Kingdom Come: Deliverance Preview

In contrast to any of the other visits I had at Gamescom, there wasn't much of an introduction to Kingdom Come: Deliverance. We were shown the trailer and after that were provided with a hands-on demo of the game.

The PC I was playing with had the option to use a keyboard with mouse or a controller. I used the keyboard and started up a new game, which started with a cut-scene where at the end of it, I was to join some soldiers investigating a raid. So, I headed out of the building to find my horse, that apparently would be there. And it was, waiting with the other soldiers. They mounted and so did I, at least I did after a few tries. Moving in this game is not point and click. The mouse is used for other things than that. You have to use your keyboard to move. After fiddling around for some time, I do get the impression that the game is built for using a controller and that the keyboard and mouse buttons are mapped to functions that you can also use on the controller. The game does not seem to have a different UI either, depending on what you are using. Anyway, I switched to a controller, as to me it felt that playing the game in that way was much more comfortable. But that could be just me.

The party I was supposed to join was already far away, while I was fooling around with the controls on the keyboard. Fortunately I am on a horse and I could gallop towards them to meet up with them again just before we arrived on our location, which was a farm.

As this is apparently an actual section of the game, I'll try to keep it low on spoilers. The farm appeared to be raided, but the people who were involved did not all tell the exact same story, so something else than we were told might have took place. I could find this out by chatting with the various people on the farm and the fields. However I could not talk to everyone. If I can, it shows 'A - Talk' and I could start a conversation by pressing the 'A' button. The other NPCs are aware of your presence though, if you bump into them they start complaining and tell you to leave them alone.

At some point I was directed to some bandits going to the forests in a certain direction. The game features a compass at the top in the screen, so a hint like "they went to the North-East" or something like that, makes it not too difficult to find the bandits, although the forest was big and it did take some searching (afterwards I found out that I completely missed the hint about a blood trail leading to  and in the forest). Meeting the bandits ended in a fight. Kingdom Come has a combat system where you can slash and defend using your sword by using an interface that looks like a flower with 8 petals, for the 8 directions. You can go round with your mouse to select one of the petals and perform a defend or attack action. With the controller you rotate the stick and then perform the action. Again, I found this to work much smoother using a controller than a mouse. And as I had experienced in one of my previous Gamescom visits before already, I do not find it particularly easy  to do on a controller either, but I am happy to chalk that up to my lack of skills in doing this right. Anyway, I still managed to defeat the bandit, but not without taking some damage as well.

That about was the time I could play the game. From what I wrote, you wouldn't say that it took me 40 minutes, but I spent a lot of time on the farm, talking to whoever I could find.

Up to now, much of Kingdom Come already has already been told about the game and shown in videos, so there is plenty of information to go on. If I would have to summarize the experience based on this play-through, it would be that this is a really great looking game, with a very well designed quest that plays easier with a controller than keyboard and mouse and a combat system that doesn't really get along with me. Yet, despite that, I am looking forward to play more of the game. If the exploratory part of the game is really as good as it looks to be, I will learn to live with the rest of my shortcomings in playing this game, or make the effort to get better at it.

Kingdom Come: Deliverance is scheduled for release on the 13th of February 2018.

Here is the trailer of the game.

And for more detailed information, check out this B-roll, but it does have some spoilers or check out the screenshots we have.