What is the perfect game? Does it even exist? I think I found something pretty damn close. Kingdom Come: Deliverance is a masterpiece that was buried by outrage media.

Obsidian Entertainment’s The Outer World left me craving a game dripping with depth, so I took to the Xbox Game Pass library to see if I could find something similar. I was really hoping to find Alpha Protocol because despite its many technical flaws it’s about as rich in story as their new game, but what I found was much, much better.

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Sitting inconspicuously among all the other Xbox Game Pass titles was a game called Kingdom Come: Deliverance by Warhorse Studios. I had never even heard about the game before. I did some research — and by research I mean watched YouTube videos — and learned that people don’t just like this game… they love it! So what’s with the Kingdom Come outrage?

Kingdom Come: Deliverance is a story-driven open-world RPG that immerses you in an epic adventure in the Holy Roman Empire. Avenge your parents’ death as you battle invading forces, go on game-changing quests, and make influential choices. Explore majestic castles, deep forests, thriving villages and countless other realistic settings in medieval Bohemia… sounds wicked, right? It damn well is.

The game doesn’t bull-shit you. From the very first quest it lets you know what to expect. For example, in the first quest you must run some errands for your farther: collect a debt, buy 10 bags of coal, grab the custom seal from the keep, and grab your dad a pint of fizzy cold ale from the local bar. Seems straight forward enough but it isn’t. I had to learn the hard way that this isn’t your basic fetch quest RPG.

Collecting the debt resulted in a fist fight. I got the crap kicked out of me and had to go back to mum to get bandaged up. I figured that there was no way I could beat that guy; him, a rugged hard working farmer… me, an unemployed, uneducated slacker… not a chance right? Wrong! I tried again, but this time played a bit dirty by throwing in a few jabs before he had a chance to get his guard up. Winner, winner chicken dinner. The guy hands me his house keys and says, “take what you want, I will get my revenge!”

So naturally I hock all his crap and then head on over to the market and trade it in for 10 bags of coal and then haggle my way to a few extra shiny coins. Then it’s to the bar to get my dad a cold fizzy ale, but not before a quick bit of flirting with my mistress… then it’s up to give my father his stuff. Oh wait, the sword master wants to see me. I have to train with him then I can go and drop the crap off. Finally, when all is said and done I had back with the stuff, but dad isn’t pleased… get this… his beer is now warm and flat. He pours it on the ground in front of me and sends me back to buy another one, and this time I must use my own moneys (lucky I haggled the shop keep for a better price).

Kingdom Come racist? Nah, it’s historical accurate.

Kingdom Come: Deliverance isn’t programmed to make this quest annoying, that was entirely my fault. I didn’t prioritise and wandered off too many times and got punished accordingly. And this was just he first quest.

They also say this game isn’t appealing to the mainstream because of its unforgiving nature which is absolute poppy cock. Sure, the game is immensely difficult because you need to level up nearly every skill to be able to do anything useful, but if you think outside of the box you can accomplish most all quests without breaking a sweat. For instance, one of the first quests you get after the prologue is to steal something from someone. The quest giver teaches you how to pick locks and tells you where he lives, but lock picking is frustratingly difficult. After 2 hours and thousands of attempts I could not open that damned lock, so I tried a different approach. First I asked him about the item and he was willing to sell it to me for 20 coins. I wasn’t willing to part with my cash so I waited for him to continue his job, snuck up behind him, put him in a sleeper hold, then stole his house and chest key. Needless to say I robbed the man blind and made a pretty penny for it.

Kingdom Come: Deliverance should appeal to anyone who loves roleplaying games, so why doesn’t it? And why am I only hearing about the game now? It launched early 2018! It’s because of outrage media. The developers were called racists and bigots for not including people of colour or trans people in their videogame. Which is insane because the developers were focused on recreating a historically accurate representation of 1440s Bohemia.

Kingdom Come racist says outrage media.

The places in the game are real, the characters are based on real people that lived in that area at the time, and story is based on historical events.

Kingdom Come outrage: MSM offended by the game’s lack of inclusivity

You witness the sacking of Silver Skalitz at the beginning of the game and that is based on the real raid on Silberskalitz (Stříbrná Skalice). The game is rife with nods to real historic events which makes it more of a masterpiece than just videogame, so we shouldn’t be shocked that there are no pink haired trans people in the game. But that was enough for outrage media to condemn the creators for racism, transphobia and bigotry.

Andreas, RockPaperShotgun, said that the developers were merely masking their bigotry under the guise of recreating historical accuracy and refused to score the game. He echoes outrage medias sentiment by declaring Kingdom Come racist.

Charlie Hall at Polygon joined the Kingdom Come outrage called it a beautiful but boring game with a narrative that is outdated in the current year. He also felt insulted because “his mother is a Bohemian descendent” and the game, for him, did not accurately portray his heritage. “Warhorse is a team of more than 150 people, but the game’s creative director has gone out of his way to rationalise his support of GamerGate, a loosely knit hate group that has devoted time to harassing women, people of colour and journalists in the past,” he wrote.

Kingdom Come racist or not? Definitely not!

Another big games blog that refused to score the game was EuroGamer. They even refused to recommend the game because it didn’t criticise the Bohemian era with a modern lens but instead celebrated it. “Instead of challenging the Dark Age it reinterprets 615 years later, the game seems to delight in it. Instead of seeing notes in the margin of a history book, we get what feels like a glossy pamphlet advertising an escape into an oddly romanticised past. And it’s that, ultimately, which makes me too uneasy about Warhorse’s work to be able to recommend it.”

Kingdom Come: Deliverance is probably the best roleplaying game in existence but it didn’t get the coverage it deserved because of its lack of ‘sexual, racial and gender diversity’ and it is absolutely absurd. One year later the game is even more polished than some of the biggest triple A titles and has a tonne of meaningful DLC available providing many hundreds of hours of gameplay. Warhorse Studios even released the Royal Edition which includes all of the available DLC and you can buy that copy for as little as AU$50. If anyone finds Kingdom Come racist they are just silly.

Don’t let the outrage media dictate what you buy, if you like old-timey games — heck, if you like roleplaying games — you are going to love this one. If you have Xbox Game Pass I recommend downloading the game while you can. You won’t regret it, it is one of the greatest games ever made.