Kingdom Come: Deliverance 2's guns are very, very bad, but that's what makes them so fun: 'We knew it was going to be a meme weapon, but we were cool with it'
Kingdom Come: Deliverance 2 is a game obsessed with medieval history—specifically the history of Bohemia, a kingdom in the Holy Roman Empire that's now part of modern Czechia. It's an RPG that is fascinated by the social structures, clothing, architecture, weapons and culture of the time.
Developer Warhorse has a full-time historian on the team who's been there since before the original game appeared on Kickstarter, and your jaunts through Bohemia will see you encounter plenty of historical celebs and become embroiled in real conflicts. But these games are not history textbooks. They aim for authenticity over hyper accuracy.
«We are working on a videogame,» says Warhorse's global PR manager Tobias Stolz-Zwilling. «And that is, first and foremost, the main goal: we want to have an intriguing and cool and fun and nice videogame. However, we try extremely hard to make it as authentic as possible. We double check the stuff, so that when the player plays it, or whenever someone checks it, that the things that are listed in there are at least plausible.»
While the first game was full of historical details, one thing it was missing was firearms, which had started to be employed in European warfare by the 15th century. But their omission did make sense. These early guns were a pain in the arse to use: taking an age to to reload, woefully inaccurate, and not remotely safe for the user.
«Firearms were usually used en masse, like you would just fire against storming cavalry,» says senior game designer, Ondřej Bittner. «They were like the beginning of line battles.»
When you've got a line of troops all firing at once, that lack of accuracy and the time it takes to reload doesn't really matter. Your enemies are gonna go down. As a weapon of war, they are terrifying. But as the weapon of a wandering knight who is usually alone, they are pretty awful.
Since big pitched battles weren't the focus of Kingdom Come: Deliverance, guns weren't a priority. You spent most of your time
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