The 'world' of
#KingdomComeDeliverance is a small patch of Czech countryside in the year 1403, centering around a few villages and towns, a monastery and a castle or two. Moreover, it's a rural backwater, about 50km away from Prague.
t's wrong to say that people didn't move about in the Late Middle Ages. Many people traveled in the 15th century - traders, pilgrims, soldiers, traders, diplomats, nobles, etc. They could walk up to 25 - 30 km a day, far more than us by foot.
machaut.weebly.com/travel-in-the-…
However (and this is a big one), long distance travel was restricted to main routes, dictated by natural resources, landscape and population centres. If you didn't need to be there, you didn't go - the risks were too great. Bandits, wild animals and natural hazards lay in wait.
What does this mean? Away from the routes themselves - even as far as a few kilometres - people largely kept to what they were doing and didn't travel far. There were obligations - farming, trading that meant travel was restricted to short(ish) distances, at regular intervals.
Medieval European travel - heck, travel up to only a few centuries ago - was heavily granulated. A lack of speed and energy required to get people from A to B quickly and efficiently, coupled with poor roads, kept people close to home.
In the game, linger around a tavern long enough and you'll hear two farmers talking in wonderment about a black person that one saw on a rare trip to Prague (I think?). No erasure or abuse here - these guys just never had access to places where travelers from afar congregated.
Now, if we were talking about a game set in Prague, things might be different. In the late medieval period, it was, for a time, centre of the Holy Roman Empire. Odds are, you would come across foreign merchants and people of colour. (Image: Prague, Nuremberg Chronicle, 1493)
However, there's very few reasons for PoC in the form of traders to visit places like Rattay, Uzhitz or Ledetchko, let alone places clustered around an monastery, like Sasau. I'm not saying it never happened, but it would be a huge deal. (Pictured Sasau/Sasava Monastery)
....
Let me just say one more thing though - in the game, I've embarked on quests that seriously look at the issues raised by refugees, portrayed in a sensitive manner. I've tried to talk heretics out of martyrdom and argued passionately about zealotry
...for a game supposedly dripping with 'toxic white male supremacy', the game can be incredibly 'SJW' at times. It's got me to think not only about the world of 1403, but our world, and what I can to leave it a better place.
So, to sum up, I think the
@WarhorseStudios have created something that is accurate, true to the spirit of the time and place, but also an incredibly immersive, thoughtful experience.
