Kingdom Come: Deliverance 2 is much more accomplished than its predecessor but still just as uncompromising an experience, and the sequel’s lead designer says it’s because Warhorse Studios were kind of “experimenting” the first time around.
Warhorse Studios’ Prokop Jirsa explained the difference in the two games’ development cycles in an interview with Edge Magazine. “In the first game, a lot of things were brand-new and we were experimenting and learning as we went,” he said.
“If you try something genuinely new, the odds of it being perfectly smooth from day one are slim,” Jirsa added. Kingdom Come: Deliverance 2 was a sequel with a far bigger budget being built off the back of an existing formula, so “we knew what worked, what didn’t, and where players expected us to raise the bar,” Jirsa went on, “It still had the heart of the original, but this time it had to stand taller.”
In the gap between the two Kingdom Come games, Warhorse Studios was actually acquired by Embracer Group subsidiary Plaion, which potentially explains the jump in budget and production resources. Not only did the developer have more money to play with, it could grow pretty rapidly, though the team were careful to keep it all under control
“By the time KCD2 released, the studio had around 250 people, about 100 more than on the first game. Along with that came new pipelines and structures, so we could have a much cleaner picture of the project’s state and how all the systems fit together. It was the only way to keep something this complex under control.”