There are some well-worn tropes in RPGs. The protagonist is often some form of destined saviour, on a quest to defeat a cartoonishly evil villain, with a selection of side-characters along the way. Warhorse Studios actively rejects all of that when it comes to Kingdom Come: Deliverance, because in the studio’s mind, they sell the genre short.
In an interview with PC Gamer, Martin Klíma, co-founder of Warhorse Studios and executive producer on Kingdom Come: Deliverance 2 and its predecessor, provides his thoughts. “I was really and I still am bored and tired of all the RPGs when you are this chosen one, when you have this grand task of saving the universe,” he says.
“The games that are these really straightforward power fantasies,” he continues. “It’s not that I think it’s somehow wrong in principle. There is nothing bad about a good power fantasy. It’s just, it’s so repetitive.”
You don’t need to look far to see his point. Final Fantasy 7, Oblivion, and Clair Obscur: Expedition 33 all exude these principles; the weight of the world is on your shoulders, in an epic story of light versus dark.
Klíma notes he plays “a lot of RPGs,” and as someone who does the same, I occasionally need to step away and play something else to get a break from the stereotypes. He had a penny-drop moment playing Progress Quest, a self-playing satire of EverQuest and similar fantasy MMORPGs. “It’s really a distillation of what the common RPG is,” he says. “So I found that there must be many, many people who are really tired of this formula and who want something new and different.”
To him, a fundamental issue is in who these releases tend to target. “The games that were, and sort of are, being made are still the games for teenagers,” he believes. “If you are 16, 17, you love playing these power fantasy games because it’s something that you need. But the audience is much older today.
He’s aware, too, that Sandfall’s JRPG-inspired epic from last year will jump to many people’s minds here. “Everybody’s going to think that I am hating on Expedition 33 right now, but that’s definitely not the case,” he states.
But he namedrops some of the Ubisoft stable instead: Assassin’s Creed, Watch Dogs and Far Dogs. Not strictly role-playing games, but Assassin’s Creed and Far Cry in particular do have cookie-cutter elements. “Once you play the same game for the 10th time, it sort of becomes stale,” he muses.
Clair Obscur’s success speaks for itself. I’ve no doubt there are many who are also a little jaded, but I’d say there are many more who just want inventive, well-made games. The historical realism of the Kingdom Come series provides a certain kind of escapism the Final Fantasy 7 remake trilogy isn’t going for, and we’re all the better for that choice.