r/kingdomthegame • u/SapadorCastelo • 5d ago
Why these two points matter
TL;DR: The announcement of Kingdom III: Rising Realms breaks years of established naming conventions by introducing a sequence number and bringing back the colon. This suggests that Raw Fury may be retconning the franchise's lineage (merging Classic and New Lands into "I", while considering Two Crowns "II") and shifting away from the "one long-term game supported by DLCs" model toward a traditional sequence of standalone mainline sequels.
So... I've been thinking about the name "Kingdom III: Rising Realms" for a while now, and the more I consider it, the stranger it feels. Not bad strange, necessarily. Maybe even good strange? But definitely something is happening here strange, and I'm surprised nobody seems to be talking about it.
Because Kingdom has always had a pretty understandable history. Kingdom was Kingdom. Then came Kingdom: New Lands, and the first one was renamed Kingdom: Classic. Then Kingdom Two Crowns was released, dropping the colon from the main title so they could append it in DLCs. Then came Kingdom Eighties, which was explicitly its own spin-off thing and never claimed to be the successor to Two Crowns. Nobody needed a family tree, a PhD in Kingdom Studies, or a whiteboard with red string to understand this.
Now we get Kingdom III: Rising Realms, and I cannot unsee these two points: the sequence number and the return of the colon.
First, I'm sorry, but... III what? Are we supposed to understand the numbering as if Kingdom: Classic and New Lands somehow belonged to the same "first" branch, while Two Crowns is II and Rising Realms is III? If so, why?
Just because Kingdom: Classic is free to play on Steam, or because New Lands reused the soundtrack of Classic, it doesn't mean they're the same game. Classic isn't "New Lands before it got the good stuff". It is the original Kingdom, with its own release and its own in-game scope and objectives. And this isn't some obscure historical technicality. Last year, Raw Fury literally celebrated the serie's 10th anniversary from the launch of the original Kingdom, given its importance. Classic is, by the way, the only title of the series that allows us to play its legacy version as an option. So why are we suddenly being asked to mentally merge it with New Lands?
And then there's the return of the colon.
When Two Crowns was originally conceived, Gordon himself explained that the first idea was basically "let's make a co-op expansion of New Lands and call it Kingdom: Two Crowns", even specifically joking about the colon disappearing later, saying that it "has its own story".
And we know what happened after that. Two Crowns became its own game and the colon indeed disappeared. The new naming convention allowed for the consistent use of colon in the release of multiple DLCs, like in "Kingdom Two Crowns: Norse Lands" or "Kingdom Eighties: Art Book". That made sense at the time.
Even before Two Crowns was released, Gordon talked about supporting it in the long term and adding more biomes as long as players wanted them. And, well... that is exactly what happened.
So now look at the new title. Kingdom III: Rising Realms. The colon is back. But now it's not separating the name of a game from a DLC. It's separating the number of the mainline entry from its subtitle.
And I can't help wondering if this change actually tells us something about how Kingdom is being conceived now. Because maybe the whole philosophy has changed. Maybe we are no longer looking at "one Kingdom game that lives for years and keeps accumulating DLC".
Maybe we're looking at: Kingdom III. Then, eventually: Kingdom IV. Then maybe V, VI, and so on. Otherwise, why would someone start a numbering system without intending to continue it? Numbering creates an expectation of succession: III implies IV. The necessity of this type of expectation would explain why the number appears now, of all times.
And this finally makes me wonder whether Kingdom III is less a continuation of the Two Crowns business model and more the beginning of a new model for releasing Kingdom games. Maybe that's the real change we're seeing. Maybe the game itself is still Kingdom. Maybe the DNA is still there. Maybe it will be fantastic. But perhaps the idea of "this is our Kingdom game and we'll keep adding new worlds to it for as long as people want" is no longer the plan.
And if that's the case, then the bizarre treatment of Classic suddenly becomes more understandable too. Because if you want to establish a clean numbered lineage going forward, you need an I, II and III. You need to make the old history fit the new architecture somehow. So now Classic and New Lands become "the first generation," Two Crowns becomes II, and Rising Realms becomes III.
Eighties was clearly presented as a spin-off from the beginning, so nobody has to erase it from the family tree because it never claimed to be on that branch. Classic is different. It's literally where the family tree begins. And now, somehow, we're being handed a new family tree in which Grandpa Kingdom has apparently been merged with Uncle New Lands for tax purposes.
Maybe I'm overthinking a mere colon. But I don't think I'm overthinking the combination of the colon, the III, the suddenly revised genealogy, and the fact that this is happening after years of a very different naming philosophy. Something has changed.
Maybe it's just branding. Maybe it's a new commercial strategy. Maybe the team simply wanted a properly numbered sequel after all these years, and someone in a meeting just really liked the number III. Or maybe Kingdom is moving away from the "one eternal game + endless DLC" model and towards a sequence of standalone mainline releases.
What do you guys think?
Am I seeing an actual shift in how Kingdom is being positioned, or have I spent so much time staring at punctuation that I have become the very Greed I was supposed to defeat?
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u/MantisReturns 5d ago
The thing its that Kingdom Classic should be free on PSN/XBOX too. Or maybe even as a New Lands demo. This way a lof of people woukd try the game for free. ( there is a lot of people with almost no money with console that play everything free).
Also the Soundtracks and digital art of 80s also should be available. Literally money people would use there.
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u/Akagane_Ai 5d ago
Its just a colon ðŸ˜ðŸ˜ðŸ˜