Mount & Blade: With Fire & Sword Previews
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Elder Geek has a three-minute video preview, showing off the new art style and guns used in combat.
GameZone offers a written preview.
The single-player will see major improvements in its narrative. Previous Mount & Blade games followed no storyline, instead presenting a medieval nation at war and allowing players to follow their own path, completing quests at their leisure and joining a faction here and there. Or not: The aim of Mount & Blade was always options. With Fire And Sword is similarly laid out with a sandbox style map, which you can navigate to find new towns and cities. The difference here is that there's an actual storyline, and it's not just any old story. The game follows the historical novel of the same name, published in 1884 and written by Polish author Henryk Sienkiewicz. What this means is characters and events actually relate to and affect one another. The novel itself is pretty broad in scope, chronicling the Khmelnytsky Uprising and various people and events within that time period. Whereas Mount & Blade was previously open-ended, With Fire And Sword brings its chapters to a close, though there will be branching options for maximum replayability.
Along with the new story, the setting has moved to the 17th century (roughly 1648-1657), meaning players can enjoy a new weapon type: gunpowder. You can now switch between your sword and your musket at will, and you're even able to shoot from horseback. Gunpowder weapons are extremely powerful but very difficult to use: Players must hold down the fire button for a couple of seconds to aim before they can make the shot, a maneuver that's especially troublesome on horseback. Along with the slow-paced sword fighting, the control feels clumsy at first, but once you find the rhythm it's incredibly addictive.
