Kingdom Come: Deliverance 2 launched to glowing reviews, proving to be 2025’s answer to the surprise smash-hit, Baldur’s Gate 3. While I don’t purport to have psychic abilities, I do feel like I could see that coming from a mile off. I loved a lot about the first game in the series, a game that was immensely ambitious for its time and has not been replicated or bested since, even by the AAA behemoths like Bethesda. Then, the marketing for the sequel focused heavily on all the vast improvements that fixed the original’s flaws while adding plenty of new mechanics.

All of this painted a picture of an impressively immersive RPG with a world so painstakingly created that it feels genuinely real. Naturally, they came to fruition, hence the positive reviews, but KC:D2 had even more to offer than it initially let on. Kingdom Come: Deliverance 2’s impressive features put many other RPGs to shame, both present and future. They have set the bar ridiculously high, including perhaps the most-anticipated RPG of all time, The Elder Scrolls 6. In fact, KC:D2 is so good, I’m worried it’s ruined TES 6 for me forever.

Kingdom Come: Deliverance 2’s RPG Mechanics Are Too Good

It’s One Of The Most Ambitious RPGs

Kingdom Come: Deliverance 2 improves significantly on the original in many ways, from its originally janky combat to its intense level of detail and historical accuracy. Every time I boot up Kingdom Come: Deliverance 2 I’m in awe at just how impressive and immersive it can be. A simple stroll through a dense forest admiring the bountiful fauna and flora, or down a mud-smothered street watching as the drunkards topple out of the local tavern never gets old. That’s what makes Kingdom Come: Deliverance 2 such an immersive open world.

However, as much as the aesthetic details contribute towards this, it’s KC:D2’s RPG mechanics that truly shine. When I first played the original game, I was amazed by how much it allowed me to genuinely roleplay. Far too often, RPGs dilute their namesake to mean the ability to customize a character, choose what stats to level up, and what skills to unlock. However, RPGs should be so much more than that. They should be different from other open-world games by allowing players to directly influence the space around them and embody their character through meaningful actions and choices.

That’s why it frustrates me when games like Cyberpunk 2077 have poor roleplaying opportunities, focusing more on narrative and gameplay rather than allowing the player’s actions to dictate the gameplay flow. Fortunately, I found Kingdom Come: Deliverance 2 to be the complete inverse of that, with its plethora of detailed RPG mechanics, such as a ridiculously in-depth punishment system, making the world around me feel more alive and believable while offering an unparalleled level of freedom that no game before has been able to match.

The Elder Scrolls 6 Won’t Be As Detailed As KC:D2

Bethesda’s Recent Games Make It Seem Impossible

Custom Image by Katarina Cimbaljevic

Unfortunately, while it helps KC:D2 get glowing reviews and makes me love it more than I believed possible, it does set my expectations for future RPGs a little too high. It may seem a little outrageous to expect the same level of determination and passion, at least when it comes to in-depth RPG mechanics, from other AAA studios. However, it’s important to remember that Warhorse Studios is a much smaller team than the likes of CD Projekt Red and Bethesda, and it doesn’t have the backing of either a storied and well-respected legacy or a multi-billion dollar corporation.

I’m not saying that CD Projekt Red or Bethesda are incapable of implementing good RPG mechanics, or that their games are bad. The Witcher 3 is one of the greatest RPGs of all time, largely thanks to its phenomenal writing and great characters. The Elder Scrolls series is beloved because of its once-unrivaled level of immersion. However, as much as both of these are great, it’s clear that they don’t hold a candle to Kingdom Come: Deliverance 2 when it comes to immersion and roleplaying, and that makes me especially worried about The Elder Scrolls 6.

I don’t think Bethesda has released a good game in several years now, with its last truly great title being Skyrim. Fallout 4 was strong but lacked a lot of what made Fallout 3 and New Vegas so great. Fallout 76 was a nightmare at launch and has since struggled to capture the quality the series was once known for, and Starfield is a joke in my opinion. One of the prevailing problems across all of these games has been the increasingly waning focus on RPG mechanics and immersive world-building.

It is so important for TES 6 to be a return-to-form for the developer and show the world that it’s just as capable of offering immersive RPG mechanics as the much smaller Warhorse Studios.

That is why it is so important for TES 6 to be a return-to-form for the developer and show the world that it’s just as capable of offering immersive RPG mechanics as the much smaller Warhorse Studios. However, I’m not convinced that the current iteration of Bethesda is capable of doing that, especially with the likes of Starfield showing it has regressed in many ways. Considering just how long TES 6 has been in development, and the number of innovations both mechanically and technically that have come since then, I have little hope it’ll be as good as KC:D2.

TES 6 Has To Be The Most Immersive RPG

Its Competition Is Too Fierce

As much as I doubt that The Elder Scrolls 6 will be as thoroughly immersive as Kingdom Come: Deliverance 2, I believe it needs to be. The fact that Bethesda has long been beaten at its own game and surpassed by studios more than half its size is more than enough reason for concern that, like many other legacy developers including Bioware, it is experiencing a sharp decline in quality. It needs a win more than ever, but in order to achieve that, it needs to offer something as good as both Baldur’s Gate 3 and Kingdom Come: Deliverance 2.

Since the release of Skyrim, the RPG genre has only grown in popularity and quality. The Witcher 3 proved that fantasy RPGs could have better storytelling than simply making the protagonist the chosen one; Baldur’s Gate 3 proved that CRPGs were more than just rolling dice while also implementing an unprecedented level of player freedom; Kingdom Come: Deliverance reclaimed the roleplaying aspect of its genre’s namesake. Even beyond these three, indie developers have been creating ambitious Scrolls-likes that rival Bethesda’s best work, and AA studios like Spiders and Piranha Bytes continue to push the genre forward with their unique ideas.

Bethesda can’t return to the fantasy RPG scene with something worse than the AA offerings available. If it does, it risks failing like Dragon Age: The Veilguard, a game that fundamentally misunderstood what made its predecessors and competitors so great in the first place. It isn’t just that I personally want The Elder Scrolls 6 to be as good as Kingdom Come: Deliverance 2 or any of the other aforementioned incredible RPGs, but rather that it needs to be the best RPG, or at least rank among them, in order to save Bethesda’s once untouchable legacy.