STACK #244 February 2025

GAMING FEATURE

visit jbhifi.com.au/stack

A DAY WITH A KNIGHT!

Tobias Stolz-Zwilling

OK, so he’s a self-anointed knight, but SirTobi – aka Warhorse Studios global PR managerTobias Stolz-Zwilling – held court charmingly when we sat down beside a round table to speak about the much-anticipated RPG sequel Kingdom Come: Deliverance II , which hits this month. Words Amy Flower T he first game has been somewhat of a sleeper hit, gaining popularity steadily since its 2018 release. So, there’s some

“We were 100 people releasing Kingdom Come: Deliverance , Now, we have 250. So, with more power, with more backup, with the help of plan, and so on, we can now tackle what we always wanted to do.” With the bigger world comes bigger challenges, like giving every in-game character a role.

thing,” muses Tobias. “We’re making a video game, and we’re well aware that we’re doing just a video game. The authenticity and the realism parts are the spice we’re using to craft this entire world, the dialogues and so on. “We have to balance the fun gameplay, or what players are used to, versus how it actually was, or could have been. We never sacrifice fun gameplay for the realism part. It shouldn’t be tedious. It shouldn't be a ‘you get a cough and then you die’ kind of thing. It must still be an enjoyable video game, but the things that we’re showing are at least plausible, or researched to the best of our knowledge. “So, bullsh-tting through is not the right word, but we are, of course, mostly due to technical reasons. For instance, houses are

pressure to deliver with this sequel – both from fans and, as Tobias attests, from the developers themselves. Then there’s the hope of attracting a new audience. “Of course, on one hand you want to please the community and give them all that they want. But, then again, you have aspirations, right? And you need to also please people who never heard about that game before. Because, let’s be honest, it was a success, but it’s still kind of under the radar. So, that is absolutely a pressure. “I think we managed - I hope we managed - to balance it out so that people who played the first game will feel right at home. In the beginning, they’ll see the characters, and they’ll be like, ‘Oh, yeah. That’s my Henry and Hans’. And those who never played it should slowly but steadily get up to speed, learn about them quickly in the first minutes, and then just have this open world in front of them.”

“That's a big challenge,” sighs Tobias. “First of all, one thing is having so many characters onscreen. That’s something we struggled with on KCD1 . The biggest village in that was Rattay, with just a few inhabitants. "But now with everything being bigger and better in KCD2 , we have this huge city of Kuttenberg with hundreds of buildings and thousands of NPCs running around doing their daily cycles. So, the scale massively increased, which is great. “The challenge is to populate the world and make it interesting for a video gamer who’s expecting a Skyrim or whatever where there’s a goblin cave behind every corner. But meanwhile, trying to be realistic

bigger than they're supposed to be. Maybe there are fancier houses because it looks nicer - they were probably in wooden shacks or whatever. We don’t want them. So, it’s these kinds of things. But again, the bottom line is that everything we show should at least be plausible. “So, there’s kind of historic, but mixed with modern stuff. That’s the balance you just have to do because otherwise it’s just not an enjoyable thing. It’s like, imagine you go on a medieval banquet. If you would it’d be actual medieval food, and chances are really high that you wouldn’t like it. So yes, it's medieval-y, but you must enjoy it.”

That open world is big one, too, as is the whole of Kingdom Come: Deliverance II . “It’s absolutely a bigger game,” Tobias tells us. “This is now the culmination of the story we thought about in 2014 when we did the Kickstarter. So, it concludes a story - I won’t tell you which one, that’s something to find out - but something is being concluded there.” One reason for the grander scale of this sequel is the expansion of Warhorse, as Tobias explains.

and saying, ‘Hey, but there's no chest behind every corner.’ Finding the balance is the tricky part.” The Warhorse people pride themselves on the historical accuracy of the game, but being set in the Middle Ages, surely there’s some guesswork going on? “That is a very good question. It’s an everyday struggle kind of

• Kingdom Come: Deliverance II is out Feb 4

FEBRUARY 2025

jbhifi.com.au

8