Kingdom Come: Deliverance is a game that promises the moon and seems to be making progress to deliver on it. It’s a game that seeks not to bury itself in fantasy tropes and clichés but instead to create a realistic depiction of the medieval world using real life events to inspire it with an open world, open narrative design.

Kingdom Come: Deliverance was taken to Kickstarter in the winter of 2014 and funded for over 1 million euro at the time. Continuing to pick funds, as of today it was over 2 million euro and achieving more stretch goals on occasion – relatively recently adding Motion Capture to the game in full. Its developer has been previously interviewed by TechRaptor and there has been some controversy around the fact that some game websites have not covered it.

The game takes the idea of an open world, open narrative approach that is seen in some fantasy games in the rpg genre (such as the Elder Scrolls series) and ditches the fantasy. Instead, set in 1400s Europe it aims heavily at simulation in many aspects from how its world lives, to how fighting happens, the landscape and everything else. The story is in fact based on real events of that time period, though it seems unlikely that it’s going to be chained to those events beyond using it as inspiration and set up.

The game is fully voice acted and features branching dialogues that are every bit as important and sensitive as combat. It is timed as you have to react and pay attention to what is going on around you, and people will remember and judge based on what you say. This isn't a game where you just click every dialogue option just because you can regardless of sense, instead how you do it and what you've done before impact it.

The game features a heavy full blown RPG stats (strength, speed, agility, vitality, speech), conditions (stamina, hunger, health, sleep), Skills (Swordsmanship, Archery, Alchemy, among others), and Perks (special moves, crafting formula or advantages). Conditions change based on what you've done – stats and skills improve as you use them.

The game is dedicated to its simulation approach. While many games aim abstractly at many points one of the major selling points of Kingdom Come: Deliverance is its basis in simulation of reality. You get better at things as you do them. The clothes you wear (and condition they are in) effects how people react towards you and what their opinion is. Eating and Sleeping are not for healing in this game but instead something that you have to do as part of surviving on a day to day basis. If you go without food, you get hungry and your abilities will take penalties as appropriate.

Its combat in style seems likely best compared to the Gothic series (not Gothic 4 – Gothics 1-3) where fighting multiple enemies is often a death request. Where combat was deadly and fighting something you did carefully with intelligence, as well as a mixture of player and character skill. How large it will be in things like sieges and full out war style battles is unknown at this time but it’s hard not to think of Mount and Blade as one of the other close ones to it when looking at those screenshots.

The Early Access which begins today is only a very early alpha. There is only one village and combat isn't being released as much of it is still being tested and incorporating motion capture. There will be no horse riding or numerous other features yet as its early in development. Instead in this village there will be a few quests that you can do and get a feel for part of the game. Warhorse studios has said that every month or two they will release an update with mechanics they've added in, and increase the region it’s in. As it approaches beta it will likely go into a more formal Early Access state, but for now only backers will be able to play test the mechanics.

Their site is being updated today so it may be down but you can visit it at: http://kingdomcomerpg.com/