You’re not paranoid—KCD2’s devs gave Henry photo mode voicelines just to stop you abusing it for stealth runs

Kingdom Come: Deliverance 2 is filled with details—little character flourishes that lend the game and its world so much memorability and charm. For instance, the fact that Henry will give you a positive affirmation whenever you pop out of the game’s photo mode: “Nice!” he’ll exclaim, as you snap your umpteenth shot of Mutt. Thanks, Henry. It is nice.

But we were all deceived, because in my recent chat with KCD2 lead designer (and now one of Warhorse’s two creative directors) Prokop Jirsa, he revealed that Henry doesn’t just gab to nurture your inner Ansell Adams. He does it to stop you cheating.

“In KCD2, we improved our photo mode, and there was a big discussion, because we didn’t want people to cheat with the photo mode! Because, for example, in a stealth mission, you could start photo mode and look around corners and everything.”

You might see where this is going. “So what we did is that, when you end the photo mode, Henry will comment about how nice the picture was. So he’ll say ‘Oh! What a nice view!’ But this is actually heard in the game, so the guards will hear you.”

And, yes, Jirsa and co were absolutely aware of just the kind of trouble this would land you in when they implemented it. “I still think it’s quite a clever way to solve the cheating issue, but we also knew that it would create these weird, ‘what the fuck’ moments that are funny and shareable, and that work in our community.” In fact, notes Jirsa, Henry’s famous battlecry was another example of that: “The ‘I’m quite hungry’ battlecry was exactly this. We knew it’s just insane, but yeah, we’re playful like this.”

These kinds of systems and their sometimes-absurd outcomes are very much part of Warhorse’s philosophy, the way Jirsa tells it, and even the funnier bugs are somewhat beloved—”We always try to fix everything and polish everything, ’cause we always knew that those weird little bugs and interactions would stay in the game… [and] we intentionally made some systems that we knew would create weird situations.” That’s just the old KCD charm, after all.

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