How Kingdom Come: Deliverance 2 Was Transformed Into a Festival Feature Film

If you’ve put down your controller this year to go touch a very particular patch of grass, you might have noticed that something strange is going on at the world’s major film festivals. It started in May, when a film adaptation of virally-successful Japanese indie game Exit 8 premiered at the prestigious Cannes Film Festival – the first videogame movie to do so. The film’s director, Genki Kawamura, gives his source material a compelling structural spin, appealing equally to the arthouse crowd and to game fans. But live-action adaptations of video games are, of course, nothing new.
That’s why Kingdom Come: Deliverance 2 Cinematic Cut is so interesting. It is not a live-action adaptation of developer Warhorse Studios’ critically-acclaimed RPG. Instead, it is an abridged and reformatted version of Act One of the game itself, presenting a newly-edited blend of the open-world game’s cutscenes and gameplay in a two-hour linear form. It was perhaps the strangest Special Presentation at this month’s Karlovy Vary International Film Festival in the Czech Republic – a unique cross-format experiment. One that wasn’t Warhorse’s idea.
“It all happened at the official launch of Kingdom Come: Deliverance 2,” explains KVIFF artistic director, Karel Och. “The first contact was made through a mutual friend, and Warhorse and KVIFF made each other understand that they wanted to collaborate at some point. During the following months, it was exciting to have a glimpse of what Warhorse represents – and I dare to say the same goes for our friends from the top of the gaming business.”
Warhorse’s communications director, Tobias Stolz-Zwilling, concurs. “They wanted to make the festival more modern and interesting – to offer something new”. The largest film festival in Eastern Europe, KVIFF attracts a younger, more adventurous audience than its contemporaries. The studio saw the film festival’s strange idea as a chance to give video games greater cultural relevancy in the broader mainstream. Besides – much of the game’s cinematics team were already speaking the festival’s language.
Kingdom Come: Deliverance 2’s cinematic director, Petr Pekař, studied film editing and directing with the intention of becoming a traditional filmmaker, but he found his calling in video games. “There are a lot of filmmakers in the Czech Republic, but the market is not that big, so it's a bit overcrowded.” says Pekař. “Thankfully, there are multiple studios creating cutscenes, which are basically animated movies”. Pekar learned on the job creating cutscenes for Mafia 3, then joined Warhorse – first as a cinematic designer on the original Kingdom Come, then as director on its sequel.
Bringing Deliverance 2’s cutscenes to the big screen invites comparison with conventional cinema, an arena far from the cinematics’ original purpose. “If you're a player, you’re mainly looking forward to playing the game,” says Pekař. “The cutscenes are more like dessert for the game – not necessary – but when it's good and it clicks, it really helps the game, the story, and the overall feel”.
The Cinematic Cut opens, naturally, on the game’s first cutscene. As it happens, you can’t help but feel like you’re settling in for a YouTube video titled ‘Kingdom Come: Deliverance 2 – All Cutscenes’ (“I don’t think anybody actually watches those in full” Pekař quips). The team’s cinematic direction is confident, but familiar – steeped in high fantasy tropes. A fiery siege on the castle is highly reminiscent of Peter Jackson’s The Lord of the Rings trilogy – a major influence on Warhorse’s stylistic approach. Transported to the cinema screen, the scene serves as a striking reminder of how video games have traded in pastiche since their inception, responding to our desire to live out the fantasy ourselves whenever we see something cool on screen. But, of course, Cinematic Cut doesn’t deliver on this pivotal fantasy like its source material does – it’s non-playable.
When the cutscene footage ends, something curious happens. Father Godwin readies his crossbow and the scene transitions into first-person. But this is no Let’s Play. Smart, quick cuts establish a new, more cinematic editing language for first-person gameplay. Godwin heads towards the stairs – cut – now he’s halfway up them – cut – now he’s atop the ramparts, plunging his sword into an enemy. It’s remarkably thrilling. “[The gameplay] was mostly recorded by Vítek Mičke, our marketing specialist,” explains Pekař. “He also made the trailers, and he's got a good sense of timing and aesthetics. He knows how to control the camera with the controller to properly set the scene and set the mood – so it looks cool.”
A couple of awkward transitions disrupt this otherwise ‘cinematic’ tempo. A sudden cut to a ladder lowering, for example, has the distinct feel of a gameplay segment ending and a cutscene beginning, and reminds you of the objective-based game that birthed the footage. But these moments are few and far between, and they accentuate how much Warhorse has otherwise succeeded in their first attempt.
“I think this is an experiment that somebody can pick up and do better than we did – or maybe we can do it again in the future with our future projects, and learn from our mistakes.” reflects Pekař. “It’s a really interesting experience to see it on the big screen – and I was surprised that it held up. It’s odd, but it somewhat works. It’s not some kind of new cinematic media that will sit next to the movies, but for festivals and conventions, for fans – I think it’s a format that others will be doing as well”.
The team at KVIFF are equally pleased with the results. “Storytelling has many faces,” says Och. “We’re proud that a new chapter in the festival’s modern history was written in collaboration with people that we respect a great deal who follow the same goal.”
“I think this format builds a bridge,” concludes Pekař. “Gamers can come to appreciate aesthetics and cinematography, the color palettes and moods in games more, and – in the same way – movie fans can understand how movies have different functions when they’re working with interactivity. When these two mediums collaborate, sometimes it creates really strange and cool ideas. When people go out of their bubble to see something different, it helps us to understand each other’s mediums.”
Kingdom Come: Deliverance 2 Cinematic Cut is available to watch on the KVIFF.TV website for a small fee (approx. $6) until July 31, 2027.
Blake Simons is a journalist with a taste for the self-reflexive, sentimental and surreal.