What Kingdom Come: Deliverance Can Teach The Elder Scrolls

It wouldn’t be the usual release of a medieval open world RPG without a comparison to The Elder Scrolls series, so that’s exactly what GameSpot has done with Kingdom Come: Deliverance in this new editorial. The article focuses primarily on a comparison to Oblivion, and in all, they prefer Warhorse’s more hardcore approach to game mechanics. A little something to get you warmed up:

Beds also are arguably Kingdom Come’s most contentious feature, as they also function as the save system. There are no autosaves outside of certain quest moments, and you can only manually save by sleeping in a bed you own or by purchasing expensive bottles of Savior Schnapps. It’s a radically different approach to Oblivion’s save-anywhere-anytime system, and results in two different experiences. In Kingdom Come, saving some poor villager being accosted on the road might not be worth the risk if you die and lose an hour of progress. You’re forced to think about every choice you make and what you end up choosing feels more important because of this. This is rarely the case in Oblivion where you can quickly save and load at any time to retry unlocking a door as many times as you want. Don’t take this as me saying that being able to save at anytime is bad or anything; after all Oblivion doesn’t want you to get stuck or lose hours or progress, it wants you to go on an adventure. Right from the beginning of the game you’re able to go wherever you want and find a fun quest to engage in with no worries about save limitations or not having enough food. Kingdom Come simply prefers a more rigorous approach.

And the advantage of Kingdom Come is that it forces you to live in its world and roleplay. When you’re making a long trek you need to make sure you’ve packed enough food and are well rested. And when it’s starting to get dark and you’re low on energy, there is a sense of relief when you see that inn on the side of the road. In Oblivion, you’d stop at an Inn to fulfill the desire to roleplay or because there’s probably a cool quest to get.