Just as the sun rises every day, another ambitious RPG has inevitably been delayed. Kingdom Come: Deliverance 2 isn’t far off, but it is now slightly further away than planned. It’s going to miss its initial release window of 2024, instead slipping into 2025. The new release date is February 11.
The RPG sequel was announced earlier this year, surprising hardly anyone, given the rumours about its development. Developer Warhorse knocked it out of the park the first time around, creating a striking medieval romp that mixed bawdy shenanigans with a hefty helping of drama and intrigue amid the forests and castles of Bohemia.
In a world full of fantasy RPGs, Kingdom Come is refreshingly grounded. It’s a historical drama, where slinging spells and slaying monsters is replaced with cooking up herbal remedies and duelling knights. Protagonist Henry is relatively grounded, too, even though he has an uncommonly interesting life. Starting out, at least, he’s just the son of a blacksmith who’s clueless about the world.
The original game is undeniably chunky, but it doesn’t saddle players with endless diversions or map-clearing nonsense despite its scale. This time around, Warhorse is going bigger, promising a game that’s twice as large, at least in terms of the map. It’s two maps now, actually, one of which will see us exploring the Czech city of Kuttenberg, which you can still visit today.
When Warhorse started work on the first game, it was an 11-person studio; now it boasts 250 people, which hopefully translates to a slightly smoother launch, with fewer of the bugs and performance issues that plagued the original.
On top of the bump in size, you can expect rudimentary firearms, horseback murder, sieges and plenty of scrapes for Henry and his BFF Hans to get into. That’s the bit I’m most looking forward to: a pair of slightly dumb lads bumbling around the Bohemian countryside, getting into trouble.
