on-one skirmishes and large-scale battles. All of this - and more - brought to life beautifully with next-gen visuals delivered via Cryengine.
Summary
Planned platforms: PC, Xbox One*, PS4*, Mac, Linux
Release date: Q4, 2015 on PC, Max and Linux
Approx. gameplay time: 30 hours (Act 1), 70+ hours (all 3 acts)
* Publishing on closed platforms is subject to approval by the platform holder. This can also influence release date there.
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Non-linear story lets you choose between being a villain or a savior. Every quest can be solved in multiple ways.
A revolutionary combat system based on inverse kinematics, the only one of its kind to offer a rich, authentic yet easy-to-control, first-person melee experience. Based on actual 15th century fighting techniques and designed in cooperation with medieval martial arts experts.
Improve your character. Different play styles - warrior, rogue or bard - can be mixed and matched as you see fit. You can develop your skills, earn new perks, and fine-tune your equipment.
Large realistic, medieval-themed, open world landscape covering 3.5 square miles and 30 hours of gameplay (in first act, out of 3 total).
Lead the charge in enormous, open field battles and sieges. You are no superhero. If you’re going to take on an army of enemies, you better find one of your own to back you up.
Take a trip through the Middle Ages: Traverse sprawling cities, magnificent castles, towering, dark forests, and muck-strewn villages.
Discover this huge world from horseback or on foot. If you can see it, you can visit it.
A dynamic world comes alive. Every inhabitant plays a role in their communities, and as night follows day, you can watch people work, help them when needed, or try to interfere in their routine and see what happens.
Build relationships with characters, become a criminal or a local hero, seduce local women, threaten your enemies or pardon vanquished opponents.
Create your own weapons, cook, brew up potions, or dig around for silver. All crafting occurs in-game, using clever mini-games, rather than boring, soulless menus.
You will not find any dragons, half-naked Elven warriors, or wizards in Kingdom Come: Deliverance. At no point will you have to collect seven pieces of a legendary magic staff to defeat an ancient evil bent on destroying the world with an army of demons. We think there are enough such games out there.
We want to bring you a strong story rooted in the height of the Middle Ages, brought to life in all its glory. So what is Kingdom Come: Deliverance? Think of it as Braveheart: The Game. Majestic castles, armored knights, large, open field battles, and political intrigue set in a vast, emergent world. We want to make the experience as authentic as possible – real-world locations, real castles that don’t look like something from Disneyland, period-accurate armors and costumes, combat and fencing systems designed in collaboration with the most knowledgeable, skillful swordsmen around, and a story based on actual, historic events.
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All this, on a foundation built capably upon the solid game mechanics of a true, hardcore RPG – nonlinear quests with multiple solutions, branching dialogue choices with points of no return, several roles to play (warrior, bard, thief), a mountain of different stats, skills, perks, and ultimate character customization details (including 4 layers of clothing and armor in 16 equippable slots!), as well as alchemy and crafting professions, the need to sleep and eat to stay healthy…even food that goes bad if it sits in your inventory for too long!
We’re mixing the freedom and mechanics of Skyrim, the setting of Mount and Blade, the storytelling styles of The Witcher and Red Dead Redemption, and the tough combat dynamics of Dark Souls into a single, gorgeous package. You could say we’d like to give ArmA (a franchise many of us worked on) an RPG makeover, streamlining the systems and controls and polishing the overarching world while keeping the unique, genuine feeling of its action and environments. Interested?
Our tale is based on historical events and takes place in 15th century Europe.
The year is 1403, and it is most certainly not the best of times. The old king is dead and his heir is weak. The new king’s brother, hungry for power allies himself with a faction of the nobility that sees this moment as an opportunity for advancement, kidnaps the king, invading the country with an army of his own to plunder this defenseless land. The aristocracy is divided between which side to support. Civil war is coming...
The hero
In the midst of this plunder and chaos, a son of a blacksmith will emerge as a hero. His home destroyed and his family murdered by the invading army, he must redeem his failure to protect those he loved and set things right again. Avenging the dead, safeguarding the kingdom’s rightful ruler, and restoring order will prove no small feat for you or our adventurer. But beware - this is not a fantasy fairytale, and you are not the chosen one! This will be a tough, dirty job that only a champion with enough wits and strength will survive.
Freedom of choice
Your character is defined by your choices. Your abilities and stats grow depending on what you do. You decide how you want to appear. Every quest can be solved in multiple ways. Branched dialogue trees grant you the freedom to express yourself. Your reputation is based on your choices, and every choice you make carries appropriate consequences. There are no class restrictions, you can do anything you want to.
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Stand tall as a brave knight in powerful armor, going it alone or finding allies to lead into battle. Complete quests with brute force. Intimidate and threaten your enemies. Be confident, arrogant, or righteous.
Sneak behind enemy lines as an invisible thief and assassinate the enemy. Stab. Snipe. Strangle from behind. Resolve difficult situations as an invisible phantom, stealing important evidence and threatening people to get information.
Win hearts as a popular bard, persuading nobles with your silver tongue and convincing them to fight one another. Use your wits rather than your muscles to get the job done. Share drinks with people, be the funny guy everyone likes… and then stab your rivals in the back when they least expect it.
We’re not trying to create the biggest game ever; we want to concentrate on quality rather than quantity. Instead of 200 generic dungeons, we’d like to focus on just a few, crafting each one as something unique, memorable, and special. Our world is large, but again, the focus is on creating a natural, organic space, not one so overpopulated (find out more about this in our blog, here). The same philosophy applies to quests. We don’t want to inundate players with an insane amount of quests, but rather ensure that those we have are rich in detail, with multiple solutions (including non-violent approaches, where appropriate) suiting different play styles and making an impact on the world.
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Death to the tired clichés!
Sick of killing rats in the basement? Or being treated like a messenger, transporting stuff from point A to point B? So are we! That’s why our quests are different. Play as a medieval investigator searching for a mass murderer, lay siege to a bandit fort with an army at your back, experience epic battles between armored knights, interrogate, bribe, threaten, love, help, fight… It’s up to you to decide what to do. There are multiple ways to finish every quest - use your sword, quick fingers, or your wit.
Branching dialogue
Conversation is an integral aspect of Kingdom Come: Deliverance, just as important as combat and just as difficult. It isn’t possible to absent-mindedly click through every dialogue option. Your time to make decisions is limited, your choices affect your relationships with others, and you cannot take back what you say. Just like in real life, you have to think carefully about what you say to whom.
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Skill-based mini-games
Almost everything that can be turned into a game will be playable – and that extends to crafting, as well. Blacksmithing doesn’t happen in menus but rather with a hammer at a forge. These mini-games are skill-based and affected by the player’s stats. You’ll be able to forge, sharpen, and repair weapons, create potions and ointments through alchemy, pick locks and pockets, distill alcohol, and prepare food.
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Freedom to do whatever you want, whenever you want, wherever you want
The exploration of the world is free. If you don’t want to play the main quest line, it will “wait” for you, and you can go about exploring the world and doing other stuff – side quests, random events, hunting, crafting, small side stories, and much more. A giant world based on beautiful, real-world locations
Cryengine allows us to quickly create huge areas of landscape. The world covers approx. 9 sq km2 (3.5 sq. miles), with a sprawling city, vast forests, majestic castles, and dozens of villages and hamlets devastated by war. Of course, there will also be underground locations to discover, like mines, secret passages, and catacombs.
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Emergent Gameplay
Our world is a living, breathing, and COMPLEX ecosystem, ready to be toyed with. Everything happens for a reason, every character has his/her daily routine, and every routine can be affected by the player. Characters are able to react properly to all player actions and adjust their routines to them.
Advanced reputation and law system
The world will organically react to your deeds. NPCs will report your crimes to authorities, who will punish you for your crimes accordingly, either with a fine, time in jail, or by subjecting you to the stocks or torture. Crime will affect economics and NPC behavior; people will get suspicious or aggressive after unresolved crimes. Your reputation will spread by word of mouth.
Creating intriguing, enjoyable, first-person melee combat systems has been a real challenge for developers. It's hard to mix easy, intuitive controls with a first-person view and sufficient variety of moves. Many have tried and failed.
Our combat mechanics are the most challenging feature of our game. They’re based on actual 15th century techniques and designed in cooperation with medieval martial arts experts to be as authentic as possible. The controls are as intuitive as in first-person shooters and, thanks to a few tricks, we have a large amount of different moves and combos. On top of that, the whole thing is based on real-time physics and inverse kinematics, so when you hit something, your hands and weapon, not just your target, react accordingly, which is something that was not possible on last-gen hardware.
Weapons
You can specialize in different fighting styles and weapon classes and will constantly learn new moves and techniques, as well as unlock new weapons and armors. Every weapon has its own uses, pros, and cons. The sword is universal, but weak against plate armor; hammers are ideal against plate armor, but weak against sword; the longsword is strong, but slow, and cannot be used from horseback, etc.
We will have several weapon classes: swords, longswords, daggers, sabers, axes, hammers, shields, bows, and crossbows.
Battles and castle sieges
You are no superhero - fighting multiple enemies at the same time is very difficult. It is often a good idea to have allies at your side (and, at times, a lot of them). Our goal is to have as many characters in fights as possible and to offer players big battles and castle sieges to take part in. Not many battles, mind you - more like one or two in the first act. For us, a battle is a climax, not a ‘wow’ moment that needs to happen every two minutes. The precise scope of these battles and the amount of characters on screen are still things we are evaluating – they are complicated feats to pull off even on next-gen hardware.
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Horses
Horses are your primary means of transportation in our sprawling world, but you can fight from horseback, as well. War horses can be used as living weapons with special moves and attacks (strafing, running backwards, several different kicks, etc.). Horses also serve as a secondary inventory for the player. We’ll have three types of horses in-game (courser, destrier, rouncey), and each offers different abilities, stats, skills, and perks. Your steed levels up on its own throughout the journey, and even comes with five slots for armor and attachments.
What would a role-playing game be without character development and customization? Your character in Kingdom Come: Deliverance will have STATS (Strength, Speed, Agility, Vitality, and Speech), CONDITIONS (Stamina, Health, Hunger, and Sleep), SKILLS (Swordsmanship, Archery, Alchemy, and many others), and PERKS (special combat moves, crafting abilities, or varying advantages). Conditions change as you become injured, exhausted, etc. Stats and skills will increase when you use them. Perks can be unlocked or learned. Stats and conditions can be temporarily or permanently modified by alchemy. You must also eat and sleep - you need to keep your character alive, after all!
Character customization
Thanks to our clothing system, you can create the ultimate armored knight. We have 20 slots for weapons, clothes, and attachments, as well as 4 layers (!) of clothing or armor on every character. That’s a lot of customization options! Different types of armor are effective against different weapons. Your clothes and their state affect your charisma and reputation, which, in turn, influence NPC reactions toward you. They also affect your visibility and the noise you produce, which affect your stealth skills.
After seeing our trailer, you might ask: “why are we here? This is a big, expensive game that’s sure to cost a lot of money, right? Does no major publisher want it? This sounds suspicious.” The answer to those questions might surprise you.
Warhorse is a comparatively small studio. We now have about thirty people, and it took us more than eighteen months to develop what you've just seen. All this time, we’ve been funded by a private investor, to the tune of almost 1.5 million dollars in total. We hope the product you’ve seen reflects that.
Our plan was to develop a prototype, pitch it to publishers, and finish development with the subsequent money. We tried to do it that way (and you can read about our experiences on our
blog), but in essence, even though everybody we met commended our work, praised our game’s visuals, and believed in our ability to deliver, negotiations would inevitably hit a dead end at the point where the publishers' marketing departments got involved. Why?
"Your game is too niche. There’s no magic. People want wizards and dragons."
We beg to differ. The response from players has always been great. We think gamers like history – look at the success of Total War, Assassin's Creed, Mount and Blade, and Red Dead Redemption. There is no medieval first-person RPG out there, but it does not necessarily follow that nobody wants one - only that there is no easy box for marketing to pigeonhole it in.
Our investor is strong and capable of funding the complete development of our project. But he does not follow the game industry very closely, and needs proof that publishers and marketers are wrong about our game - that you are indeed interested in a mature, medieval RPG that emphasizes freedom and authenticity. And so we stand, as a studio, at a crossroads. Either those naysayers are right, and there truly is no desire for the game we are making, or we are right. Either way, we think Kickstarter is a great way to find out.
The sum we are asking for is about ten percent of our total budget; for our investor, however, it is proof that there is real demand for the game, and that there is a point to keeping it funded. Every extra dollar will allow us to make the final product that much better because it means more money for development and more support from our investor.
Should our Kickstarter campaign fail, it will mean that we were wrong, that there is no interest to play a game with the atmosphere of Braveheart, and that we will have to start considering working on some mobile MMO, because that's where the money is these days (or so everybody tells us). We are, however, positive that our instincts are right.
So help us to make our vision a reality. Help us to make not the 176th free-to-play mobile RPG MMO Elven village-builder with DIAMONDS™, but to make the kind of unique, engaging experience we think you’d like to play