Kingdom Come: Deliverance 2's developer is 'fed up' of being dragged into the culture war: 'It seems like someone is always trying to brand us somehow, and we are just trying to make a cool videogame'

pcgamer.com:

«History rhymes. It's not repeating itself. It rhymes.» Warhorse's global PR manager Tobias Stolz-Zwilling is paraphrasing an aphorism often attributed to Mark Twain—though its origins are actually unknown. He is bemoaning the fact that, once again, the Kingdom Come: Deliverance 2 studio has found itself embroiled in the exhausting culture war.

Back in 2017, before the launch of the first Kingdom Come: Deliverance, the game caught some flack from critics who questioned its lack of people of colour and if that was truly historically accurate. This prompted some genuinely interesting discussions about medieval Europe and its portrayal, but it also saw battle lines being drawn.

Some wrote the game off as an ahistorical, overly homogenous view of Czechia, while others rushed to its defence and celebrated it for pushing back the 'woke' agenda. And this was all before most people had even played it. Game director Daniel Vávra's support for Gamergate only served to fuel the flames.

History rhymes. It's not repeating itself. It rhymes.

Then it launched and most people agreed it was actually pretty great. It wasn't some scholarly project that gave us a 100% accurate portrayal of Bohemia, and there were some valid criticisms about how it presented, for instance, Cuman mercenaries as evil, barbaric marauders, but otherwise it was a fun, flavourful and often fascinating romp around the countryside. To characterise it as an 'anti-woke' champion refusing to be censored was patently ludicrous. But the label remained.

Now the same crowd that pretended to care about historical accuracy have turned on Warhorse—all because Kingdom Come: Deliverance 2 features an optional gay romance and a larger array of non-white, non-Christian characters. While the studio continues to use the expertise of its in-house historian, Joanna Nowak, and is just as obsessed with historical authenticity as before, now it's apparently been pressured into becoming woke by a shadowy cabal of evil leftists.