Kingdom Come Deliverance II is on the roster for Game of the Year at the 2025 Game Awards hosted by Geoff Keighley, and recently, BAFTA posted a documentary on Youtube covering the developer Warhorse Studio’s thoughts on the game’s production and success. The game’s predecessor did well, but the sequel garnered far more attention and success, selling over a million copies on the day of its release, and of course getting the GOTY nomination. Warhorse’s medieval take on the open-world RPG can likely attribute much of its fame to its unique premise; a historically grounded, immersive, and sometimes painfully realistic experience that left players awe-struck and hungry for more. According to the developers in the BAFTA documentary, this is an aspect of the game they really wanted to replicate in the sequel. Lead Designer Prokop Jirsa states:

…It’s the immersion. And that’s a word many developers use, and I think it’s used too lightly… because when we say that we really mean it… we want you to feel like everything makes sense in the world.

As the Game Awards inch closer, reflexive moments like these from developers are important to listen to–they provide the “why” for what makes a game worthy of those lofty accolades. For the developers at Warhorse, at least in the documentary, they expressed an uncompromising dedication to create a living, breathing world that does not necessarily concern itself with the player, but rather gives them a playground to “entertain” themselves in. And a big part of that is the attention paid to the story and the characters within it. There’s a focus placed on the performance put on by Tom McKay, the voice and motion talent of KCD’s protagonist, who throughout the documentary, emphasizes the intensive creative process undertaken to deliver a genuine experience for players. McKay attributes a lot of the game’s success to its fans of this kind of storytelling, claiming:

…this game particularly is blessed with the most extraordinary kind of energetic, passionate, and funny army of fans… [they share] an intelligence and a kind of curiosity about history… In fact, it’s incredibly unique to us… 

In an era where fan opinion is indeed make or break for even the largest titles–like the backlash Black Ops 7 is facing–the relationship Warhorse has fostered with its community “defines” their company according to CEO Martin Fryvaldsky. Although this is something that a lot of developers would likely claim, and indeed a lot of the current Game of the Year nominees are community driven, but especially in the context of a sequel, Warhorse’s focus on immersion and community made it clear that Kingdom Come Deliverance 2 would do well this year.