After sinking nearly 90 hours into Kingdom Come: Deliverance and finally reaching the end and completing the majority of the side quests, I was left with more questions than answers. The ending felt more like something you could expect from 2-part episode of your favorite TV show instead of the end of a video game.
However, it was planned this way all along. Or, at least for the past year or so.
In a thread on Reddit from last year, the official US community manager for Warhorse Studios (Rick5292) replied to an inquiry about the original act-based setup for KC:D. Originally, it was planned to have 3 separate acts that ultimately tell Henry’s story; but that idea was axed after Warhorse Studios realized that what they were building was going to be much larger than just Act 1, so they made Deliverance consist of both acts 1 and 2 with act 3 coming later on as a sequel.
Spoilers below!!
So, the ending in Deliverance isn’t technically the ending. In fact, it might just be the beginning considering the entire sequal will be telling the events of act 3. What will happen during act 3 is up for debate at this stage, but I’m going to assume you’ll be getting your sword back at the very least and probably running into Markvart Von Auliz. Two things that do not happen in acts 1 or 2.
Cliche plot twist, anyone?
Personally, I really disliked the ending of Deliverance. The final battle for Talmberg was way too easy and it was over before I even realized it had started; I mean, aside from the 5-6 fetch quests you’re given leading up to it. Once the battle (siege?) is over, you ride to Skalitz to pick up Lord Radzig who had been held captive in Talmberg, enjoy a nice 2-person ride on a horse (Templar style) and then the credits roll.
From there, the epilogue starts and now it’s a matter of taking a short ride with Lord Capon to the camp where you get the end-game loot north-east of Neuhof (I’m sure everyone knows of it by now) and that’s pretty much that. There’s a short cutscene after you reach the camp and then you ride off into the sunset at which point the game is over.
Don’t get me wrong, I really enjoyed Kingdom Come: Deliverance, but that ending was pretty terrible. The last couple of cutscenes end up giving you way more questions than answers and sets up what should be act 3, but it’s done in such a way that the ending of Deliverance feels like a bit of a rip-off. At the very least, it felt extremely rushed.
In any event, now I’m stoked for the sequel and I’m itching to finish Henry’s story. I just hope that happens sooner than later!
What are your thoughts on the ending of Kingdom Come: Deliverance? Do you feel it could have been done differently and made to be a little more satisfying? Let me know in the comments!
In my opinion, the ending is horribly misunderstood, and that’s why almost everyone thinks it’s terrible. And while it’s by no meas perfect, people give way too little thought to the real purpose of the story and the way the ending challenges the industry norms actually in a fairly clever way. Just because an ending is not satisfying doesn’t mean it’s bad.
Now, let’s talk about these “industry norms” first. Gamers have basically been indoctrinated to think that quests are made to be completed in RPG’s. If something is in your quest log, it has to be completed because why would it otherwise be there, right? Yeah, that’s how it usually works. But we never really stop to think about the in-world reason the quests are in the log. Often it’s pretty straightforward, some authority figure tells you to do a thing, maybe for a reward, or because they are your liege lord and just order you to do it. But what authority actually tells Henry to get the sword back and revenge Markvart von Aulitz? Radzig doesn’t tell him to do those things, nor does Hanush or Divish. No, there is no quest giver in this case, these are nothing more than Henry’s ambitions. At the start, with the knowledge Henry has (not knowing that he’s important to Radzig by default, for example), these goals are absurdly unrealistic to achieve, and he’s a big fool for even considering that he’d be achieving them. It’s a miracle he ever gets as close to the sword as he does. It should be perfectly acceptable that he doesn’t achieve the goals, but because we are used to quests in RPG’s being always completable, we feel disappointed with the ending. I did too at first before thinking about it a bit more.
But what is the real purpose of the story, then? It most certainly is not the sword and revenge, those are just red herrings. Well they are a bit more than that, they are what Henry thinks is the purpose, and what drives him forward, but they are really just a way for him to process the real issue: loss and grief. Henry lost his parents in the beginning and as a direct result of that, decides that he has to get the sword back and get revenge. Maybe he subconcsiously thinks achieving these goals will give him peace of mind regarding the events of the prologue. But in reality he just needs to process what happened, come to terms with it. In the end in his dream, he literally delivers (in the archaic “deliver us” meaning of the word) his parents to Kingdom Come. I certainly don’t think this closure is perfect in how warranted it is, but it’s not entirely out of nowhere and makes for a decent real thematic conclusion for the story.
To some I may sound like that English teacher that is trying to pull hidden meaning out of their ass just for the sake of it, but it didn’t really take much thinking to come to this conclusion and it all really is there when you just look. The ending is not the best one in the world by any stretch, but it’s nearly not as bad as most people make it out to be just because they didn’t understand it.
Worst ending of any game I’ve ever played. Seriously disappointed.
Yea i just finished it and Im extremely disappointed. It ruins the game for me. Companies should make a game and not a business strategy.
The ending was ok I guess. I expected more. I could tell the were leading to a sequel tho. Just takes a little common sense to see that coming. I can’t help but feel a little bit ripped off tho. Let’s just hope that they’ve learned much MUCH MUCH better programming skills ! That has always been my biggest issue with the game. Throughout most of the game I keep thinking that these guys really need to stop drinking so much while trying to make a game !
I mean, even the vanilla version of Oblivion was better ! I sincerely hope that they do much better I the future. Cuz it’s kinda nice to play a game once in a while that doesn’t have cliche zombies everywhere or everything all dark and horror. Everybody foes all that to death. I think these guys need to ask the folks that made “Uncharted 4” for help with getting the game right.
I feel trolled. The whole point of that story was to get the damn sword back and use it to kill the whoreson who murdered your mother. And at the end it’s like you know what, you got enough content, story ends here, go f*ck yourself.
9/10 game with a 1/10 ending :/
The sword is just a fake goal. Nobody tells Henry to get it back but he himself, and it is kind of an absurd goal for a weak little peasant when you look at it objectively. The real purpose is for Henry to come to terms with what happened in Skalitz. The sword can wait for the sequel.
I struggled to stay awake through the horrible last third of the game. If I missed something it may have been due to passing out from boredom.
Yeah at the end of the Fellowship of the Ring they should have thrown the ring in mount Doom to say KCD ending suck is rather foolish and to see the emotion you felt just tells me that they got you invested in the story and to see the conclusion
In all fairness, LoTR is a well-established story and I don’t think anyone is surprised or let down by how the trilogy is broken up, whether you’re talking about the movies or the books. KCD, on the other hand, had arguably one of the worst endings I’ve ever experienced in a game – and there aren’t many games I haven’t played. You run through about 5 fetch quests, take part in a 5 minute battle vs around 10 enemies, then you take a 3-minute ride on a horse before watching a 10-minute cutscene where a new character is introduced, and then the credits roll.
Again, it’s not like the rest of KCD sucks, because it definitely doesn’t – that’s a huge part of why the ending felt like such a rip-off. In comparison to pretty much every other questline, especially those like Godwin’s, the final quest and ending felt extremely rushed/uninspired.
You have misunderstood the ending just as much as most other people did. Thinking that the sword was the main point in the first place means that you didn’t really think about what the whole game was about. The sword is just an object that Henry obsesses about for reasons more important than just wanting to get it back.
And that description of yours of the ending is just really inaccurate. First of all, the Jobst cuscene is not even a part of the ending, it’s epilogue, and the real ending ends after Henry’s dream. But yeah, I find the Jobst part weird and clumsy as well. If we agree that the end starts where the fetch quests starts, there is actually a lot of stuff, and it’s kinda prepostorous to call it rushed. There’s the whole ordeal with Konrad Kyeser. There are the fetch quests which by the way are optional, though I do agree that having them is not the best desing choice. There are three battles, two of them having way more than 10 enemies, but there you are right, the battles do not really give off a sense of grandeur. There’s interrogating Erik, and the related negotiations. There are the weird parts where you have to wait for a couple of days because of realism. After the final battle, there are a bunch on pretty important cutscenes, and disregarding those makes it seem like you didn’t even want to understand what the whole game was all about.
Describing this ending as “5 fetch quest, a battle, a horse ride, and a cutscene with a new character” makes me think that you also describe Witcher 3 ending as “open a portal, fight the boss, take a hike up the mountain to meet Ciri, and get one of the ending cutscenes”.