Warhorse Studios is an independent studio which recently established in Czech Republic, founders of this new studio are Daniel Vavra creator of Mafia 1-2 and Martin Klima from ALTAR. Warhorse Studios gathered experienced and young talented people in game industry together. In Jan 2014 Kingdom Come: Deliverance a realistic RPG which happens in medieval era started its fund raising campaign and .became third successful title of Kickstarter in 2014
In following read our exclusive interview with the director of public relations Mr. Tobias Stolz-Zwilling
.First, it’s a great honor to talk to you. Please introduce yourself to BaziCenter audience and tell us a little about your current project
Greetings, the honor is on my side. My name is Tobias Stolz-Zwilling, and I am the PR Manager at Warhorse Studios. We are currently working on Kingdom Come: Deliverance – a realistic RPG that takes place in medieval 1403 Bohemia, Central Europe. You will incarnate as Henry, a humble young guy that loses everything due to war. What you don’t lose however, is the will to revenge the death of your family, so you get into the service of a noble who decides to fight the invading forces
?Why did you decide to establish your own, independent studio
I guess that might be a dream for most game developers, to create their own studio. Daniel Vavra, founder of Warhorse Studios and Creative Director, figured out that this is the only way to create the games he really wants to do. That’s why he quit his job in an established game studio to create his own
?Did you start working on Kingdom Come: Deliverance immediately after establishing Warhorse Studios? or you had other projects too
Warhorse Studios was created out of the idea to develop Kingdom Come: Deliverance, so you could pretty much say that it’s the other way around. We immediately created Warhorse Studios after we knew that we wanted to work on Kingdom Come: Deliverance
?Fortunately, Kickstarter helps developers a lot these days and many fans of classic RPGs managed to fulfil their dreams thanks to Kickstarter. What led you to go for it
For us, the Kickstarter was sink or swim. We struggled to get funding for our project. Luckily, we found an investor in the end, but he wanted to prove that there is demand for Kingdom Come: Deliverance. If we were able to reach the set goal of 300.000 British Pounds, our investor would jump in and finance the project. If we didn’t reach our goal, we probably wouldn’t be talking to each other today. We had 30 days for those 300.000 Pounds, but in the end, we received 1.1 million Pounds. This was a huge success that showed us that people believe in us and our project. But of course this doesn’t fund the entire project, it just “kickstarts” it
It’s very interesting that you abandoned the fantasy theme for Kingdom Come: Deliverance and decided to choose a more realistic approach. Do you think that Kingdom Come will add a new and special sub-genre to RPG genre?
.At the very least, it’s not impossible
?What was your source of inspiration when developing Kingdom Come? Did a specific game, book or movie inspired you
.The Hussite Trilogy by Andrzej Sapkowski definitely are interesting books to read. But of course, there have been a lot of different movies and books that inspired us, even video games
Kingdom Come will be definitely compared to other RPG games upon release. How close is it to the clichés of the genre? Is it more focused on characters and story like Witcher series? ?Or is it more focused on exploration like The Elder Scrolls series
I would say it’s a mixture of both. Our Creative Director is Daniel Vavra who is responsible for Mafia 1 and Mafia 2. Victor Bocan, our Lead Designer, was responsible for Operation Flashpoint. Mafia was known for its deep and intriguing story while Operation Flashpoint was known for being super realistic. If you combine both and add a beautiful reconstructed Bohemian landscape, you’ll get Kingdom Come: Deliverance
?Why did you choose CryEngine for the development of Kingdom Come
.Because the CryEngine looked the best at that time and we knew that we wanted high-end graphics in order to maximize immersion
?Fetch Quests and variety of missions are playing a pivotal role today’s RPGs. What is Kingdom Come: Deliverance’s approach? Fewer, more varied missions? Or focus on more content
.Definitely fewer, but meaningful quests that’ll all have something to do with the overall plot of the game
?Do you like Choice and Consequence mechanism? Shall we expect several endings
Yes, we do like these mechanisms and you will even find them in Kingdom Come: Deliverance. You will have several ways to solve quests and it will be up to you to explore and decide. However, you will not be able to change history. The End is the same but how you get there is up to you
Now’s the time for the most important question. Can we finally play Kingdom Come: Deliverance this year? Are you planning to release Beta and Early Access versions to study the reactions? Or you are aiming for a full and final release only?
It’s done when it’s done. We are going to talk about the exact release date soon. But we are aiming for a full and final release only
In the end, the risk that you and your team is taking to create a unique and different game from everything else in RPG genre is very admirable. We hope that Kingdom Come: Deliverance takes a strong first step for Warhorse Studios?
.Thank you very much. Let’s all look forward to Kingdom Come: Deliverance
