The dialogue in Kingdom Come: Deliverance plays a central role in gameplay and in the development of your story. Most of the dialogue options available to you will allow you to select a number of different responses to attain the same outcome based on your specific persuasion skills, and in some cases to enable different outcomes in side quests. The options provide many different ways in which you can interact with the world and the characters within it, but the basics of the system are relatively easy to understand once you know what each persuasion icon means.

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An example of the three main persuasion icons in dialogue with other characters. From top to bottom; Speech, Charisma and Strength. Note also the level of reputation with a specific character, measured from 0 - 100.

As can be seen in the bottom right of the above screenshot, each dialogue icon will have a number associated with it. These numbers represent the level of your ability in each aspect of persuasion. The higher the number, the better the chance of success in persuading the person to see things your way. At the beginning of the game you will not be able to see the level of ability in each stat that the person you are talking to possesses, with the exception of those who you have spoken to many times before. Upon reaching level eight in Speech you will be able to acquire the perk ‘Empathetic’, which allows you to see the persuasion stats of everyone that you speak to.

There are a number of ways to increase your stat in each persuasion method:

– Speech: Increased primarily by speaking with as many people as possible, but also influenced by the level of reputation that you have with a particular character.

– Charisma: Increased primarily by the type and condition of your armour and weapons, the state of your hygiene (visit the bathouse!) and by your reputation in a particular settlement or region.

– Strength: Increased primarily by your Strength skill, but also the perceived threat of your weapons and other factors such as whether or not your armour contains blood stains.

There are also two other dialogue options which will occasionally be available to you:

– Bribe: In some cases you can attempt to bribe people with Groschen into agreeing to terms. Works in the same way as haggling.

– Special skills: If you are proficient in a particular skill, for example Healing or Horsemanship, the option will appear to use that skill in order to avoid having to resort to other methods of resolving a problem.

It is important to remember that the level of your persuasion stat compared to the character you are speaking to does not always necessarily determine the outcome. You must also pay attention to the content of the dialogue to ascertain the appropriate response, having taken into account the specific circumstances at play. There may be circumstances in which multiple persuasion options will result in the same outcome but with different dialogue consequences. In some cases, you may have a more favourable outcome by selecting the option that uses no persuasion icons. As with the more general rule, Read, Read, Read!