The year of 2018 was an absolute heavyweight for video game releases.
It saw the release of “Red Dead Redemption 2,” the new “God of War,” and “Marvel’s Spider-Man” — three of the best games ever made, period.
And yet, an upstart game made by relatively unknown Czech developer Warhorse Studios was actually able to snatch some of the spotlight from those heavyweight debuts.
“Kingdom Come: Deliverance,” which came out in February 2018 and is Warhorse Studios’ only published game, is far from perfect, but it’s a highly beloved game.
It also came in for some of the kind of criticism that comes so easily in the woke years of the 21st century — namely, that its characters were entirely white — and now its makers have come out with a sequel that will at least address that.
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WARNING: The following trailer contains scenes of violence and occasional graphic language that some viewers may find disturbing.
The sequel looks bigger and better than the original game, but the 2018 title was no slouch either, despite its flaws.
The controls in “Kingdom Come: Deliverance” are a bit clunky, the interface isn’t intuitive (even the simple act of saving the game can be a chore), and the difficulty spikes in the game can be unwieldy.
Does the “Kingdom Come” experience sound appealing to you?
But, boy howdy, did that first game have soul and charm.
Your character, Henry of Skalitz, is a blank slate for your preferred playstyle, and the endless suite of options hooked gamers who could overlook some of those aforementioned warts.
There were also a number of interlocking systems and mechanics that helped “Kingdom Come” stand out from things that gamers had taken for granted, like the ability to read.
Yes, Henry begins the game illiterate, and any in-game text will look garbled to you until Henry learns how to read.
Even basic hygiene, a concept certainly explored in other games, played an outsized role in “Kingdom Come” and how the world would respond to Henry.
“Kingdom Come” is a flawed but brilliant gem, in this writer’s opinion at least, and that should’ve been the start and stop of the conversation.
But of course, people looking for things to complain about found it: Apparently, this video game set in 1403 in the Kingdom of Bohemia (modern-day Czech Republic) did not feature enough people of color.
Here’s one such example of hand-wringing (they’re not hard to find) from Eurogamer’s 2018 review of the game:
“But there’s also a big problem,” the self-identified white author of the article wrote. “There are no people of colour in the game beyond people from the Cuman tribe, a Turkic people from the Eurasian Steppe.
“The question is, should there be?”
Oh boy.
Warhorse creative director Daniel Vavra addressed this line of thinking in a 2015 post on the platform then known as Twitter.
@a_man_in_black would you please explain to me whats racist about telling the truth? There were no black people in medieval Bohemia. Period.
— Daniel Vávra ⚔ (@DanielVavra) February 23, 2015
“[W]ould you please to me whats racist about telling the truth?” Vavra posted. “There were no black people in medieval Bohemia. Period.”
That response was not good enough for the likes of the Eurogamer writer, who tracked down “a historian” to rebut that argument.
“We know of African kings in Constantinople on pilgrimage to Spain; we know of black Moors in Spain; we know of extensive travel of Jews from the courts of Cordoba and Damascus; we also know of black people in large cities in Germany,” the historian told the outlet.
Noting that the historic location of “Kingdom Come” occupied a spot on the Silk Road, the historian further added a random outlier example.
“You just can’t know nobody got sick and stayed a longer time,” he told the outlet. “What if a group of black Africans came through and stayed at an inn and someone got pregnant? Even one night is enough for a pregnancy.”
Look, this writer is humble enough to admit that he doesn’t know nearly enough about 15th-century medieval European history to say whether Vavra or the “historian” are more correct. (A Reddit post from 2018 on the topic might be illuminating, depending on whom you believe.)
But this writer is also smart enough to ask: Who cares?
“Kingdom Come” is the property of Warhorse Studios, and it can very well do what it pleases with the franchise. Sorry, it’s just not offensive to depict a sliver of society in 15th-century Europe as exclusively white.
But the criticism apparently had some effect.
Warhorse Studios appears set to diversify the sequel a tad, though its historic explanation appears to pass the smell test.
“The story and plot of [Kingdom Come: Deliverance] has evolved — it’s darker, deeper, and more cinematic, yet also crueler with pivotal decisions and plot twists that challenge the players’s conscience. Nevertheless, it retains its humor and down-to-earth approach,” Warhorse Studios representative Tobias Stolz-Zwilling told IGN.
“As mentioned already, Henry is embarking on a journey from the countryside and local quarrels to a relatively cosmopolitan city that is besieged and occupied by the invading king.
“Naturally, in a place like this, people can expect a wide range of ethnicities and different characters that Henry will meet on his journey.”
Get ready for the complaints that those characters aren’t nearly enough.
“Kingdom Come: Deliverance II” is expected to release in 2024, and is slated to release on PC, Xbox Series X|S and PlayStation 5.
