Personal issues with main story / Illusion of choice / consistency [SPOILERS]

[Locket Rauncher]

Spoiler Warning: This post contains story spoilers for Kingdom Come: Deliverance 2. Read at your own risk!

Hey everyone,

I've been enjoying Kingdom Come: Deliverance 2, but I wanted to discuss a few issues that have been bothering me regarding player agency, story consistency, and certain design choices.

1. The Illusion of Choice & Morality Imposition
One thing that stands out is how the game still subtly pushes certain morals onto the player, despite presenting itself as a game of choice. A clear example is when von Bergow captures a bandit from the ambush. His men refuse to torture him due to superstition, leaving Henry the choice. However, when Hans asks Henry what he thinks about it, you’re only given two responses:

"I don’t like torturing."

"We have to do it."

There’s no option to fully embrace a more ruthless or "evil" perspective. It feels like the game wants to keep Henry on a morally gray but ultimately redeemable path, rather than allowing full freedom in roleplaying.

2. Forced Captures in the Main Story
Another issue is how often you’re captured in the main story, with no real way to avoid it. No matter how cautious or prepared you are, these scripted events happen regardless of your choices. This takes away a sense of agency—if the game wants Henry to be captured, it happens, even if your decisions or playstyle should logically prevent it.

3. Handgun Inconsistencies
Lastly, there’s some inconsistency in how early firearms are portrayed. When Zhisska and his men ambush you with handguns, the explosions and smoke send everyone into a panic, highlighting their psychological impact. However, later when you ambush the convoy with the Dry Devil and Zhisska uses the same handguns, the soldiers barely react at all. If these weapons are so terrifying and cause confusion in one scenario, specifically as a cheap plot device when it suits the enemy, why do they have zero effect in another, specifically when it would help out the player?


I’d love to hear what you think about these issues. Keep in mind I am not all the way through the story, so I might come back later and add a few more things here.

[EMT-Fields]

I agree. I understand Henry is suppose to be a set character. But I would have loved to be able to morph his personality more than what we get sometimes. I hate to say it, but the torture part you're talking about. Made it feel like Dragon Age The Vailguard. It's like sometimes they just want to force you to play the nice guy, and I am so annoyed at that.

[CountCapacollo]

Originally posted by EMT-Fields:

I agree. I understand Henry is suppose to be a set character. But I would have loved to be able to morph his personality more than what we get sometimes. I hate to say it, but the torture part you're talking about. Made it feel like Dragon Age The Vailguard. It's like sometimes they just want to force you to play the nice guy, and I am so annoyed at that.

No thanks I like henry

[Locket Rauncher]

Originally posted by EMT-Fields:

I agree. I understand Henry is suppose to be a set character. But I would have loved to be able to morph his personality more than what we get sometimes. I hate to say it, but the torture part you're talking about. Made it feel like Dragon Age The Vailguard. It's like sometimes they just want to force you to play the nice guy, and I am so annoyed at that.

Yes it pisses me off massively. You can go around in the whole game world and just randomly stab an innocent person to death and rob them to the udnerwear, but torturing some bandit that slaughtered all of your friends and tried to kill you?

Nuh uh , tzk tzk thats very very evil, and you can't say that you dont give a f about torturing him or "fck yeah lets torture this mf'er until he spits it out"

[EMT-Fields]

Originally posted by ybgbgl:

No thanks I like henry

Okay you can still like Henry. But the player should be given more choices to have his personality fit the player's playstyle. I like Henry, I just him more when he's threatening people.

[Locket Rauncher]

Originally posted by EMT-Fields:

Originally posted by ybgbgl:

No thanks I like henry

Okay you can still like Henry. But the player should be given more choices to have his personality fit the player's playstyle. I like Henry, I just him more when he's threatening people.

Same, I wan't to play henry as person who doesn't give a f about morality and will cut you down if you try to f with him or make him do fetch work, for the most part the game gives you a lot of choice to tell people that they will regret it if they get on your wrong side, but that specific instance where Hans asks you what you think about torture really feels like the dev's not having the balls / trying to forcefully impose morality on the player and not allow you to play him as an "evil" person

[EMT-Fields]

Originally posted by Locket Rauncher:

Same, I wan't to play henry as person who doesn't give a f about morality and will cut you down if you try to f with him or make him do fetch work, for the most part the game gives you a lot of choice to tell people that they will regret it if they get on your wrong side, but that specific instance where Hans asks you what you think about torture really feels like the dev's not having the balls / trying to forcefully impose morality on the player and not allow you to play him as an "evil" person

True, this is why BG3 resonated with me so much. The fact Larian gave the player the choice to be the bad guy in the end was unheard of. Like I get Henry is his own person, but as an RPG the player should have more agency surrounding his personality at the very least.

[Locket Rauncher]

Originally posted by EMT-Fields:

Originally posted by Locket Rauncher:

Same, I wan't to play henry as person who doesn't give a f about morality and will cut you down if you try to f with him or make him do fetch work, for the most part the game gives you a lot of choice to tell people that they will regret it if they get on your wrong side, but that specific instance where Hans asks you what you think about torture really feels like the dev's not having the balls / trying to forcefully impose morality on the player and not allow you to play him as an "evil" person

True, this is why BG3 resonated with me so much. The fact Larian gave the player the choice to be the bad guy in the end was unheard of. Like I get Henry is his own person, but as an RPG the player should have more agency surrounding his personality at the very least.

I mean as I said before, you can be the most vile murderer / grave robber in this game that will stab a widow in some dark back alley for a few groschen, but in that situation you are NOT given a real choice, I don't understand, what do these people smoke?

[Tom Bombathrill]

Originally posted by Locket Rauncher:

Originally posted by EMT-Fields:

True, this is why BG3 resonated with me so much. The fact Larian gave the player the choice to be the bad guy in the end was unheard of. Like I get Henry is his own person, but as an RPG the player should have more agency surrounding his personality at the very least.

I mean as I said before, you can be the most vile murderer / grave robber in this game that will stab a widow in some dark back alley for a few groschen, but in that situation you are NOT given a real choice, I don't understand, what do these people smoke?

I think you're referring to the illusion of choice. Freedom when it's inconsequential but restrictions on the important bits lest you miss the developers curated experience for you.

[Locket Rauncher]

Originally posted by Tom Bombathrill:

Originally posted by Locket Rauncher:

I mean as I said before, you can be the most vile murderer / grave robber in this game that will stab a widow in some dark back alley for a few groschen, but in that situation you are NOT given a real choice, I don't understand, what do these people smoke?

I think you're referring to the illusion of choice. Freedom when it's inconsequential but restrictions on the important bits lest you miss the developers curated experience for you.

Well except for it would not make a difference at all to the outcome of the situation if you were just able to say something along the lines of: Yeah let's torture this vile bandit until he spits it out" and let the player decide what Henry thinks about torture instead of trying to impose modern morality in a medival scenario where something like this was perfectly normal to do to captives to get information

[Private Hidehead]

I 100% agree with the illusion of choice in terms of moral decisions so far in the game and I also agree that it is nonsense that it has been done like this, well almost. I can see a couple reasons as to why you might still wanna do this especially in such a "realistic" simulation type game in terms of how chars behave toward you etc. etc.

But I mean... I have to feel bad about torturing someone but I got for example information from a certain character that I had to meet as part of a story mission and he wanted me to pay him as I failed all skillchecks. He wanted to rip me off entirely by having to pay him 500 gold. For some intel. Ridiculous. I paid it. Then I snuck up on him and stealth killed him and took my money back out of his pocket.

So you do have the choice to do morally very qeustionable things all throughout the world as you said which makes it very immersion breaking that I act like a good guy in situations like the torture one.

---

Technically in the game I am a serial thief and a serial murderer at this point lol.
I killed a lot of innocent people that I didn't like and I robbed a lot of people.

The game warns you about that characters will still deduce that you are the one who stole things but that only happened to me once yet and that was when I was outright wearing stolen armorset in the very castle I stole it from lmao.