I’m gonna put this upfront. If you want to know my opinions on the game itself, I’ve shared my opinions about the game in my article on GameGang. This blog post only includes things I didn’t include in the GameGang article.
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The year 2014 was infamously known as the year of “nepotism in game journalism bad.”01Though this highly depends on where and how you got introduced to it.
10 years later, I have established myself as one of the two semi-official photographers for club Amulet D20, taking photos of club’s major events for the last two years. This portfolio caused my day to be interrupted by a discord notification from a friend Alja (who writes for GameGang, a local game news website).
Hey, can you take 3 days off work and go to Czechia to play Kingdom Come: Deliverance II with me? All inclusive. I need a video guy, and the one I usually work with isn’t available.
I am being shown a sample of what’s expected of me and I decide that despite my relative lack of video experience, I can very likely handle the requirements. Especially if I borrow my brother’s mic.
I put in 3 days of PTO, hand over my personal details, and immediately run to the local government admin unit to renew my ID card because it expired two months prior.
Few hours later, Discord notifications ring again. While the initial e-mail Alja received said that +1 for camera crew can be arranged, the agency that handled press event invites for former Yugoslavia said no. However:
TBF if you’re interested, you can go instead of me, the agency doesn’t really care. I just want an article by the embargo date.
Also since you’re going alone, you don’t have to do the video.
Well it’s a done deal, then. Plane tickets are arranged, NDAs are signed, new ID card appears in my mailbox. Two weeks later, I find myself on a plane to Prague, off to Czech out Kingdom Come: Deliverance II.
Day of the Arrival
I arrived to Prague in late afternoon. Event coordinators were waiting at the airport exit, I was escorted to a taxi, which then delivered me to the hotel.
In the hotel lobby, the Warhorse desk was thematically appropriate.
They handed me the keycard for my room, as well as a letter that formally invited me to a trip to Kutna Hora — or, as the Germans and the game call it: Kuttenberg.
15 minutes in, and I’m already impressed by the amount of effort they’re putting onto this.
There was no activities planned for the day of arrival, so I could either stay in my room and do nothing, or I could do the Amulet thing:
With all the money I’m saving by not having to pay for my hotel and my plane tickets, I can most definitely drop some cash on some D&D minis. There’s this website saying Ogří Doupě is the place to be, Google maps says it’s open till fairly late (which was neat, since it was 7 in the evening by the time I left the hotel, and the place was 30-45min away by public transport).
Turns out that Ogří Doupě does mostly warhammer stuff, so not really my cup of tea … but hot dang, I came to get at least one mini, so I’m not gonna leave without at least one mini.
But most important random discovery —
Yes, they do have 🤌Thursdays🤌™12Days dedicated to painting minis in a social environment. In club Amulet D20, we meet every Thursday, which is why we call our meetings 🤌Thursdays🤌 — though this naming makes little sense for people who aren’t insiders.. Except, they happen on Wednesdays. And also Fridays, though I don’t recall whether Fridays happen at their second location.
Slovenians will understand.
Needless to say, I rather enjoyed that evening. I ended up leaving at around 21:30-2200, because I wanted to get some sleep. We had to be in the hotel lobby by 8 in the morning, and I wanted to get a decent amount of sleep.
(I did managed to do some attempts at street photography on my way back to the hotel)
The main event
On the day of the event, I somehow managed to wake up at 6, well before my alarm rang. I wish waking up for work was this easy, but at least I had enough time for breakfast.
We left as planned, and arrived to Kuttenberg at around 10. Sir Tobi, PR spokesman for Warhorse Studio, greeted us in style.
It is my personal belief that Sir Tobi is very well aware that he’s giving off some mad Olgierd von Everec vibes. PR game is very strong.
After a quick address, we were led to the demonstration room, where it quickly became apparent just how … let’s just say that when you sit across the isle from Joe Vargas, the impostor syndrome becomes very real.
We got about 3.5-4 hours of game time on “game journalist” difficulty and boy, I was pretty hooked. From what we played, it’s very clear that the game has lots of effort and love behind it.
I’m not going to repeat my GameGang article here, but in the second demo segment, the questgiver — a german swordsman not very fluent in local language — asked us to “steal the guild sword [of a local swordsman guild] and hang it on the Rathaus for all the Bürger to see.”
Since we weren’t allowed to take our own screenshots, I tried to illustrate the quest on my own:
My editor unfortunately rejected this for being too much of a shitpost.23Okay I actually didn’t even show this to my editor until the article went live, because if this wouldn’t get rejected for being a shitpost, it would get rejected for using improperly licensed images..
Wish we could play it for longer, but unfortunately the schedule was packed. The next thing on the schedule was guided tour through Kuttenberg.
It lasted about two hours. As we walked through the city, Sir Tobi extensively explained how they tried their best to re-create 15th century Kuttenberg in game, including creative liberties and educated guesses they’ve taken. They talked about how and why modern day Kuttenberg differs from the Kuttenberg we saw in the game. Turns out that cities change a lot in 500+ years, and that having a description how something looked half a millennia ago isn’t always a given. But when creative liberties were taken, they did consult with historians to ensure their guesses were as educated as they could be.
My favourite story from the tour is probably Sir Tobi explaining how they went knocking door-to-door in order to capture reference material for the game. The story goes that Warhorse Studios went to people, knocked on the door and asked:
“Hey, we have this super secret game in development that we absolutely aren’t allowed to talk about, but it would help us immensely if we could see your basement.”
The logic behind the ask being that basements are renovated a lot more rarely than the rest of the house, which means some houses could have basement walls that date all the way to the medieval times.
During the tour, we were also greeted by mayor of Kuttenberg, who welcomed us on behalf of the city. Turns out that Kuttenberg — and plenty Czech people in general — are rather proud of Kingdom Come: Deliverance.
The tour of the city ended in the church of st. Barbara. Inside, waiting for us, were Jan Valta Adam Sporka — the composer of KCDII soundtrack — and an orchestra.
The soundtrack is pretty nice and fitting inside of the game, but having it performed live for you inside a church is an experience on a whole other level. The concert was about an hour long, which was only a small part of what’s actually in the game … but hey, time constraints are time constraints.
After the concert, we — Warhorse representatives, Plaion, and the press — took a drone group selfie, during which time Jan made his way to the place where we had dinner, standing by the entrance, shaking hands with people entering.
Do you know that feeling when you realize that you don’t know the protocol for a high class event, and it’s too late to google proper etiquette for the occasion?
Well, I do now.
But the dinner that followed was nice. Food was, at the very least, medieval-vibe, and in every case good. Menu existed, but so did “secret dishes” that you had to ask and find on your own. I was generally busy eating, so I didn’t ‘gram everything, but:
Neon Knight is unwittingly posing for a shot with the desert there on the right.
Oh, and the beer came in bespoke KCDII mugs.
These were also a part of the “loot bag” that we got at the end of the evening, but we didn’t quite know that we’ll get one of them at the end of the day at the time. Guess who managed to pocket a second mug? Not me, and the only reason for this being the case is that I left the half-full mug unattended for a little bit too long during the medieval weapon demonstrations. But I know someone who did manage to sneak out with the second mug.
Did I say medieval weapon demonstrations?
Yes. They had local re-enactment groups bring the real stuff. This is the point where this post devolves into nothing more than a photo dump.
They showed off weapons:
They had combat demonstration for various situations: everything from what kind of weapons you’d typically see used to fend off against random bandits, to proper 1:1 fights you might see in a battle.
Except that they weren’t always 1:1.
The demonstrations were capped off with the biggest things that will be making the most noise in the community once the game releases — the hand cannons:
We were warned these were loud, and to cover our ears. I decided to “yes, do as I say” my way into trying to capture decent photos instead because how often does the opportunity arises and … Gotta say, the warning was on point. The only reason I managed to get this photo was because sound travels slower than light — slow enough to delay the startle by one shot from the burst.
After the demo, we had extra time for activities — making our own silver coins (Kuttenberg was known for its silver mines, where coins were being coined), playing dice, trying out weapons on armored dolls, and (of course) drinking.
It truly was a 10/10 experience. Would do it again.
