Prokop Jirsa is the lead designer of Kingdom Come Deliverance 2, and now one of Warhorse Studios’ two creative directors. Our Joshua Wolens recently spoke to him about their games’ love of making things difficult for players, but another topic that came up was their systems-driven nature and the role a PC Gamer article played in that.
Discussing the reaction to the first Kingdom Come Deliverance, Jirsa said, “We knew that our systems-driven world works because one of you guys thought that somebody has stolen Henry’s shoes while he was in Talmberg. And we had no system like that in there. The boots just despawned. But he was really searching around the castle, ‘Who actually stole the boots?’ And he was looking at the clothing of the NPCs.”
The article in question was Chris Livingston’s memorable piece, Kingdom Come Deliverance stole my boots, and I’m on a violent mission to get them back. As Chris explained, the saga began because of another system he was unsure of. In a game full of deep simulations of day-to-day medieval life, did he need to take his boots off before going to bed?
“Early in the story,” Chris wrote, “I’m told to get some sleep by another character, who also tells me to remove my muddy boots before getting into bed. I happily comply. I don’t know how deep the simulation is in KCD yet: for all I know, if I sleep in my boots the bed could legitimately become muddy, and this character might be annoyed with me for not following his instructions. I aim to please, so I take them off.”
And thus began the delightful Epic Boots Quest, a read I highly recommend. Turns out, the game’s developers were reading, and were delighted. “This is what we aimed for,” Jirsa said. They deliberately layered in so many complex systems “that you suddenly believe that the world is real and anything can happen in the game. And that made us feel like, yeah, OK, that works.”
Stories from other players backed the feeling up. Players would say they came across a confrontation between members of competing factions, and assume it was a bespoke narrative event. “People are thinking, OK, this is some super interesting event that the designers prepared for us,” Jirsa related. “And no, it was just a thing that came up from the systems automatically.
“So all those little stories kinda made us feel that the uniqueness of Kingdom Come is worth it, that it’s worth pursuing further. Because these systems do bring actual value to the players, even though it takes so much time to implement them and make them bug-free.”
And that’s how we ended up with a version of Kingdom Come Deliverance 2 where, as Josh wrote in his 90% review, “I once got chased out of a fortress because I’d absent-mindedly equipped a stolen ring and walked past the schmuck I took it from.”
“I still remember that PC Gamer article,” Jirsa said, “and for that reason specifically I pushed for KCD 2 that we actually had that system. So now in KCD 2 the NPCs—if you, for example, pass out drunk—they will steal your shoes. They will steal your cap, and they will start wearing that. So that was you guys.”
