Warhorse's new creative director tells us why the secret sauce for Kingdom Come Deliverance is making things difficult for players: 'The usual answer is OK let's get rid of the friction—We don't work like that'

Prokop Jirsa didn't plan for any of this.

"There was no 10-year plan to become the lead designer or director," says the Kingdom Come: Deliverance 2 lead designer and one of two recently-anointed creative directors at the game's maker, Warhorse Studios. "Never. I just really like making games and playing games… When I joined the studio, I thought that I would go back to a proper job sometime in the future. It never occurred to me that I would be here 12 years later."

It's probably to our benefit that Jirsa's not the type to map out his life trajectory: a man with a 10-year plan would likely have picked a firmer footing for his future than a studio pitching an achingly realistic RPG about Czech history on Kickstarter.

But Jirsa, more or less on a lark, did just that a little over a decade ago in 2014, during his last few months at university. "It would never occur ...