After completing the game I have to say that the final 30% of the main story feels like it was written by a completely different person. Take for example the difference between the gypsies were written and how the Jews were. The game shows the Gypsies as they were good and bad, they are apprehensive to you since they're a strange group of people with backwards beliefs and traditions that often times get in the way of you completing their quest. The quests ends with the daughter of the chief tricking you into getting her dad to hand over the amulet she needs but because Henry does so much for them they end up bringing Henry into the fold. This is all done in a completely optional quest,
Goes to show that the Jewish questline, like Yasuke in Assassin's Creed Shadows, was crowbared into the game for the sake of diversity points/author's fiat.
The Jewish questline is mandatory main quest with Henry tracking down John in Kuttenberg. Henry learns that he is in fact in the Jewish quarter of the city (that didn't exist at the time of the game). He goes to inquire about John from the Jews and talks with Samuel who will only tell him where John is if he snitches for the Jews at an anti-sematic meeting. Turns out this was a trap to get Henry killed by the Jews but of course he beats them and only then is he allowed to visit John. At this point you're given absolutely no reason to like the Jews as they blatantly tried to get you killed but the game tries to play it off as them just not knowing. So when you've reached the final part of the game you're supposed to go help fend off the mob from mascaraing the Jews at Kuttenberg at this point I feel like Varvra realized that the player wouldn't really have cared to save them so right before Henry rides out to Kuttenberg Samuel reveals that he is the bastard child of Martin. At that point in the game you've only known Sam for maybe one or two hours and it makes it feel so forced and unnecessary much like the mission to save the Jews feels. By the end of the game when you sneak out of the castle to get reinforcements with Sam I didn't even bother finding him when the nanosecond he got lost from sight and left without him only to then find out he got hung by the enemy and even then I felt more sad about Adder dying then Henry's own step brother.
If they really wanted RPG-style player choice, the player would be given the choice to A) side with the Jews and appeal to a higher authority to save them, like the Pope or the Holy Roman Emperor, (lawful good) B) side with the Jews and help them get away from their persecutors on your own, (chaotic good) C) do fucking nothing because it's not the player's problem, (neutral) D) side with the persecutors because as a good Christian, you're tired of the Jews taking a massive dump on your religion, (lawful evil) or E) side with the persecutors because even if you don't give a shit about religion, you can kill the Jews and steal their material possessions, and the persecuting authorities won't mind; their dudes are probably doing the same. (chaotic evil)
I remember games like Shadow the Hedgehog, KOTOR, and Mass Effect where you had legit player choice.
In KOTOR, you can have your Jedi character run around like a bandit killing people with the Dark Side and stealing their shit, or have your Jedi character heal people with the Light Side and give free money to passing beggars.
In Mass Effect, you can have Commander Shepard act like a total racist towards aliens and let their leaders get killed by hostile robot armies, or you can have Shepard go full tolerant and say that humanity has to work with the aliens, while sending an entire legion of human soldiers to die so that the alien leaders might live.
Shadow the Hedgehog can have the titular hedgehog join an alien invasion against the humans because he's still mad at the fact that they killed his stepsister, or he can join the humans and repel the aliens because his stepsister wanted him to make the humans happy.
THAT was player choice. This? You might as well remove all illusion and just say that Henry is fated to save the Jews no matter what. Make it into a Dynasty Warriors game where you mow down scores of crusaders and angry mobs who want the Jews dead. At the very least, that'd be more entertaining. I mean, that formula was really fun when I was cutting down scores of soldiers or peasant tax-dodgers in Han China for Dynasty Warriors 3.
The original game was very careful about where and when they messed with history, simple little things, like side quests can be argued to be completely fictional, but they served a purpose to help educate people on authentic things that would happen back then. Things like the village Uzhitz thinking they are plagued by the Black Death, despite it turning out that it was really water poisoning due to a dead animal in the well. it was few and far between, and Henry is practically just a way for the players to be in the world while helping historical characters who would’ve had many underlings very similar to Henry. The second game very much goes out of it’s way to include things like ghosts, death “herself”, mythical black people and apparently time traveling Jews due to the fact the Jewish quarter didn’t exist at the time. It almost feels like a straight “fuck you” to all the kickstarter people who wanted a game series with the most realistic sword combat, as well as retelling the history of a pretty cool time period in an authentic way.
They sold out and "went legit". KCD1 was the hip, cool new game that wanted to give the world a game that was historically realistic for the time, KCD2 was the sellout that went "nuts to that" and threw away everything medieval realism had to offer, from back-talking Jews, Muslim scholars who know everything (by this time, Islamic science was already fully adopted in Medieval Europe thanks to the Church and the Crusades, so it would've been more accurate if Musa was a Greek scholar running away from Constantinople), girlbosses at a time when most women preferred the home life, and gay sex at a time when everyone, Christian, Muslim, or Jewish, would've reacted to that by playing dodgeball using rocks, with you as the target practice.
Warhorse got big and fat from KCD1's success, so they don't need those kickstarter people anymore. As far as they're concerned, those original backers can get fucked; they've got big money now, and that's all that matters to them.