Mount & Blade II - Gameplay Features Explained

[HiddenX]

In their blog #11 TaleWorlds explains the gameplay features of Mount & Blade II: Bannerlord in great detail:

Hello All!

As many of you may have noticed, we have been rather busy! Last week, we visited Cologne, Germany to attend Gamescom, the largest game conference in Europe. While there, we took appointments to demonstrate some Bannerlord gameplay to the world's media. Along with this, we released a few videos which were used as part of our presentation.

It has been great to see the excited response to the clips and we're very pleased that your feedback has been so positive! Of course, the game is still very much in development and so we had to make decisions about what to put in the videos and how it would be presented.

Here, we have compiled some of the highlights, along with a small smattering of new footage, which we want to present to you the community, along with a little explanation about some of the features. […]

More information.

 

[HiddenX]

Thanks you, Silver for reporting this - an interesting read.

 

[Silver]

Thanks you, Silver for reporting this - an interesting read.

No problem. The game looks good to me and I like the refinements they're making. In the original game I mostly played as a gladiator in the arena from city to city. Loved how the combat worked.

 

[ChienAboyeur]

In the end, only a few bits of information. The world map is reworked, new names of locations, new looks for castles...

It does not tell about sieges, they seem to use assault and siege as swappable terms. From the look of it, it seems that engines can be used to support an assault of the walls, it does not tell of a siege.

The integration of the village to the castle is another big question mark. It might have solved some of the issues their previous modelization featured, as now the support to the nearby castle is easier to manage. AI back an fros to loot a support village are probably over, commitment will be required in order to undermine the castle supply.
It also reduces the option to undermine a castle supply, which is going to influence the approach to it. How good natured lords are going to do now?

All in all, they look like they are dropping things that made the originality of the previous games to align on the offer made elsewhere.
Guess it is going to be another mere conquest bend game incoming.

 

[wiretripped]

And still using that darn ugly font, I see...

 

[Saxon1974]

I hope this is a better more flushed out original game and not a whole different game. Heard a rumor that they were removing RPG attributes from the character. I hope that is false.

 

[ChienAboyeur]

Somebody wanted to have fun, using the Fall Out 4 trauma.

Better to bet on the opposite: more attributes to cover new attributions to the PC.

 

[BoboTheMighty]

Never played this "saga"...always on my next list. Does it have any decent characters/story? Can you catapult peasants as live artillery?
I've heard good things about FPS melee combat, though.

 

[ChienAboyeur]

Having no scripted story was part of the originality. The gameworld was designed in such a way that it enables players who do not rely on others to write the narrative to write their own narrative.

Characters are the same story, an original feature as they are characterized by their actions and behaviour. Characters are what they do and what they do not (an important part as characterization goes through forbidden actions)
Their backstory's only there to tell explicitly their character (which is implicitly reported by the way they act in the gameworld)

Both features will be probably gone in the next iteration.