Kingdom Come: Deliverance 2 is set to launch in 2025, picking up Henry of Skalitz's story soon after the first game's ending, where the son of a blacksmith who went on a quest for revenge ed forces with nobles such as Sir Hans Capon and got involved in far grander affairs that involved those in charge of the land. The sequel is already grander in its scale, as it is set to be twice the size of the original, with 80 to 100 hours of playtime in the base game and plenty of side quests.

Screen Rant recently attended a press event in the city of Kuttenberg - or Kutná Hora, as it is in Czech - where there was the opportunity to get hands-on with Kingdom Come: Deliverance 2, playing a total of four hours of the game before seeing more of the city that a large portion of the story is situated in. While attending this event, Screen Rant sat down with Warhorse Studios' PR Manager, Tobias Stolz-Zwilling (aka. Sir Tobi), to discuss the game's approach to character progression, story, and how it brought the massive medieval city to life.

Warhorse Studios Wanted To Make Kingdom Come: Deliverance 2 Accessible To Newcomers

But Henry Still Plays A Part In A Much Grander Story

Screen Rant: Normally, in RPGs, the huge thing is starting from level zero as a complete underdog and working your way up. We had that with Henry's story in Kingdom Come: Deliverance. So, where you've continued it into the sequel, what was your approach coming to it? He has this established past the players are familiar with, but I also noticed that there's a kind of jumping-off point for new players to come in.

Tobias Stolz-Zwilling: Exactly, exactly. Very good question. That's exactly the point. We tried very hard to make sure that the fans feel right at home. Meanwhile, we, of course, want to attract new people to the game who don't feel left out.

So the way we did it is that slowly, at the beginning of the game, we only give you the very necessary information. "That's you, that's your best friend, or your lord, you’re his squire. This is a letter. Bring it there." That's it. Then, throughout the game, naturally and at a small pace, they will tell you the other information that you should not realize that it's a recap in some form or shape where you'd have to watch a 20-minute video to get where you are and to what you do. So it should all come naturally. And when it comes to the stats, well, Henry gets robbed, so that's the easy explanation. So he loses his gear, so I think that's not weird.

But in an RPG, you want to level and loot of course. So the way I explain it is that KCD2 is now going on the big stages. So KCD1 is really like rural areas and villages, and you deal with bandits most of the time. In KCD2 now you're being dragged among kings and armies, and you're part of a partisan group, and you have to do sabotage and there are gunpowder weapons. So it's huge, way bigger stages now, and I sometimes say that Henry was the champion of the Sunday league, and now he's invited to play in the Premier League, and he will quickly find out that the Premier League is a totally different challenge where he needs to hone his skills.

Yes, he knows how to play football, but he needs to get way better in that to be able to keep up with the other guys. So some stats will stay the same, so Henry will be able to read, he learned it in the first game, so it would be absurd if he forgot that, so these stay, but for the other ones, the weapons and of course the new skills and the new minigames that are coming, like the blacksmithing, those are of course something you have to either hone or learn as a new.

The First KCD Initially Had Three Acts, But This Was Abandoned

Instead, The Story Now Seems To Be Split Across KCD and KCD2

Screen Rant: Originally, going way back to the Kickstarter for the first one, there was some talk of Kingdom Come Deliverance being three acts, and I've recently written about the fact that for those who pledged for Act 2, they've got this game for free. In of the story, obviously, the three-act structure was left behind, but you've moved on to a full sequel. Was everything from those three acts in the first game, or have there been things that you've sort of carried through to this sequel?

Tobias Stolz-Zwilling: So, in the Kickstarter, before Kickstarter, we had to have a good guess of what we wanted to do. And we wanted to do 3-acts, each of which would have like 15 hours or so, and release one year after the other. When the game was funded and we had to think of where would the logic cuts be and how should we divide the story, we quickly found out that it really didn't make sense and it would be a mess. So we made one big KCD and Daniel Wabra always had this grand scheme in his mind or this overarching story in his mind, but how it actually fleshes out is something that he learned during the writing.

It's like with a good series when you start the series, you don't know how it will end, but the writers and the actors are like kind of moving with it and then changing accordingly or choosing a new path or whatever. So this is somewhat what happened as well. If you really wanna like think of the acts, Act One and Two are definitely KCD1 and Act Two and Three are definitely KCD2. So we want to bring something to an end.

I won't tell you exactly what we want to bring to an end, but this Act thing is something we completely left behind. And with the Kickstarter thing you mentioned before, yes, we will give KCD2 free for some people who pledged big amounts back in the day. It's just a thank you thing because we had two single swim situations in our Warhorse Studios history. One is the Kickstarter, if that would have failed then there wouldn't be any Kingdom Come: Deliverance at all and the second single swim situation was the release of KCD1. If that would have failed, then we didn't even have DLCs by that point, so the DLCs were developed after the release, so... yeah.

Kingdom Come: Deliverance went on to sell over 6 million copies, and in the years that followed its launch, Warhorse Studios has grown significantly as a studio, going from a team of 90 people to 250.

Screen Rant: That actually takes me to my next question about the DLC and how it covered other stories other than Henry’s. A Woman's Lot focused on Theresa, and for me, it was particularly interesting due to how many women weren't involved in battles and weren't trained for that, and her gameplay reflected that. I thought you did that superbly. Are we likely to see more perspectives than Henry's? Is that something you'd like to explore in this story?

Tobias Stolz-Zwilling: Absolutely. We will definitely show different perspectives on things. Absolutely. KCD2 is bigger, there's more people involved. There's a huge medieval city which obviously attracts people from all around, at least Europe. And so, I don't want to tell you too much of course, but it's a relatively metropolitan city, so, naturally, you will meet all kinds of people and I think that will be very, very cool and very enriching for the overall story.

Many Czech Officials Have Been ive Of Kingdom Come: Deliverance 2's Development

Helping To Bring Kuttenburg To Life

Screen Rant: You've talked about the city of Kuttenburg. What was it like bringing that to life in the game? We played a little bit in the open world, and it seems huge already.

Tobias Stolz-Zwilling: Yeah, a pain in the ass, let me tell you. [Laughs] That's definitely the biggest challenge for the game. It's a huge city with thousands of NPCs. We have a big advantage of the city when they found out that we want to do the game. They were all completely bonkers and said, "oh, wow!" They see this as a huge touristy thing and a cultural phenomenon pushing the city into the minds of the people of the world. So they were very welcoming and ive, which is great, and they opened all the doors so we can have the preview event in the gallery here. We could shoot the announcement in the church and so on.

Kingdom Come: Deliverance is more than just a video game. For Czech people, it's something like The Witcher for Poland. People are identifying with it. Politics, institutions... the Czech Tourism Board is identifying with it. They want to use it to attract people to Bohemia and Czech Republic. So this is really more than just a video game, and that makes us very proud, of course.

Kingdom Come: Deliverance 2's announcement trailer was filmed in Saint Barbara's Church, and the press event was held in the Gallery of the Central Bohemian Region nearby.

Screen Rant: It really is a beautiful city. Sadly, I’m being signaled to wrap this up now, but I've been really enjoying the game so far. Thank you very much for your time.

Tobias Stolz-Zwilling: Thank you very much.

Kingdom Come: Deliverance 2 launches on February 11, 2025, on PC, Xbox Series X/S, and PlayStation 5.