Deliverance 2 Features Mocap Work From A Real Horse

Kingdom Come: Deliverance 2 is here, kickstarting what is going to be a very busy February for new video games. It has started the month with a bang, dropping to a swath of incredibly positive reviews. I can only assume most of those scores would be bumped up even further if the reviewers knew that the game features an actual horse.

PlatigeImage, a studio that specializes in creating 3D imagery and special effects, particularly in video games, shared a short video of some behind-the-scenes shots from Kingdom Come: Deliverance 2 demonstrating how the game came together. The video jumps between in-game footage and the motion capture work that helped create them, and there’s a blink-and-you-‘ll-miss-it moment that shows a horse trotting through the mocap studio.

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Not only is the actor riding the horse kitted out in mocap gear, but the horse itself is too. The horse’s tail is wrapped in blue material and the same small balls that are placed on humans to motion capture their features are placed on various points on the horse’s body. It doesn’t seem to be phased and is doing a terrific job.

Kingdom Come: Deliverance 2 Mocapped A Real Horse

There’s No Substitute For The Real Thing

It’s unclear how much work was required of the mocap horse. The same short video also shows Henry actor Tom McKay sitting atop a dummy horse, so clearly the real thing wasn’t used for every single horseback shot in the game. Probably for the best since between its 2.2 million lines and 200-hour platinum, it would have been bordering on animal cruelty to expect a horse to work that much.

Warhorse isn’t the first studio to bring horses into the mocap studio. Rockstar did the same thing for Red Dead Redemption 2, just one of the reasons that game will be etched in history as one of the best-looking games ever. If Kingdom Come: Deliverance 2 is compared to Rockstar’s cowboy epic in any way, then it’s definitely doing something right.

Platige has promised there will be at least one more behind-the-scenes look at Kingdom Come 2’s mocap work and yes, it will feature more horse footage. Quite a few of you may have experienced the horse’s work first-hand already as the sequel quickly hit 160,000 concurrent players on Steam during its release day.

RPG

Action-Adventure

Open-World

Systems

Released

February 4, 2025

ESRB

Mature 17+ // Use of Alcohol, Blood and Gore, Sexual Content, Strong Language, Intense Violence, Partial Nudity

Developer(s)

Warhorse Studios

Genres