Kingdom Come: Deliverance seems to have become one of my traditional stops whenever I’m in a trade show nowadays. I’ve seen it way before it was out at E3, a second time when it was just about ready to be released, and now, for a third, in my hometown of São Paulo during Brazil Game Show. PR manager for Warhorse Studios Tobias Stolz-Zwiling handled the demo for Kingdom Come’s second piece of paid DLC (out of three) that comes out in a few days, the ‘Amorous Adventures’ of young Sir Hans Capon, the lovable and somewhat dim-witted noble, one of my favorite characters from the game.
If protagonist Henry didn’t have enough on his plate trying to seek revenge for the razing of his village over the course of Kingdom Come: Deliverance, now he has to help Capon steal the heart of fair young maiden Karolina, a series of quests that involve a lot of comedy and hijinks, which proved to be surprisingly on point during my time checking it out yesterday with Tobias.
Hans Capon was one of the best characters in KCD because he turned out to have one of the more radical bits of character development. He had it everything going for him to be just a plain old jerk, given that he’s a noble who didn’t take too kindly to Henry when he joined his ranks during the story, but eventually evolved into a buddy of sorts for the coming up hero by the end of the adventure. The DLC takes place around the halfway portion of Kingdom Come, and can be played naturally during a normal playthrough, or in case you’ve already finished the game, it can be found somewhere on the map, at which point it will take you back to that point in the story and allow you to enjoy the new content.
The entirety of Amorous Adventures encompasses a handful of pretty involved questlines, one of which, the one in the BGS demo, had us chase whoever stole a family heirloom necklace that Capon wants to give to Karolina. That took Henry to a camp of thieves that were burgled themselves, pointing the way to the actual location of the quest objective, an even bigger campsite that allowed Tobi and I to have more than one way of reaching our objective, the main prize of a dice game competition. Out of the options we had, we could’ve played in the tournament and won it normally, but even in that approach there was also a few different ways of going at it. Tobias suggested that we could have also avoided playing and just robbed the whoever ended up winning the whole thing. Outside of that, we could also burgle the burglars ourselves, and even talk them into giving up the goods, if our verbal skills were good enough. And of course, there’s always the iron option.
We eventually reached that quest’s conclusion via some convenient saves Tobi had set up beforehand, so I only got to see the end result of whatever was done at the camp, but given the amount of possibilities, I’m looking forward to jumping in and trying to figure even different ways out myself. The follow up took us to the most comedic moment of the demo, where Henry acquires a poetry book and is tasked with feeding Capon with romantic lines so he can convince Karolina to let him into her room, against her father’s wishes. You might not recall, but Henry starts out without knowing how to read, so that aspect of the quest is already split into the crossroad of whether or not you went through the trouble of having him learn to do so during the course of the main Kingdom Come: Deliverance campaign. In this case, he did know how to, but it was Hans who failed to listen to his instructions, bungling his delivery of the poem in ridiculous and hilarious ways.
Still, Karolina ended up impressed, so Henry’s buddy was able to sneak in, as his soon-to-be father-in-law and his cronies came outside to check what all the noise was about, leaving Henry to fend for himself as the wrongly-accused love bird. Things ended up going south, and a fist fight broke out all the while Capon’s upstairs getting to know Karolina romantically, if you catch my drift. Whether or not he succeeds on conquering her heart depends on how well Henry keeps the dad occupied, and from that point on, the story of the DLC carries out accordingly. Sadly, I did not get to see that in my demo, but given that the final version will be out in a few days, I can’t blame Warhorse Studios for not wanting to divulge further.
I was already into a lot of what Kingdom Come: Deliverance had to offer earlier this year, and according to Tobi, this set of DLC is coming out thanks to its success. The rest of the paid content will be out later on, no dates were specified. There’s also a free piece of content that introduces a tournament Henry can partake in at Rattay, where he’ll face off against increasingly tougher opponents in two out of three sets where weapons are chosen by participants and by the local lord, and will offer unique pieces of armor to the winner every in-game week.
Amorous Adventures will be released alongside the free tournament mode next week, on October 16th for all versions of Kingdom Come: Deliverance. Check back soon for a full review!
