There is a life-like quality to the villages and landscape that feels more authentic than what IвЂ™ve seen in other games, and I have played many of this ilk. The world of Kingdom Come is equally enthralling. How players go about this is entirely up to them. Losing the sword means losing a part of his father as well as his own honor as he was tasked with delivering the sword to his fatherвЂ™s patron. HenryвЂ™s first mission is one of revenge, an all too human pursuit, and his revenge isnвЂ™t to kill the man who burnt down his village, though that is on the back-burner, rather, itвЂ™s to find the bandit who stole his fatherвЂ™s finest sword. Saying this, one might assume that Henry is destined to rise up and overthrow the evil Lord who seeks to take over Bohemia, and though IвЂ™m only a dozen hours into the game, I donвЂ™t believe that this is ever the case. There is freedom here that I have not seen in any game, and I love it. Want to pick locks? Prepare to hate picking locks until you pick a lot of locks and get better at it, both in game and with your controller. Want to swing your sword better? Swing it a bunch and train with a master. Players are fully in charge of how Henry develops. Many games feature this type of inverted power structure, where instead of the game being harder at the end, itвЂ™s more difficult at the beginning, but not many take it this far. He canвЂ™t even swing a sword well enough to chop through a corn stalk. He isnвЂ™t overly attractive or large, and at the beginning of the game he is bad at everything. Henry is not is the chosen one, the Mary Sue, the destined child who must save the world. Henry is swept up into events that he has no control over, but not long into the game players are given the choice of how they wish to interact with these events. Players star as Henry, a blacksmithвЂ™s son whose village is burned down by a power-hungry Lord with aims at throne of Bohemia.

What Kingdom Come is, in essence, is a medieval simulator. Since its release, I havenвЂ™t heard much about it, but after finally getting my hands on a library copy of the game, I am amazed that there arenвЂ™t more people abuzz about this gem. Kingdom Come is the first game from newly crafted Czech studio, Warhorse, and it was released earlier this year to good reviews. This all brings me to the topic at hand вЂ“ Kingdom Come : Deliverance. Something like Call of Duty might not feature fireball hurling, but it gives you tools beyond anything you likely have access to outside of special ops military folk. Even games without magic or far-flung technology are power fantasies in their own right.

Most games are quite literally power fantasies, and this is good. To transition, video games are their own kind of magic, and are related to fantasy in that they allow the average Joe to perform amazing feats of strength and power. People have differing definitions for what fantasy means, but for me it is the ability to perform otherworldly and un-explainable feats. Magicians, Merlin being the exception, are largely absent in medieval media, and when they do make an appearance they are usually charlatans or just people who can read. For one, true medieval literature and media has relatively little to do with magic. People tend to equate medieval themes with anything fantasy, and the two are certainly related, but not married. The most memorable class I took during my undergrad days was one called Everyday Medieval Life, which avoided all the larger scale historical moments in favor of looking at how the average person of the Dark Ages lived their lives. My minor in Medieval Studies grew from my Arthurian infatuation combined with a related love of all things fantasy, and while what I actually studied in those classes was a far cry from the legends and sagas I had been reading, I still found the times of Lords and Ladies and Knights and overwhelming Christianity to be fascinating. Arthurian Legend was a powerful enough love for me that I would actually do homework when anything related to the Round Table was assigned. My love of medieval literature and history came from an early obsession with King Arthur. The program is fairly well-known, and they host a medieval congress every year for all the academic nerds of the world to get together and talk serfs. This is not a common area of coursework in many colleges, but Western Michigan University has an entire department devoted to ye olde ages of yore. In college, I minored in Medieval Studies.

Kingdom come deliverance lost sword