CRYENGINE Developer Spotlight: Kingdom Come: Deliverance
CRYENGINE Developer Spotlight: Kingdom Come: Deliverance

CRYENGINE Developer Spotlight: Kingdom Come: Deliverance

CRYENGINE-powered Kingdome Come: Deliverance was showcasing its forthcoming DLC at Gamescom 2018, and we were there to see all the action and catch up with Tobias Stolz-Zwilling from Warhorse Studios.

Since coming out to critical and community acclaim, Warhorse Studios has released regular updates and their first piece of premium DLC, From the Ashes, alongside a free hardcore mode for all players. At Gamescom, Warhorse Studios showcased their forthcoming premium DLC, The Amorous Adventures of Bold Sir Hans Capon, and Tournament, a substantial free content update.

The Amorous Adventures of Bold Sir Hans Capon delivers between five to ten hours of extra gameplay with new quests that follows Sir Hans Capon’s attempts to woo the latest love of his life. You’ll be invited to acquire a legendary potion, the Musk of Infinite Allure, hunt down a precious jewel, and, armed with only a book of poetry and amorous desires, earn either the love of a fair maiden, or the wrath of her furious father. This light-hearted new expansion for Kingdom Come: Deliverance releases this fall.

Arriving alongside the new DLC will be a substantial free new update, Tournament. Sir Hanush of Leipa has decided to hold a tournament at his castle to entertain his subjects, and you’re invited to join combatants from fiefdoms near and far to demonstrate your skills, earn fame, and, if you’re successful, unlock unique armor. All combatants are provided with gear and weapons from Hanush’s armory, so each three-round bout is decided by skill rather than equipment.

We spoke to Tobias Stolz-Zwilling, PR Manager at Warhorse Studios, about the new content, their commitment to continued support for the game and their community, and more.

Hey Tobias, thanks for joining us. How important is providing both free and premium DLC for Kingdom Come: Deliverance?

For us, giving away free content is our way to go. We are a Kickstarter company, so from the beginning of Warhorse Studios and Kingdom Come we are very tightly connected to our community, and this is our way to say thank you, even though it sounds cheesy. Of course, we have to earn more money to continue development, so we offer premium content too. Amorous Adventures is pretty funny story which adds some more smiles to the game. If you love Kingdom Come already and want new stories, then it’s definitely something for you, especially if you like the character Sir Hans Capon. It adds roughly five to ten hours more questing so players who have finished the game can go back and experience a new story, but it’s also for new gamers or players who never completed the game. You don’t need to finish the game before you can play the DLC. Dive straight in.

But we also want to give something back in the form of free new content for all players. With the first DLC, From the Ashes, we also added hardcore mode as a free update for all players, and now with Amorous Adventures we have a new tournament mode for free.

How vital is post-launch support for a game?

We love the game, and we hope that people can see that. It’s not only about bug fixing. Although that is important. From day one of release, we were still working, bug fixing, bug fixing, bug fixing and then, of course, adding new content. Our plan was to provide a full year of support, which we go to with our last planned DLC. We will see how this goes, one year, and then we see how the community is. We would like to see Kingdom Come on the market for a long time to come, adding more content.

How has the process of working with Crytek been?

We had very close contact with the Crytek guys. It’s no secret that when we started with Kingdom Come, the engine had to be modified at our end, so we could get specific needs like 1000 NPCs and some features that were not completely ready in the first place, as with any engine. But we had very good contact with the dev team at Crytek. We made things happen, we’re very grateful for that collaboration. Kingdom Come looks amazing on CRYENGINE.

It’s been fantastic to see Kingdom Come: Deliverance to go from a Kickstarter project to where you are now. How has the experience been for Warhorse?

It sounds silly when you say it about yourself, but it’s a Kickstarter success story. Because we did it! That’s the most important thing for us. On the day of release we were still not sure. We knew we had bugs. Everyone hates bugs, we hate bugs as well. But people complained about the bugs, not about the philosophy of the game. They didn’t say it was too hard, or too boring. They liked the story and the concept, so they were able to overlook the bugs and gives us 8, 9s, 7s, whatever. This is, for us, the most important part, and why we want to give back and say thank you with the constant fixes, patches, free stuff, and so on.

Of course, yes the Kickstarter, and selling well, is good, fine. But more important for us is that the concept was not a niche, like many said. Before the release of Kingdom Come, so many journalists were saying “yeah, well it’s nice, but it is not for everyone.” In the end, it turns out it is kind of is for everyone, it’s just a new type of game, a new kind of design. In the end we have to say we are grateful and thankful, and it turned out well for everyone, for Deep silver, for us.

Thanks Tobias!

You can stay up to date with Kingdom Come: Deliverance by heading to their website. And talking of Gamescom, our very own Hunt: Showdown used the show to announce that it will be released on Xbox Game Preview, a service that allows Xbox players to preview and purchase work-in-progress digital titles, and to actively take part in the development process. Get the lowdown here!

As ever, we look forward to your feedback in the comments, on the forum, or via Facebook, and Twitter.

- Your CRYENGINE Team