Kingdom Come: Deliverance – A Violent Mission to Find Some Boots

Open-world games, like the recently released Kingdom Come: Deliverance, can serve as great vessels for emergent gameplay, as we can see in this PC Gamer article that documents one player’s cunning plan-filled journey to find a pair of new boots after the game stole the ones he had. Prepare yourselves for murderous hijinks, sitcom-worthy misunderstandings, and memorable frustrations. An excerpt:

This game stole my boots. Early in the story, I’m told to get some sleep by another character, who also tells me to remove my muddy boots before getting into bed. I happily comply. I don’t know how deep the simulation is in KCD yet: for all I know, if I sleep in my boots the bed could legitimately become muddy, and this character might be annoyed with me for not following his instructions. I aim to please, so I take them off.

As it turns out, I’m the annoyed one, because in the morning I awaken to discover that my boots are gone. They’re not in my inventory, they’re not in small room where I took them off: they’ve simply vanished. This obedient, uneducated peasant I’m playing is now even more of of a humble nobody because I don’t even own a pair of shoes. Events in the game lead me out of the castle before I can find another pair, and every time I look down at my bare feet as I travel, I grow a bit more annoyed. This game stole my boots, and I want them back.

[…]

A bit later, after some non boot-related parts of the story unfold, I once again awaken with nothing on my feet. This time it turns out someone has considerately stored my footwraps in a chest for me, but it’s yet another reminder that this game seems to have a penchant for making me barefoot against my wishes.

Luckily, a simple quest a little while later provides me with a choice opportunity: while sneaking through a house looking for something, I spot the resident sitting at a table, eating. On his feet: boots. Two boots, which is the precise number of boots I do not have and would like to have. I choke him unconscious, take his boots, leave him with my footwraps, and split. Finally! Now I can get on with Henry’s actual story.

Except, no. Kingdom Come isn’t done with me yet. The moment I return to town, I hear panicked screams and see villagers running everywhere, yelling that someone has been attacked. I rush over and discover a woman lying dead, face-down in a river. The guards haven’t responded, no one is around, and I don’t see her attacker. Naturally, a lifetime spent playing games has taught me that when you find a dead body, you take everything it’s got. Just when I’ve hunched over to loot, however, a guard suddenly materializes in the space next to me and accusing me of stealing the dead woman’s belongings.

I pay him off so I won’t get arrested, but he insists on searching me and recovering any other stolen items I have. I have two: one of them is a boot, and the other is also a boot. Dammit, I’m bootless again. And I don’t even have the footwraps, since I considerately left them in the possession of the man I brutally choked unconscious in his own home. No good deed goes unpunished, I guess.