We tried a medieval life simulator, attentive to personal hygiene: Kingdom Deliverance 2

It is possible video game with history? With the Middle Ages to be precise. Kingdom as Deliverance 2 It allows you to easily answer this question. It is evident from the first game stages, set during a siege. The context is that of Bohemia of 1403. The situation in the region is rather tense: King Venceslao IV, deposed as the king of the Romans, struggles to maintain control over a divided nobility. With the Holy Roman Empire in crisis and the most contested Church, the region therefore began towards a chaos from which the Hussite wars will begin.

It is within these dynamics that the Kingdom Open World as Deliverance 2 branches off, a historical role -playing game that in the first 24 hours after launch he sold 1 million copies. Today he reached double. A really important result for a young study like Warhorse.

The protagonist of Kindgom as Deliverance 2: the man of Arme Henry

We live all this in the role of Henryalready the protagonist of the first chapter released in 2018, who managed to become a man of arms as a son of Fabbro. He is now at the service of Sir Hans, a knight who wants to get in touch with the lords of Trosky. “Henry is a popular who made it,” he says to Fanpage.it Paolo “Adhras.art” ManziniContent Creator craftsman and shielder expert in white weapon fights.

“Henry is not a knight and this thing makes the game understand it very well, especially compared to the films that very often do not suggest the difference between the knight and the man of arms: the medieval knight is a status, a legal figure, a nobleman To all respects. How do you get there? Obviously by blood line, but not always. If we go to see, especially in Italy, this title could be earned “.

As? The answer is very simple and current: with money. “There is a saying of Giacomo Trivulzio, Knight and Marshal of France, according to which three things are needed to make war: money, money and money. To become a knight there were many of them since, trivially, a war horse, as the historian Alessandro Barbero says, cost like a Ferrari “.

There is also a culture speech. Always at the beginning of the game, during the journey to Trosky, Sir Hans explains to Henry the meaning of the Latin phrase “Audentes Fortuna Iuvat”luck helps the daring. A short exchange of jokes which, however, lets you see well how any Kingdom element like Deliverance 2 is functional for its medieval historical story.

The historical rigor between sieges and fighting to the white weapon

We ask Manzini more details on the siege that opens the game. The scene is this, strictly in the first person, like the rest of the game: we are armed with crossbow, to recharge it takes a while, because both hands are needed to hit the dart again. In the meantime, the enemies try to penetrate through stairs and a few blows of Trabucco. “It’s an accurate scene,” says Manzini. “There is not a gigantic siege like those we see in the cinema, indeed very often the sieges were like this: little girl, made by a handful of men.

The great battles, such as that of Azincourt we see in the film The Kingthey were very rare and took place during major events such as the war of one hundred years, which were the peak of very complex geopolitical situations “. Perhaps the only exaggerated element is the penetration of the walls through the subsidy of wooden stairs. “It is the extreme ratio, when for example you don’t have time and there is no other way to take the strong, because it is very dangerous to climb. Generally the sieges were decidedly more boringalso lasted months and were won by breaking down the enemy’s morality in many ways such as hunger, bombing with trabucchi, etc. All this to force the besieged to the surrender “.

But the most appreciable aspect of Kingdom as Deliverance 2 It is the combat to the white weapon, considered slow and complex, not in a negative way, because the game tries to replicate the sensations of that type of clash. “The title succeeds in this intent both thanks to the excellent sound effects and thanks to the feeling of fatigue Just of the fight: especially at the beginning we pull two or three blows and we are tired, we have to stop. This thing is decidedly realistic compared to other games with a more arcade medieval setting “.

There is a further element that is well stratified in Kingdom as Deliverance 2, that is the equipment. In the game menu we can customize Henry with clothes, weapons and armor, filling some inventory slots, which are really numerous because they reflect the various layers whose armor of the time is composed. “The equipment system reflects a lot of real armor: you cannot put a plate or a crush knit if you have not put under the Gambeson before,” explains Manzini.

“The Gambeson is a sort of jacket made up of many layers of linen and padded with horses, wool etc. Without this you cannot wear a grilled armor above, because it bothers and above all ” – specifies Manzini -” If you do not have the padding below, a sword stroke you feel everything. This padded armor was the real light armor of the Middle Ages “.

Yet in the common imagination it is not like that, probably because this imagination has been spread by American cultural production, which when it deals with the European Middle Ages often flows into fantasy. “If you look at Dungeons & Dragons and other role -playing games we have leather armor, but in the European Middle Ages this does not exist. As we said, the real light reinforcement is the Gambeson and a crossbow, which does not fight in contact, can only have that to protect itself from wandering arrows or similar blows, but in other cases the Gambeson is the base on which the armor of shirt (if you have the money), otherwise the armor of plates (if you have even more money) “

A medieval life simulator

Kingdom as Deliverance 2 is not just war and blood, on the contrary: the merit of having inserted in Warhorse dynamics of everyday lifesince in the game it is essential to feed, sleep, wash and dress adequately. Otherwise, the other characters from the game world, the so -called NPC, will react negatively. And this despite Henry is a man of arms. “The people of that time was very direct and there were no classism that we know in human relationships”. Interesting above all is Personal hygienewhich changes based on where you wash (a wooden tub full of cold water is one thing, a private bathroom with soaps is another).

A dynamic that has opened a reflection on similarities between the fifteenth century and the present day. “At the time it was simply more complicated to wash, not having running water at home, but Homo Sapiens has been so thousands of years. Now we have different knowledge and beliefs, but human nature is that. It is always us, and it doesn’t change much. At the time, like today, there were those who were much more attentive to hygiene as far as possible, and who stink … like today! ” Manzini says. “This discourse of hygiene, to which is added that of the money made before, shows that the late Middle Ages was an era of capitalism and privileges, especially in Italy, and was not different from today”.

It should be remembered that Kingdom as Deliverance 2 is set in Bohemia, where, beyond the main characters of fiction, there are other historians really exist, which could be a pretext to passionate about the events of a region that rarely does Find on local school books, even if According to Manzini, the title of Warhorse is not suitable for the actual study, but more to the genuine curiosity. After all, teaching is not the ambition of such a video game. “I would recommend the title to those who want to approach and get into the world of the early fifteenth century, really well made unlike other games or medieval setting films”.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=e9uea-pmhz0