Warhorse Co-Founder Blasts RPGs as 'Games for Teenagers'

Martin Klima says he's tired of chosen-one power fantasies and thinks today's older audience wants something new. He points to publisher risk-aversion as the reason the formula persists.

Ever feel like you've saved the universe a dozen times already? You're not alone. Warhorse Studios co-founder Martin Klima is right there with you, and he's not shy about saying it.

In a recent chat with PC Gamer's Joshua Wolens, Klima traced the origins of Kingdom Come: Deliverance back to his own boredom with the typical RPG loop: kill the dark lord, romance a companion or two, repeat. "I play a lot of RPGs, it's a genre I really like," he said. "I was really and I still am bored and tired of all the RPGs when you are this chosen one, when you have this grand task of saving the universe... The games that are these really straightforward power fantasies." He's quick to clarify that he doesn't think power fantasies are inherently bad—just painfully repetitive. "There is nothing bad about a good power fantasy," he said. "It's just, it's so repetitive."

To illustrate his point, Klima compared the standard fantasy RPG to Progress Quest, an old idle game that satirized EverQuest and similar titles as time-vampire Skinner boxes. "It's really a distillation of what the common RPG is," he explained. That frustration became the seed for KCD. "I found that there must be many, many people who are really tired of this formula and who want something new and different," he said.

But according to Klima, not much has changed since then. "The games that were and sort of are being made are still the games for teenagers," he said. "If you are 16, 17, you love playing these power fantasy games because it's something that you need. But the audience is much older today." He even name-drops Expedition 33, anticipating pushback: "Everybody's going to think that I am hating on Expedition 33 right now, but that's definitely not the case."

So why does the chosen-one trope keep coming back? Klima blames publishers' preference for proven formulas. "They are really best at recycling the same formula over and over," he said, pointing to Ubisoft as an example. "I played the original Assassin's Creed, and the original Far Cry, and the original Watch Dogs... it was fun. But once you play the same game for the 10th time, it sort of becomes stale." He acknowledges Ubisoft's technical prowess—"beautiful animations, beautiful models... pretty much bug-free"—but wishes that craftsmanship went toward something more innovative. Still, he gets the financial dilemma: "I appreciate the dilemma that they have, and I don't have any easy answers for it."

Klima's comments echo a growing conversation among players who've aged alongside their favorite genre. With KCD, Warhorse aimed to offer something different—a historical RPG without chosen-one prophecies or universe-saving stakes. Whether the industry at large will follow suit remains to be seen, but Klima's clearly hoping for more variety.

What do you think? Are you tired of chosen-one stories, or do they still hit the spot? Let us know in the comments!