Kingdom Come: Deliverance Review - 5 Ups & 5 Downs

6. Up: Rote Quest Design, But With Great Open-Ended Experimentation

What good is a set of mechanics and an RPG in general, without a great set of quests to pin them too?

In Kingdom Come's case, sadly, it somewhat drops the ball in terms of what you're structurally being asked to do - which is another way of saying, this can turn into "Fetch Quest: The Game" more often than not.

Thankfully, then, KCD somewhat remedies this by having a completely open-ended, causal system of goal completion. Say you're tasked with getting out of a certain keep: You could use lockpicks to steal a uniform, bypassing the patrols as one of their own. Alternately, pass time by sleeping or waiting, and slip out across the drawbridge as its being lowered.

I had a great moment where, instead of heeding the quest marker and reporting for duty after discovering an attack, I actively hunted down those responsible, only to return home with the option to say, "It's already taken care of" to my commanding officer. The sheer amount of dialogue options Warhorse have recorded appear to cater to a staggering array of possibilities, letting you apply a real-world thought process to many situations, only to realise the developers knew you would do so in the first place.