Kingdom Come: Deliverance 2 is the latest in a growing line of RPGs that revel in friction, purposefully asking players difficult questions and throwing them curveballs both narratively and mechanically. Senior game designer Ondřej Bittner of developer Warhorse Studios reckons the game is "quite welcoming" as hardcore games go, but defends its mechanical complexity and reckons that dense games with bite are "good for the industry and for the players" over massive but repetitive games.
"I think the mechanics you're describing – a little more involved gameplay – falls around the fact that players may be finally [realizing] that it doesn't really matter how long a game is," Bittner tells GamesRadar+. "What matters is if your individual sessions are individual enough. If a game is 150 hours and all of your sessions are the same, you're gonna get bored. A little more involved mechanics [means] more original content."
