Mount & Blade II: Bannerlord Previews
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The weekend brings us some further details about TaleWorlds' Mount & Blade II: Bannerlord - with a focus around siege combat, specifically - thanks to the game's showing at the E3 expo in Los Angeles earlier this month.
Rock, Paper, Shotgun:
A major area in which Bannerlord has been improved over its predecessors is in the social and political interactions that can occur between characters. TaleWorlds’ aim is to allow players to follow any course of action which seems logical rather than being limited to a small pool of choices. If a friend or ally has been captured, you’ll be able to sally forth on a rescue mission and the AI will recognise your objective and NPCs will react appropriately. If you seize a castle, you’ll be able to negotiate with its previous owner.
One way in which this has been achieved is through changes to trading. If you want to offer a prisoner in exchange for goods or money, that will be possible, and similarly you can negotiate diplomatic deals through a combination of promises, treaties and actual resources or people. Effectively, many of the decisions and interactions you might choose to make have been shifted to a simulated layer, meaning that you can customise negotiations to a greater extent, adapting to the situation you find yourself in.
In addition to the series' previous features, TaleWorlds has included more strategic options to make battles more realistic and give their audience more options. The big takeaway from the demo TaleWorlds presented was an increased emphasis on siege warfare. After a brief trailer that consisted of actual in-engine gameplay footage, the developers explained that the siege mechanics were far more in-depth than in past Mount & Blade expansions, and that players will be able to directly assume control of catapults, battering rams, and more when besieging an enemy stronghold. The player will be able to place soldiers and siege weapons during the "Deployment" phase prior to each battle, but the developers stressed that the game's AI would be able to take care of setup should the player choose to jump straight into the fray.
Things escalate quickly, as they are wont to do when two groups of heavily armored soldiers are attempting to murder each other with sharp pieces of metal. TaleWorlds promises a full arsenal of medieval weaponry, and they strive to make combat as realistic as possible (arrows, for example, will drop when fired, and this must be taken into account when aiming). We got to see Bannerlord's new destructible environments when a catapult destroyed part of a tower and exposed the archers lurking behind the battlements, and there was another sequence where a battering ram succeeded in breaking down the castle gate, and upon entry the attacking force came under assault from above by stone-throwing enemy soldiers.
Mount and Blade II takes the tried and true browser strategy game empire building aspects, and throws you right into the third person combat elements you always wished weren’t just numbers on an RNG calculator. Command your rather sizable army of physics driven rather quality AI soldiers as you clash on the fields and in the forts of a realistic medieval European equivalent world. We’re talking 300-400+ soldiers on each side putting in work as they launch arrows, push siege equipment, raise ladders, and fire ballistas hoping to leave a dent in the horrific war of attrition between sides.
Smack in the middle of this chaos is you, a customizable and RPG driven commander gaining experience and bolstering their abilities with each battle depending on your actual fighting style. Play as the crafty Robin Hood, sniping enemy ballista operators from insane distances to buy your sieging soldiers a few more seconds. Man the catapults, and showcase your engineering prowess as you chisel away at the weak points in an enemy structure. Don the heaviest platemail as you kick your enemy’s fortress doors down, standing one against many to press back the tide of flimsy peasant opposition. Ride the ramparts as you face certain death taking the wall guards by surprise. Any part of the battle you wish to be a part of, you can be. Just so long as you don’t end up with an arrow in your helmet visor in the process!
And then there are breadkdowns of the game's siege warfare in two separate YouTube videos here and here.
