Assaults on Kingdom Come: Deliverance for homosexual romance, illustration 'solely mattered to a handful of terminally on-line tradition warriors,' reckons KCD2's exec producer, and possibly didn't influence the video games' reception
Kingdom Come: Deliverance, as a sequence, isn’t any stranger to controversy. The primary got here in for criticism from progressive voices over illustration and its depiction of the battle between the Czech protagonists and their Cuman enemies, whereas the second sport managed to upset the alternative finish of the political spectrum by that includes homosexual romance and positively portrayed Romani, Jewish, and Muslim characters.
For its half, Warhorse is quite bored with speaking about it. The studio informed us final yr that it was “fed up” of being dragged into tradition wars and needed solely “to make a cool videogame,” however after I bought the possibility to speak with Martin Klíma, studio co-founder and KCD2 government producer, about KCD2 taking PCG’s 2025 GOTY award, I needed to take a second to ask: did he suppose the controversies really impacted the sequence in any respect, when it comes to gross sales, reception, or developer morale?
Klíma mentioned that, actually, it was tough to inform. “I’d actually, actually prefer to know the reply to this one,” he mentioned. “You’ll be able to actually convincingly argue each methods. You’ll be able to convincingly argue that we bought some additional visibility—that it would not matter what they are saying about you, so long as they spell your title proper.” On the identical time, you may argue that “any controversy is hurtful, and also you need to communicate in regards to the sport, and you do not need to clarify some… tangled reasoning.”
However Klíma has a hunch, and his opinion is that, for all of the sound and fury, KCD’s controversies most likely did not have an effect on the video games all that a lot. “My private tackle that is that this complete kerfuffle solely mattered to, actually, a handful of terminally on-line tradition warriors, and that they’re principally an insignificant intersection with the gaming public writ giant, and the true gamers actually do not care about it in any respect, and possibly most of them by no means actually even heard about these pseudo-controversies.”
As for the devs themselves? Klíma reckons that if it impacted them in any respect, it was to “a small diploma… All of us felt that it was very unfair and disingenuous, these assaults, for the primary sport and the second sport each.
“So this form of gels the workforce a bit of bit. You might have this type of ‘besieged fortress’ mentality, however I do not suppose it actually mattered to us, actually, that a lot.” In reality, Klíma says there are nonetheless individuals at Warhorse who’re barely conscious of the controversies. “I am fairly certain that you may discover really fairly just a few individuals within the studio which have a really dim consciousness of this complete kerfuffle.”