Kuttenberg: A Medieval Metropolis
Kingdom Come: Deliverance 2 provides an expansive slice of rural life for players to explore, but it’s inside the city of Kuttenberg that politics, power and profit combine in ways that influence every life in 15th Century Bohemia.
“Kuttenberg is where the coin is minted,” explains Ondřej Bittner, senior game designer at Warhorse. “And where the coin is minted, the power lies. We wanted a big set piece location and this was the natural choice.”
Time may have eroded the fine detail, but the real city of Kuttenberg [now Kutná Hora] still retains much of its medieval ancestry through its architecture and layout. These broader strokes of preservation have allowed the team to draw a direct line from the modern world, back towards Henry’s history - and gain a real understanding of the physical space they’re operating in.
When asked to describe the biggest challenge of crafting a faithful recreation of the city, it’s the sheer scope of this physical space that Bittner cites. Step foot inside Kuttenberg and you’ll cross the threshold of a freely explorable city space some ten times larger than the most directly comparable region of the first game, Rattay.
As well as the size of this undertaking though, the team must also wrestle with the misconceptions many of us have about medieval city life, based largely on crude depictions from Hollywood.
“It’s not how people think a medieval city should look,” explains Bittner. “They immediately think about crooked small streets, dark alleys - everything being very compressed.
“Kuttenberg has avenues with almost wide streets and city blocks - it’s not like a maze! It really feels like a big city, and it’s a similar layout to what we have in most European cities nowadays.”
In the time of KCD 2’s story, the layout of a city would have emerged organically from a sense of practicality. Businesses would congregate to ensure an efficient flow of related commerce, while citizens relied on these commercial clusters to navigate and coordinate gatherings.
“Most medieval cities in Central Europe were organised around markets,” says Bittner. “They usually carried the name of the market, and so there’s a coal market, a beef market, a fruit market and so on. Many of Prague’s streets and squares still carry these names today.
“Often, specific crafts existed in a particular street too, so there was a butcher street, a cobbler street, a tailor street and so on. We borrowed that to make it how it really was in Kuttenberg.”
Commerce thrived here just as it does in every major city, but in the medieval world power and wealth had a far more complex relationship than the one we’re all familiar with today. It all makes for a unique and potent sandbox for the narrative team to play in, as Bittner explains.
“This is a time where some people are getting very rich, while the nobility are getting poor because of the feudal law that says you have to split your land between your multiple sons and daughters. All of that diminishes your wealth over time.”
“And so there’s a struggle where there are people who have money, but they don’t get any special treatment because they’re just ordinary people. Meanwhile the nobility is poor, but they act as though they are worthier and are the important ones.”
The more prosperous medieval citizens were keen to flaunt their wealth and success by contributing to the construction of churches and cathedrals too. This form of self-serving philanthropy influenced the architecture of Kuttenberg greatly, imbuing the city with even more historical detail.
Bittner is keen to stress, however, that there are more important centrepieces to focus on when it comes to Kuttenberg. “The biggest is the Italian Court, which is the mint of the money,“ he explains.
“That’s not just the centre of the city, it’s the centre of the whole empire. It’s also the seat of the king if he’s in the city. I think that’s even more interesting! Cathedrals are great, don’t get me wrong, but they’re in every city. This is a unique thing that only Kuttenberg has.”
Something else Kuttenberg has is secrets, and there are plenty of these for inquisitive adventurers to discover below ground. The key to this underground opportunity lies in the origins of Kuttenberg.
“The silver mining actually started in the city,” explains Bittner. “The whole city has underground panels and mine shafts that the player can use to traverse the city and sneak around in. There’s also an ossuary near the city - a place you put bones in. Even today it’s a very popular tourist attraction!”
Taken altogether then, Kuttenberg is a grand undertaking that challenges misconceptions about this period of history, while providing a unique opportunity to explore power dynamics that rarely get an outing in modern storytelling.
Kingdom Come: Deliverance II arrives 4 February 2025 on PC, Xbox Series X|S and PlayStation 5.
https://store.steampowered.com/app/1771300/Kingdom_Come_Deliverance_II/
