If you haven’t seen it. Kingmakers trailerI encourage you to watch it now before continuing. If you have, or maybe you’re reading this magazine in an effort to limit screen time (you’re doing great, and we appreciate your support), I’ll spoil the big twist. Can’t continue talking about the game without doing. The trailer teases what appears to be a medieval strategy game with pre-modern base-building elements, but admittedly junk truck horses, armor, and probably arenas full of Old English screams. Screams to arrive in the middle of battle. sentences, but it’s hard to hear through the chaos.
What follows is closer to Dynasty Warriors, where one man battles the armies of yesteryear with advanced weapons technology like guns and missile launchers. The premise is instantly catchy, weird and funny, but Kingmakers’ creators, brothers Ian and Paul Fish, are taking a surprisingly down-to-earth approach to its game while fully fleshing out the funny but compelling idea. But adopt.
“Plot is important, especially when it comes to historical accuracy,” says Ian. “It’s not just a typical medieval setting. You’re in the 15th century. You’re fighting against Henry Bolingbroke – Henry IV – and his son Henry V. It came as a shock to me because watching the trailer. After all, I had completely assumed that Kingmakers was a tongue-in-cheek action game about fighting medieval soldiers with modern weapons, and while it certainly is, Ian is clearly about history. I’m excited.” He spends the next few minutes of our interview talking about that period in history, England’s relationship with France at the time, and the 2018 Timothée Chalamet film. King And of Shakespeare Henry V Both misunderstood history. “Ian likes to be unmoored from history and really go deep,” says Paul. “We try to maintain that accurate knowledge, and then you intervene. Then the idea is that — you know — you’re changing history.”
And this historical intervention will apparently produce different results. “There are many endings to the game,” confirmed Paul. The trailer doesn’t go deep into the game’s story, which is by design. Fishes didn’t want to overwhelm potential players with knowledge at this first glance. “I don’t think the trailer should start naming a bunch of proper nouns and places and characters,” says Ian. But for those who dive into Kingmakers when it’s released, the story will be a motivator.
Despite the action of fighting medieval armies with modern weapons, you won’t be playing as a trained soldier. Instead, you’re a member of a team of scientists trying to figure out what caused the present-day apocalypse in the past. Your team has invented a time machine that allows them to watch the world change and change around them due to decisions made in the past. They learn that they must unite England, Wales, Scotland, and “a bit of Ireland,” as Ian puts it, to prevent a terrible future. You’re not an army with an unlimited government budget – you’re a scientist trying to prevent current disasters.
And it’s possible to fail, or at least reach a very ambiguous finale. The trailer teases that a hopeful conclusion appears in a futuristic city with cat-shaped floating ships, but all is not as it seems. “If you pay close attention at the end, you’ll see that cat ship opens up and it’s just raining human skulls and other bones. So, it’s not very promising,” says Ian.
The story was the unexpected element of Kingmakers that drove my conversation with the Fish brothers, but the duo and their team are also passionate about creating a compelling action game with unique mechanics. As a time-traveling scientist, you’ll be jumping into the middle of the field, but you’ll also be building defensible bases and commanding your army. So, as well as firing guns and trucking through piles of soldiers, you’ll also be issuing orders, and doing it all online with others if you do. You’ll be able to help your friends with ongoing campaigns, and they can do the same for you. While specific details on how the multiplayer will work are still under wraps, the Fish brothers make it clear that they want it all to be jump-in jump-out.
“It’s third person, but it’s also fake?” Not ready to fully commit to a particular genre, says Paul. “It doesn’t have to be narrow genres because people like a lot of genres, and they want to see interesting matchups of those genres,” says Ian. Kingmakers enters Early Access later this year, which will be our chance to see what this extraordinary game is really about.
This article originally appeared in Game Informer issue 365.