Kingdom Come developer Warhorse Studios has, in the past, prided itself on historical accuracy to a fault, though this year’s medieval sequel Kingdom Come Deliverance 2 presents itself more like sparkly historical fiction. It’s a bloodstained place where knights have Hulk strength and peasants’ teeth aren’t rotting out of their skulls, but I wish Warhorse hadn’t cut a key combat mechanic that would have made Kingdom Come 2 even more of a dark fantasy.
As per CzechCrunch, the action role-playing game once made players suffer their karma through dreams and nightmares; a lying, stealing, murderous player with a guilty conscience might be forced to combat spirits and demons while they slept. If they succeeded in defeating the monsters, they’d gain XP during their waking hours. If not, their sleep quality would plummet.
A saintly player, however, would have a completely different experience once they closed their eyes – they could dream a path to glimmering hidden treasure, for example.
While similar RPGs like Red Dead Redemption and Fable have employed morality systems for decades, they’d most typically manifest in your character’s dialogue options, available story paths, or appearance. Like, particularly unscrupulous Fable 3 players might have sprouted sludgy, black fallen angel wings by the end of the game.
Interactive dream sequences are a more rare, relatively unfashionable thing, but it sounds like Warhorse was prepared to transform them with a unique, karmic twist. I will mourn this lost opportunity to study the knightly subconscious, along with other interesting pieces of Kingdom Come Deliverance 2 cut content. That includes a heavy blackmailing plot in the game’s main quest and little babies, who Warhorse feared would get executed by those aforementioned players worthy of nightmares.
