Exploring the game's cities and forests is easily the best part of the experience, though the glaring level of pop-in is a distraction. Kingdom Come Deliverance delivers many wonderful high points in its open-world design, but this is sullied by plenty of rough edges. Equally, low resolution assets show up across the game on the whole, if you stop to look too closely. A real issue with the console releases is the presence of low resolution art in some cases - a problem that manifests right away on the title screen, just as it did on the notorious CryEngine-powered Lichdom Battlemage. There's a decent degree of cross-platform conformity here: texture resolution is identical, as is shadow quality, and motion blur sampling. Visually speaking, the situation is straightforward on console, where both base and enhanced PlayStation 4 and Xbox One consoles share similar strengths and weaknesses. So does Kingdom Come Deliverance suffer from similar pitfalls at launch, or does the 22GB day one patch ensure that all platforms get a smooth ride? Thankfully Dambuster Studios improved the game immeasurable since then and we definitely recommend it, especially on PS4 Pro and Xbox One X. After all, Homefront The Revolution clearly had issues at launch, with a similarly open world design often delivering frame-rates under 20fps. It's a topic Eurogamer will address in its review, but the focus for this Digital Foundry piece is its technology and performance.Ĭhoosing CryEngine for this title speaks to the level of ambition behind what is essentially an indie launch, especially as even seasoned developers have struggled to get optimal results from this technology. It would be remiss of us not point out the controversy surrounding this title based on the attitudes of Daniel Vávra, the lead developer, whose views speak for themselves in both his social media and this Kotaku interview - aspects of which are reflected in the game content, and may give pause in considering it for purchase. Dragons and magic are out, and the focus here is on a brutal power struggle in the Kingdom of Bohemia. The big difference next to a game like Skyrim though, is the swapping out of fantasy elements for a more historical setting. From beautiful, dense woodlands to idyllic early 15th century European villages, there's a grounded, almost photorealistic look to the world in many areas. What if the Elder Scrolls formula were transplanted across to a real-world location, steeped in history? And what if Skyrim's less than state-of-the-art technological underpinnings were replaced with one of the most powerful game engines on the market?Īs the debut project from Czech developer Warhorse Studios, this ambitious, crowdfunded RPG uses the CryEngine technology - as seen in the likes of Ryse, Prey and Homefront the Revolution - but with a Skyrim-style canvas of terrain to explore. Conceptually, Kingdom Come Deliverance is an intriguing proposition.

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