Declining to indulge in alcohol in Kingdom Come: Deliverance 2 becomes a strangely compelling form of defiance.

This article contains moderate spoilers for the closing events of the Wedding Crashers quest in Kingdom Come: Deliverance 2.

It’s impossible, I think, to play Kingdom Come: Deliverance 2 without playing a boozer, even if you’re only boozing in cutscenes. The game’s 15th century world is greased by many splendours of hooch, from the wine used in potion-brewing through the finer vintages at banqueting tables to the viral pondwater they sell in seedier taverns. A lot of the time, the writing views alcohol as a means of teeing up some slapstick debauchery reminiscent of Paul Bettany’s character in A Knight’s Tale. It venerates the spectacle of having a large one, with custom dialogue and voice-acting for protagonist Henry when you woozily explain your antics to guards. But sometimes, perhaps despite itself, it expresses something about the culture of drinking and the unpleasantness of being militantly exhorted to drink.

Early on in the main story, there’s a quest in which Henry wangles his way to a wedding in the hopes of meeting an important noble. There’s a bunch of smaller quests to pursue, while waiting for that character, and many of them involve tying it on. You can play dice for badges and take part in a duelling contest, with the price being that you’re required to glug a jar of Bohemia’s finest every time you lose. There’s a band of tearaway cousins who demand that you share a flagon of their preferred, ultra-concentrated moonshine, after first retrieving it from the cellar. To accomplish that, you’ll also need to get a watchful guard leathered.

In amongst all these more formalised incentives, there’s a steady white noise of pressure to drink up, be a Good Lad and partake in shenanigans. The atmosphere is quite intoxicating in itself, with dozens of colourfully attired NPCs dancing, bantering and sitting at tables sagging beneath the weight of gaudily rendered canapes. My Henry arrived at the event under false pretences – he’d snuck in as the bodyguard for a prostitute he’d hired to waylay a local bigwig. As such, I felt extra-obliged to make merry and hide my ulterior motives, while remaining sober enough to carry them out. As the mission’s designated plot-driver, I had to unofficially lead the NPC revelries while preserving my character stats against the effects of over-consumption.

Even if you get away without drinking much, the quest sort of acts as though you’ve given in. It ends, predictably, with a drunken brawl after you’re caught having what looks like an intimate encounter with the bride. This last twist underlines how the game world’s sexism and chauvinism are abetted by boozing. There are several eligible women at the wedding and while they have believable agency, they are all discreetly offered up to you as damsels and potential conquests for the local bachelors. Amongst other things, you can accept a wager from two strutting boneheads to “rescue” a woman who’s being aggressively hit on by a would-be poet.

Speaking as a man who drinks alcohol, I think Deliverance 2 does a fair job capturing the claustrophobia of social events in which drinking is expected. I’ve been to weddings and, worse, stag parties like this, in which the high jinks are enforced by joshing assaults on your self-esteem for being a lightweight or a killjoy or a girl.

I was also reminded of games industry events in which, between the jetlag and the stresses of networking and deadlines, I’ve used alcohol as a speedbreak and a means of lowering my guard. Events like these have, at times, proven uncomfortable or even actively unsafe for female journalists and developers surrounded by legions of intoxicated bros. Say what you like about Deliverance 2’s parties – at least there are no roofies involved.

Part of the trick to the wedding quest’s modelling of boozer culture is that Deliverance 2 itself is, broadly, a terrible influence on Henry, and completing the quest can feel like an exercise in shrugging off its roguishly enveloping arm. It’s constantly trying to get him at least tipsy, if not raging drunk. The game’s RPG underbelly portrays alcohol as akin to a power-up with a mix of buffs and debuffs. It reinforces this with a dorky manual quicksave system that requires you to periodically knock back a flask of specialised schnapps – another provocation to come over all National Lampoon if you tend to checkpoint often.

I find having to brew or otherwise acquire my own quicksave juice in KCD2 pleasing, inasmuch as it renders an action I take for granted esoteric – a tidy little rite of participation. But I’m a bit bothered by what all this suggests about the realworld ‘utility’ of booze. Why do we quicksave? Because we’re concerned about the threats ahead, and worried about losing our progress. I don’t want to give Fox News any silly ideas, or suggest that a game about the 15th century should adhere to 21st century health guidance, but Deliverance 2’s system lends itself to the idea of getting drunk as a coping strategy.

The game does simulate more severe consequences for overdoing it. Beyond fleeting hangovers, you can make it such a habit that you become an alcoholic. Still, “curing” alcoholism is relatively simple in Deliverance 2, more like a simple difficulty modifier than a personal ordeal: it’s just about learning to live with some stat cuts for a few hours. And the dangers of alcoholism are offset by the temptations of an entire skill tree dedicated to boozing, with perks that both render you more resistant to the negative effects and endow you with, say, unarmed combat bonuses and resistance against fall damage while under the influence. Levelling-up remains gaming’s most popular vice, I guess.

Again, though, all of this can be spun for the positive when it comes to that wedding quest, where the game’s tendency to play toxic enabler is engagingly personified in the ranks of boisterous idiots queuing up to thrust a goblet into your hand. If you’d rather keep a clear head, the secret is that you have plenty of time: the arrival of the person you’re waiting for appears to be scripted, contingent on completing certain quests beforehand. So if you’re going to imbibe, pace yourself. Do what I do at a lot of games industry events and enjoy the ambience from a corner. Maybe go have a look at the pond.

During my Kingdom Come: Deliverance 2 review playthrough, I completed that quest chain without filling up the drunkenness gauge, thanks partly to winning all of the aforementioned dice games, and partly to spending 20 minutes waiting for somebody to leave a kitchen so I could steal something from the pantry. I woke the day after bloodied and incarcerated but not hungover. It’s entirely my imagination but I feel like Deliverance 2 was disappointed with me. I’d given myself away for a buzzkill – no Good Lad at all – and do you know what, I’ll take that as a win. You’re decent company, Deliverance 2, but you’re a bit of a liability at parties. I’m getting too old for this.