I messed up so bad in Kingdom Come: Deliverance 2 that I was literally branded a criminal and hours later I'm still shunned by society

I didn't know you could mess up as badly as I did last night in Kingdom Come: Deliverance 2. It's been several real-world hours since I was branded a criminal (literally), a debuff that I initially scoffed at, and it's starting to impede my quest progress. No merchant, craftsman, nor humble butcher will acknowledge my existence.

It sucks, but it also kinda rules. KCD2's crime system is more fleshed out and consequential than that of any sandbox RPG I've ever played. I can't say I don't deserve it. Here's how it happened:

A while ago I was riding between towns when I got stopped on the road by an older man. He politely declared that "This is an ambush," and asked I fork over my money, but a quick speech check got us to the root of his problem: He was an out-of-work knight driven to crime after another knight stole his armor and horse. Long story short, I agreed to get his stuff back from the jerk that screwed him over because I'm Henry of Skalitz, a nice guy who does things for people.

The quest led me to a war camp, easily the least welcoming settlement I'd encountered in KCD2, as I had to state my business before they'd let me through the gate. I found the knight in question, a mustachioed brute, and hit him with my Henry's greatest weapon: a silver tongue. My level 17 Speech skill had hard-carried me through countless close calls before, but this time I was powerless. The man simply would not listen to my excellent reasons for giving the downtrodden former knight his stuff back like "It's the right thing to do" and "Come on man" and kicked me to the curb.

My quest log confirmed what I dreaded: The only way to get the gear back now was to steal it. Just thinking about it made me nervous—I'd largely avoided engaging with crime in my 40 hours up to this point because KCD2 is so brutal. It's easy to accidentally break the law and get fined for innocent mistakes like standing outside a tavern after closing or walking the streets without a torch, I don't need the smoke of real thieving work. I'd only snuck into one rando's house for a quest up to that point, and now I'm gonna heist a soldier's gear in the middle of a war camp? A dumb plan, but I'd hate to let my buddy down.

Plan B

Not to brag, but the first part went down just like I hoped. I waited until dark, snuck into the tent while the soldier was sleeping, and snagged my guy's lost armor from the floor. Unfortunately, his other stuff was locked in a chest. My pickpocket skill wasn't nearly high enough to beat the lock on my own and I was 100% sure that I'd screw up the pickpocketing minigame and wake him up, so I improvised once more, slamming the left trigger to "knock him out."

One well-timed button press later, he was out cold. I nabbed the key, got the stuff, and nearly ghosted my way out of there, except some guards saw me fleeing from the camp on the knight's stolen horse. I escaped, but not unseen.

Several in-game days later, I had to talk to somebody else in the camp for a different quest, which I wasn't too worried about. Surely nobody would remember my little infiltration after all this time, right? Even if they did, nobody saw me knock the guy out or steal his gear (which I no longer had), so there's no way I'd be on the hook for everything.

This time the guards didn't ask me to state my business—they ordered me to surrender. Not only was I busted for stealing the horse, but my trespassing had also been linked to the jerk knight's assault, who also noticed his stuff was missing and figured (correctly) that I did that, too. I was worried for Henry's well-being, but also impressed by KCD2's capacity to logically spin a thread of crimes together.

Reaping

Yeah so, it turns out the fine for six counts of burglary, breaking and entering, assaulting a knight, trespassing, and grand theft horse is a little outside my price range: 10,646.1 groschen, or approximately eight times more money than I've ever held in the game. My last line of defense, three different speech checks, all failed, so I accepted my punishment.

I thought I was in for the sort of ceremonial consequence you get for breaking bad in a Bethesda or Rockstar game—a jail cutscene, a steep fee, a brief breakout sequence—but KCD2 surprised again. I got something worse than jail time: a brand.

As I mentioned, a brand is a real pain in the ass. Townspeople avoid me. I saved a woman on the road from a pack of wolves and she was grateful, until she noticed the brand, backed away slowly, and yelled "You're that criminal!" Worst of all, nobody will let me sell or buy anything from their stores, which really limits my money-making options. It's poor timing, then, that my main quest involves paying off a guy's 500 groschen bail. The debuffs screen also reveals that my reputation gains are halved and if I commit another serious crime, I "may be executed!" Bummer.

Apparently the brand doesn't last forever—the debuff has a timer that's around halfway done after a few real hours of playtime—but after trying to work around its negative effects, it's feeling like an eternity.

The description also says the "worst effects" of the brand pass with time, but does that mean some of them are permanent? Will I ever be able to buy a tomato or sell an extra sword again? If the game's gonna brand me an outcast, maybe I should lean into it and keep stealing to get by? Hm, maybe KCD2 is too realistic.