“Shh, my sweet carpenter,” I imagine Henry whispering, his bulging forearms wrapped around the throat of a craftsman whose only crime was not selling me someone else’s lute. He tries to elbow me and break out, but it’s no use. This isn’t my first rodeo. I’m terrible at stealth in Kingdom Come: Deliverance 2, so my go-to approach to theft – yes, I’m stealing that bloody lute – is to simply choke out anyone who might spot me, then blow through their home with the subtlety of a pilching tornado and leave before they wake up.
Unfortunately, that approach isn’t exactly ironclad. A few minutes after fleeing the starting town of Troskowitz, lute safely stashed in my inventory, a notification warns me that guards have put two and two together and know what I’ve done. I’m now wanted in Troskowitz, but that doesn’t mean too much to me. I’m already far away, and I’ve got what I wanted. Besides, how much can one lute be worth?
The gang gets branded
Some context: during my earlier travels, I met a pair of bards who wanted to immortalize Henry with a ballad. The only catch, as you may already have guessed, is that they didn’t have a lute. Not to worry – they know the carpenter in Troskowitz has one hanging on the wall of his workshop, though the owner who commissioned its repair never came to collect it. That, according to 15th century RPG custom, makes it free real estate. I treat it as such – you already know what happens next – and by the time it’s safely in the hands of my new bard friends, I’ve already forgotten the cold reception that’s waiting for me in Troskowitz.
Unfortunately, the townspeople of Troskowitz have a better memory. Crime and punishment in Kingdom Come: Deliverance 2 is an intricate system, and avoiding the consequences of your actions is easier said than done. Bohemia has several tiers of sentencing, depending on how badly you’ve flouted its laws. Steal a few things, and you’ll have to pay a fine and spend a few days being pelted with rotten fruit and veg in the village stocks. Break the law too soon after your first punishment – or commit more serious offences – and you’ll be branded, permanently marking you as a criminal. Besides the wound itself being a pain to deal with, the brand forever impacts how everyone treats you going forward. Really screw up, though, and you’ll be executed – and there’s, er, no coming back from that.
When I trot back through Troskowitz a few hours later, none of this is on my mind. I’m here to pass the night before going to work for the local gravedigger at dawn, and also stock up on a few healing potions. But as I leave the apothecary, a guard waits at the door to confront me. A few things have gone missing and they know I did it, which is fair. What’s not fair is the 200 groschen fine I’m expected to pay for something I didn’t even keep – don’t they understand how quest objectives work? I’ll admit, I was following the rules of every RPG since the beginning of time: that guards have the collective memory of a single overworked goldfish, and leaving the scene of the crime for some time would resolve things. I still believed that when, indignant at the prospect of shelling out almost all of my money, I decided instead to bowl through the guard and flee – after all, the gravedigger had been very specific about me being there at dawn.
After running away from my problems, I stuck to my theory that time was the best medicine. I stayed away from Troskowitz for another day, kept busy with helping the gravedigger, and generally tried to keep Henry out of trouble. For several more days, I tried to keep my interactions with the town to a minimum. I’d either circle right past it or careen straight through on my trusty steed Pebbles, ignoring the cries of guards who tried to apprehend me (which they tried several times).
Eventually, though, my life of crime became too awkward to work around. One main quest had multiple objectives in Troskowitz, and when I tried to sneak in on foot to complete them, I was chased out by its ever-vigilant guards. Having made a little more money since the initial crime, it was time to face up to the music – so, sword in scabbard, I strolled right in and surrendered. Except there was one small catch: presumably because of all the running-away I’d done, my fine now stood a little over 2000 groschen – a sincerely unfathomable sum. If I couldn’t pay up, they were going to brand me. I tried to sweet-talk my way out, to no avail. I owned up to the fact that I didn’t have that sort of money, to no sympathy. Nothing worked – and given there was no way I would let Henry be branded so early in the game, there was only one option left. I fled, knocking out my would-be captor with a nasty uppercut and making a quick exit on Pebbles.
As it stands, I’m staying away from Troskowitz for real this time. My plan is to scrounge and save from honest work in the countryside until I have enough to pay off the fine. At first, having a major town off-limits was a nightmare – I still can’t tick off that main quest, and Troskowitz is a very handy hub. Now, I’m quietly enjoying the ways Kingdom Come: Deliverance 2 is forcing me to reckon with the consequences of my actions.
My outlaw life is the most immersed I’ve been in an RPG in a long time, and I relish having to get inventive when it comes to making money. Does it count as graverobbing if you only took what the real graverobbers, all inexplicably stabbed to death, had already dug up? Kingdom Come: Deliverance 2’s world is too big to bend into shape – and by trying to do so in the main character-esque way you’d approach most RPGs, you’ll only twist yourself up. For now, I’ll continue to scrape enough coin together to buy forgiveness. If I’d really learned anything, I’d march back into Troskowitz and accept the real consequences – a big sizzling Crime Barcode – of my deeds. But stolen lute be damned, I won’t be paying for my crimes just yet