Watch the ambitious swordfighting of Kingdom Come: Deliverance
The pivotal part of the no-fantasy medieval RPG game.
Kingdom Come: Deliverance is making waves for being a realistic medieval role-playing game without wizards and dragons and all that fantastical paraphernalia. It's a historical role-playing game from the Czech Republic.
Simulated swordplay and combat is a pivotal part of the package. The aim is to make it feel as real - not flashy - as possible. It's first-person, and ruled by physics, with the clash and clang of steel on steel, be it another blade or someone's armour. The aim is to put you in the shoes of an (albeit very talented) fighter of that period of time.
A lot of this history is on developer Warhorse's Czech doorstep, including medieval battle re-enactments and experts in sword styles of the medieval time. And it was all drawn upon to try and achieve the desired result.
Below is a video I was presented at Gamescom by Warhorse that gives a great overview of how swordfighting looks in the game, what the team wants it to be, and how it was made. There are other weapons besides swords by the way, but they're not on show here. Also, if you have access to the technical alpha builds of the game - if you're a crowdfunding backer of the appropriate tier - then you can test the swordfighting system now for yourself.
Kingdom Come: Deliverance is due summer 2016 on PC, with consoles (PS4 and Xbox One) due a few months thereafter. Warhorse boss Daniel Vavra told me at Gamescom that he expects consoles to be a "couple" of months after PC, but I still think he's being ambitious. It's built on CryEngine so it already runs on consoles, but a full release will require optimisation work beyond that. I'll write more about what I learned at Gamescom when I can.
