Crusader Kings 3 is Real By Joe Robinson

Paradox Interactive have just announced at their annual PDXCon show that they are working on a third entry in their iconic Crusader Kings franchise. Crusader Kings 3 is due out next year and doubles down on what the team feels is most appealing about the game - the characters, and the player’s journey as they try and navigate the harsh and brutal world of medieval politics.

Crusader Kings 2 was and still is famous for being one of the more mainstream grand-strategy games, and the game that put the genre on the map as an example of how to design a game with deep, player driven experiences. It also in many ways pioneered the DLC model most Paradox grand-strategy games now follow, and can be considered the first in the current generation of PDS titles.

Crusader Kings 3 looks to start a new dynasty of its own with a brand new world map, characters rendered in 3D and brand new tools around tutorialisation and user friendliness. Even the UI is going for a very minimalistic feel, at the time of writing. Mechanics wise, while it probably won’t have every feature currently available in CK2, it will have a lot of it, and the main innovations focus around how the player interacts with concepts such as family, dynasty, religion and their particular government type.

This follows the company announcing that the base-version of Crusader Kings 2 is now free-to-play, which we’re given to understand is a state-of-affairs that will be permanent. We once went back to look at the vanilla experience for CK2 and see what it was like after all these years of patches (and DLC) - you should check it out.

Crusader Kings III is due out sometime in 2020, and will be coming to Steam and Xbox Pass for PC.