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You can’t keep a good cat down
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I recently had the opportunity to sit down with Warhorse studio’s PR Manager Tobias ‘Sir Tobi’ Stolz-Zwilling to discuss the upcoming Kingdom Come: Deliverance II. Immediately prior, I got prepped with a hands-on preview of the game. Between this little tease and recently making an effort to properly play the original, I wondered if I was out of my depth here. Despite my trepidation, Stolz-Zwilling filled the room with infectious pride for the ambitious historical sequel. I wanted to consider the significance of a successful independent studio working on its sophomore project out of Prague. Turns out they’ve got a strong starting position on the back of the original game’s success. Now, they’re just having fun with it.
WellPlayed: The first game had Kickstarter funding behind it. Has the studio been able to acquire any kind of Arts funding in the EU or Czech?
Tobias Stolz-Zwilling: No, not at all.
Right now, in the Czech Republic, there are discussions about if the state should support video games – which is not happening at this moment. Luckily KC: D (Kingdom Come: Deliverance) was so successful. Even if it was so-so, we didn’t, and wouldn’t do, another crowdfunding thing. We felt like that was not the right thing because when we did it for KC: D, it was really a sink-or-swim situation if the Kickstarter had failed. We actually did the Kickstarter back in the day to please the investor. To tell him, “Listen, there’s a crowd [for this game],” because the investor was not a video game dude. He did, I don’t know, coal mining or something crazy like that.
Publishers back before Plaion and whatnot in 2011, even before the PlayStation 4 and so on, said that nobody plays single-player games. They just kept saying that over and over again. “Nobody plays single-player games. How about you do a Facebook game like Zynga or poker?” Cash cow shit.
I’m pumped for further virtual tourism in lush medieval Bohemia
We’re like, probably not. The investor was then like, “Why are all the publishers not trying the game? Is the game any good? Do they have a point?”
“No, no, no, no. Trust us. Let’s do crowdfunding.”
Last chance. Luckily it was successful. From that point on we decided we would not do this for KC: DII because it would not be honest. It would be a marketing thing only. That’s not our flow. KC: DI financed KC: DII.
WP: For a setting like 15th Century Bohemia and its immersive world that the team is creating, what are some of the foundational media that the team has found entertaining or inspiring for them?
TSZ: Most of the devs that are working at the studio, the majority are from the Czech Republic or Slovakia. They’re not the same country but they are very interconnected to each other. They were one country in the past. It doesn’t matter at this point. But if there are two things Bohemians or Czechoslovaks or whoever are fond of, that they know inside out, is mushroom picking. Every single kid really has a dictionary about which mushrooms are edible and which are not. They know the forest. They collect mushrooms completely dry every year.
And the second is the Middle Ages. Castles. Knights.
The first season of Game of Thrones started as super medieval and everything. But then at some point, it became magical. Nothing bad about that, but nobody stayed authentic to this medieval track.
This is part of our heritage and part of everyday life in the Czech Republic. There’s history everywhere. The capital city is a medieval city. Everything is like really [medieval]. It’s everywhere. So for most devs we have here in Prague, you know, many of the ‘Young Guns’ actually were like, “Um, we want to work on this game, or KC:D, specifically because of the villages and talking about Czech History.”
We have a full-time historian in the team and she works mostly with the concept artists because those are the ones who are crafting the world: painting the world and putting an art direction in there. She’s the link between us and those people at the museums, universities, reenactors and whatnot to get those things right.
For Daniel Vávra and the design team: It’s old Czech movies and Sapkowski, the guy who wrote The Witcher books. He’s actually talking about the Hussite Wars in those books, which are breaking out a few years later (than the events in KC:D). He has vampires and shit in there, but still, the way he describes the Middle Ages and the wars that are breaking out was somewhat fitting to what we imagined and visualised as well.
Time will tell how viable the rebuilt stealth systems will be
There’s a lot of these historical movies and so on already. What Daniel and the founders of Warhorse found in the beginning, was that no one really tried to create a video game or movie that was authentic [to this era]. The first season of Game of Thrones started as super medieval and everything. But then at some point, it became magical. Nothing bad about that, but nobody stayed authentic to this medieval track.
WP: Can you name any Czech films that inspired the team?
TSZ: I don’t know them by heart.
They are usually black-and-white movies. Actually, I know one. Do you know the movie that released on Netflix two years ago or so? It’s called Medieval, or Jan Žižka. That’s a bad example because that one is shit.
WP: (Laughs) Cool, thanks man.
TSZ: No, no. Write it down. It talks about Czech war heroes. Medieval is about this general during the Hussite wars. Jan Žižka is something like the hero of the Czech Middle Ages. There’s a better movie about him and his situation from the 60s or 70s, around the time of colour TVs.
WP: Are you aware of any specific feature, game interaction, or maybe even character interaction that the team is nervously or excitedly anticipating an audience reaction to?
TSZ: (Smiling nervously) Well, yes (laughs).
Production said no cats. No more animals. We’re done, we have to ship the fucking game now. No cats!
There are lots of things where we are really looking forward to see how people are reacting.
And for different reasons. One is how will long-time fans react? How will newcomers react? They will most likely react differently. But I, of course, can’t go too deep into that.
But what I can tell you is that every single department in the office is putting in easter eggs left and right. This drives me mad because I have absolutely no idea what’s going on when they are laughing about it. None of them are keeping track of them. So, there’s stuff in there that I hope will be all fine and not just some crap jokes somewhere here and there, but I can’t guarantee that.
I know of some Easter eggs, which I will not tell you about because they’re fun.
But I can tell you a very good story about development. The character department had several employees who desperately wanted cats in the game.
Production said no cats. No more animals. We’re done, we have to ship the fucking game now. No cats!
The interfaces will be comfortably familiar for returning players
And they said, “Yes, cats.” They created this small rebel army inside Warhorse Studios where they got a programmer, one animator and a few other people, and they secretly sneak cats into the game. Because they had only one programmer, they couldn’t make them pettable or whatnot.
So, the cats are now on the roofs and tiles where you can’t reach them and whenever you get close, they run away and shit. During one review meeting, there was this small black thing jumping on the roof in-game. And I was like, what the heck was that?
Sneakingly, the character department, of all the departments, snuck cats into KC: DII. Now we have cats in there. That’s the kind of bull crap we had to deal with when we had a flat hierarchy where everyone can say, “How about we add cats to the games?”
No one can stop you.
WP: That’s wonderful, thank you so much.
A big thanks to Plaion and Warhorse Studio’s Tobias Stolz-Zwilling for allowing WellPlayed to sit down with the game and team in the leadup to Kingdom Come: Deliverance II’s launch.
Kingdom Come: Deliverance II releases for PlayStation 5, Xbox Series X|S, and PC on February 5, 2025
I recently had the opportunity to sit down with Warhorse studio’s PR Manager Tobias ‘Sir Tobi’ Stolz-Zwilling to discuss the upcoming Kingdom Come: Deliverance II. Immediately prior, I got prepped with a hands-on preview of the game. Between this little tease and recently making an effort to properly play the original, I wondered if I was out of my depth here. Despite my trepidation, Stolz-Zwilling filled the room with infectious pride for the ambitious historical sequel. I wanted to consider the significance of a successful independent studio working on its sophomore project out of Prague. Turns out they’ve got a strong starting position on the back of the original game’s success. Now, they’re just having fun with it.
WellPlayed: The first game had Kickstarter funding behind it. Has the studio been able to acquire any kind of Arts funding in the EU or Czech?
Tobias Stolz-Zwilling: No, not at all.
Right now, in the Czech Republic, there are discussions about if the state should support video games – which is not happening at this moment. Luckily KC: D (Kingdom Come: Deliverance) was so successful. Even if it was so-so, we didn’t, and wouldn’t do, another crowdfunding thing. We felt like that was not the right thing because when we did it for KC: D, it was really a sink-or-swim situation if the Kickstarter had failed. We actually did the Kickstarter back in the day to please the investor. To tell him, “Listen, there’s a crowd [for this game],” because the investor was not a video game dude. He did, I don’t know, coal mining or something crazy like that.
Publishers back before Plaion and whatnot in 2011, even before the PlayStation 4 and so on, said that nobody plays single-player games. They just kept saying that over and over again. “Nobody plays single-player games. How about you do a Facebook game like Zynga or poker?” Cash cow shit.
I’m pumped for further virtual tourism in lush medieval Bohemia
We’re like, probably not. The investor was then like, “Why are all the publishers not trying the game? Is the game any good? Do they have a point?”
“No, no, no, no. Trust us. Let’s do crowdfunding.”
Last chance. Luckily it was successful. From that point on we decided we would not do this for KC: DII because it would not be honest. It would be a marketing thing only. That’s not our flow. KC: DI financed KC: DII.
WP: For a setting like 15th Century Bohemia and its immersive world that the team is creating, what are some of the foundational media that the team has found entertaining or inspiring for them?
TSZ: Most of the devs that are working at the studio, the majority are from the Czech Republic or Slovakia. They’re not the same country but they are very interconnected to each other. They were one country in the past. It doesn’t matter at this point. But if there are two things Bohemians or Czechoslovaks or whoever are fond of, that they know inside out, is mushroom picking. Every single kid really has a dictionary about which mushrooms are edible and which are not. They know the forest. They collect mushrooms completely dry every year.
And the second is the Middle Ages. Castles. Knights.
This is part of our heritage and part of everyday life in the Czech Republic. There’s history everywhere. The capital city is a medieval city. Everything is like really [medieval]. It’s everywhere. So for most devs we have here in Prague, you know, many of the ‘Young Guns’ actually were like, “Um, we want to work on this game, or KC:D, specifically because of the villages and talking about Czech History.”
We have a full-time historian in the team and she works mostly with the concept artists because those are the ones who are crafting the world: painting the world and putting an art direction in there. She’s the link between us and those people at the museums, universities, reenactors and whatnot to get those things right.
For Daniel Vávra and the design team: It’s old Czech movies and Sapkowski, the guy who wrote The Witcher books. He’s actually talking about the Hussite Wars in those books, which are breaking out a few years later (than the events in KC:D). He has vampires and shit in there, but still, the way he describes the Middle Ages and the wars that are breaking out was somewhat fitting to what we imagined and visualised as well.
Time will tell how viable the rebuilt stealth systems will be
There’s a lot of these historical movies and so on already. What Daniel and the founders of Warhorse found in the beginning, was that no one really tried to create a video game or movie that was authentic [to this era]. The first season of Game of Thrones started as super medieval and everything. But then at some point, it became magical. Nothing bad about that, but nobody stayed authentic to this medieval track.
WP: Can you name any Czech films that inspired the team?
TSZ: I don’t know them by heart.
They are usually black-and-white movies. Actually, I know one. Do you know the movie that released on Netflix two years ago or so? It’s called Medieval, or Jan Žižka. That’s a bad example because that one is shit.
WP: (Laughs) Cool, thanks man.
TSZ: No, no. Write it down. It talks about Czech war heroes. Medieval is about this general during the Hussite wars. Jan Žižka is something like the hero of the Czech Middle Ages. There’s a better movie about him and his situation from the 60s or 70s, around the time of colour TVs.
WP: Are you aware of any specific feature, game interaction, or maybe even character interaction that the team is nervously or excitedly anticipating an audience reaction to?
TSZ: (Smiling nervously) Well, yes (laughs).
There are lots of things where we are really looking forward to see how people are reacting.
And for different reasons. One is how will long-time fans react? How will newcomers react? They will most likely react differently. But I, of course, can’t go too deep into that.
But what I can tell you is that every single department in the office is putting in easter eggs left and right. This drives me mad because I have absolutely no idea what’s going on when they are laughing about it. None of them are keeping track of them. So, there’s stuff in there that I hope will be all fine and not just some crap jokes somewhere here and there, but I can’t guarantee that.
I know of some Easter eggs, which I will not tell you about because they’re fun.
But I can tell you a very good story about development. The character department had several employees who desperately wanted cats in the game.
Production said no cats. No more animals. We’re done, we have to ship the fucking game now. No cats!
The interfaces will be comfortably familiar for returning players
And they said, “Yes, cats.” They created this small rebel army inside Warhorse Studios where they got a programmer, one animator and a few other people, and they secretly sneak cats into the game. Because they had only one programmer, they couldn’t make them pettable or whatnot.
So, the cats are now on the roofs and tiles where you can’t reach them and whenever you get close, they run away and shit. During one review meeting, there was this small black thing jumping on the roof in-game. And I was like, what the heck was that?
Sneakingly, the character department, of all the departments, snuck cats into KC: DII. Now we have cats in there. That’s the kind of bull crap we had to deal with when we had a flat hierarchy where everyone can say, “How about we add cats to the games?”
No one can stop you.
WP: That’s wonderful, thank you so much.
A big thanks to Plaion and Warhorse Studio’s Tobias Stolz-Zwilling for allowing WellPlayed to sit down with the game and team in the leadup to Kingdom Come: Deliverance II’s launch.
Kingdom Come: Deliverance II releases for PlayStation 5, Xbox Series X|S, and PC on February 5, 2025
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