Since it was announced in 2012, Mount & Blade II: Bannerlord has not given us much news up until this year. Even dedicated fans of the Mount & Blade franchise were beginning to give up hope of it ever being finished at all. That changed greatly yesterday, as TaleWorlds finally delivered us some gameplay footage that displayed new features being introduced that ought to enhance your experience as a king’s vassal or free-roaming warlord.
Weather and seasons
No longer will you roam the forest, mountains, or deserts of Calradia with a static environment. Bannerlord will feature weather and seasons that provide a much more immersive experience as you travel to different locations. We have to wonder if weather will play any role in how you and your soldiers perform in battle.
Board games
The trend in RPG’s in the last fifteen years seems to be including some type of board game. We can observe this in games like Fable or The Witcher’s dice poker and in the most recent installment of that series, the card game “Gwent”. These games usually serve as a way for players to wager money against NPC’s to make quick money, and we can likely expect that from this odd new game in Bannerlord that is reminiscent of checkers.
Siege weapons
Siege towers have always been a part of the Mount & Blade franchise as a means of sieging a castle, but those have little to no offensive capabilities. In the new trailer, we see a catapault being used to launch stones at an enemy castle as well as a battering ram to breach castle walls. We can surely expect to see other siege weapons and possibly some means for defenders to hold their castle (boiling oil, please).
Weapon crafting
This new feature definitely has potential. We saw a sword being customized in the trailer, and we could see that players can customize the blade, guard, pommel, and handle of the sword. Each of these parts affect how your weapon will perform in battle based on its weight, length and balance. With more weapons to come, weapon custimization options are seemingly inifinite, and we can hopefully look forward to seeing more of this when TaleWorlds is nice enough to grant us another look at their up and coming sequel.
Replay system
Want to know how everything went south so fast? Now you can with Bannerlord’s new replay system. We are not sure whether or not this mode will be available in singleplayer mode or just multiplayer mode. In any case, we can see that players can assume multiple angles in a free camera mode, create clips, tweak different effects such as bloom and grain, and even render that all out to produce a video clip ready to play or do further editing in another program.
PC gamers have long awaited news for Mount & Blade II: Bannerlord, and from what we have seen so far, it looks like TaleWorlds is definitely putting together a product that will be worth the wait.
