Kingdom Come Deliverance 2 doesn’t have kids because Warhorse Studios was worried players would kill them, and Skyrim’s children proved them right years ago

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In philosophical discussions, there are differing opinions about the nature of innocence in children and their moral standing – a view that St. Augustine expresses skeptically in his spiritual memoir Confessions by saying, “An infant’s purity stems from physical weakness rather than intellectual capacity,” based on an observation of a baby showing signs of jealousy over another’s milk-drinking. In contrast, the upcoming 2025 action RPG Kingdom Come Deliverance 2 chooses to forego such debates and simply omits all references to children from the game, presumably to prevent players from accidentally harming too many of them.

If you find that perspective rather pessimistic, allow me to point out an interesting example: Players of Skyrim eagerly install mods enabling them to “eliminate” child characters, all in a bid to target some of the game’s most irritating Non-Player Characters with arrows.

As a dedicated fan, I can’t help but point out an intriguing YouTube clip that showcases creative uses of mods in Skyrim. This particular mod apparently empowers lackluster game guardians to carry out medieval-style discipline on virtual children. Remarkably, one comment with over 2,000 upvotes reads, “This might just be the most gratifying video I’ve ever seen online.

It’s reasonable that Warhorse Studios anticipated their players could become ruthless NPC killers, as Martin Klíma, the studio’s executive producer, revealed at the recent Prague Comic-Con, according to CzechCrunch.

At the gathering, Klíma shared that Warhorse initially intended to incorporate children into their historical fiction game for authenticity and visual variety. However, they became concerned about a similar issue arising as seen in Skyrim players, namely excessive violence towards bald infant NPCs.

In the end, Warhorse found themselves having a common discussion that serious individuals often have when considering a significant move, and they concluded that raising children was more trouble than it was worth. The developer had no desire to view Twitch clips depicting tragic scenes of child casualties or to deal with negative publicity.

In the second installment of Kingdom Come: Deliverance, one encounters an abundance of adult NPCs who are preoccupied with their livestock and ale. One might expect such a manufactured, youth-free environment to be dull, but surprisingly, it’s not all that unpleasant. After all, things could always be worse – you could be struck by lightning, or in this case, smitten by divine intervention.

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2025-04-19 00:13