Mount & Blade Console Port in The Works, Sequel Heading to GamesCom

[StewShearerOld]

Mount & Blade Console Port in The Works, Sequel Heading to GamesCom

Mount & Blade developer TaleWorlds will be showing off live gameplay from Mount & Blade II: Bannerlord at GamesCom 2015.

Speaking as a completely objective person who totally hasn't sunk 400 hours into raiding, pillaging and conquering the countryside, I can safely say that the Mount & Blade series and <a href=http://www.escapistmagazine.com/articles/view/video-games/previews/8587-Preview-Mount-Blade-With-Fire-and-Sword>its expansions are some of the most addictive RPGs ever made. They're the sort of games that you boot up intending to play for a few minutes only to find yourself still hooked on hours later. That in mind, you can perhaps understand why today's rare release of Mount & Blade-related news has left me so excited.

What news you ask? The series' creators at TaleWorlds have revealed that they'll be showing off live footage back in 2012. Perhaps even more interesting, the studio also revealed that it's currently working on "fully featured" ports of Mount & Blade: Warband for "the current generation of game consoles." It capped off these two announcements by sharing that the series, in total, has sold more than 6 million copies since its initial release back in 2008.

Speaking personally, while a deeper look at Mount & Blade II is exciting, I'm almost more interested in the console version of Warband. Mount & Blade's control scheme isn't the most complex in the world, but there are still things I could see not translating well to the more limited button options of a controller. I'll be likewise interested to see what the studio means when it says the port will be "fully featured." While vanilla Warband is a lot of fun, it arguably pales in comparison to some of the expansions the game's received over the years. The recently <a href=https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ImVLiG0HFio>"reforged" Viking Conquest DLC, for instance, makes vast improvements over the base game that longtime players like myself might not be willing to part with.

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[Kungfu_Teddybear]

Finally! I can't wait to see what they have to show.

 

[nomotog_v1legacy]

Finally! I can't wait to see what they have to show.

Hey! I was going to say that. But ya we have been waiting so gosh darn long for this. I hope it doesn't end up bad.

 

[gmaverick019_v1legacy]

hopefully they can keep the scope of the game intact, the fort battles where I'd be leading the charge of 300+ men vs 300+ enemies in the fort were epic and just a giant clusterfuck of awesomeness.

 

[Imperioratorex Caprae]

Funny enough, I fired up Warband earlier this week with the A Clash of Kings mod and set to rule Westeros with an iron fist... What a great and epic series. I still play M&B as well because the Star Wars Mod is also quite excellent... If anything that needs mods to be really well done its Mount & Blade, not that its poor without that functionality but mods really make M&B special. So if they do port M&BII to console, I hope its also going to get the forthcoming "promise" of mods as well.

 

[Sight Unseen]

Considering Mount and Blade: Warband was already ported to NVidia Shield, a console port shouldn't be too difficult.

Excited to see Bannerlord though!

 

[StewShearerOld]

Considering Mount and Blade: Warband was already ported to NVidia Shield, a console port shouldn't be too difficult.

Excited to see Bannerlord though!

Well that's good to know!

 

[Sight Unseen]

Considering Mount and Blade: Warband was already ported to NVidia Shield, a console port shouldn't be too difficult.

Excited to see Bannerlord though!

Well that's good to know!

Yeah! It's actually how I first got into the game since it was one of the premier controller-enabled Android games that was made for the original NVidia Shield. It worked pretty well but the touch screen was almost essential for some menus, so that'll need some fixing up for a console release. I ended up upgrading to the PC version because of modding, better framerates, and bigger battles (android started chugging if the battle had over 100 or so people) Aside from modding, the current consoles should be able to fix the framerate and battle size issues because the consoles are (hopefully) much more powerful than my little Android handheld

 

[antipunt]

Im pretty sure I'm playing this game wrong? Tried multiple times to get into it, but failed each time, only finding the game to be rather tedious

 

[Venatio]

I certainly hope that it becomes just a little easier to navigate the world politics to become King or Queen in Bannerlord. In the original Warband, even with the best Diplomacy mods, starting up your own faction was a painstaking task. While it was a little more streamlined to become King in "With Fire & Sword" it was still hard because 1) that DLC was awful and 2) the amount of work was still mind-numbing.

But I am very excited for Bannerlord, even if I am wary about the fact that they are trying for the console crowd. I also hope that companions become more intuitive, leveling up your team was often the most onerous part of my campaigns.

I will definitely be siding with one of the Imperial factions out the gate, and perhaps the heavy cavalry happy Vlandians later on.

Lastly, I hope they retain the marriage system from Warband and improve it with alliances. What's a knight without a princess to woo?

 

[hittite]

hopefully they can keep the scope of the game intact, the fort battles where I'd be leading the charge of 300+ men vs 300+ enemies in the fort were epic and just a giant clusterfuck of awesomeness.

Except Uhhun Castle. Where all combat takes place in a tiny freaking doorway.

 

[Darks63]

Im pretty sure I'm playing this game wrong? Tried multiple times to get into it, but failed each time, only finding the game to be rather tedious

I found that it is better to play it modded rather than vanilla. Mods can add more quests and such allowing you to get more money and levels in the early game. They can also help against difficulty spikes so you don't go from fighting robber bands to fully armored horse bandits.



OT: Awesome too bad i will likely not be able to run it on my pc .

 

[Thyunda]

Im pretty sure I'm playing this game wrong? Tried multiple times to get into it, but failed each time, only finding the game to be rather tedious

I sank fifty hours into it practically all at once, and then got really bored of it. Got given a village by a lord, then all the enemy armies bypassed the castles, towns and armies just to raid my village. Lost my whole army after twelve successive raids. Sure, I repelled armies four times my size every time, but losing ten of my 120 soldiers with each raid quickly turned into a disaster. All because I wouldn't abandon my village...I feel this needs re-iterating - the Nords and Khaganate sent twelve separate armies to raid one tiny little village in the middle of Swadian territory. Because it was mine.
Fucking bullshit.

But once I reached that first village, I lost interest. The battles were too pitched, the sense of progress totally gone and essentially, it was 'do as the lord says and make no progress' or 'try to rebel and fight the whole world map at once.'
The Viking Conquest mod has reinvigorated it a bit. I feel like I can roleplay in that. My Anglo-Saxon hunter, Talorcan Rowe, who makes his way by hunting boar (because that's in the expansion) and trading. Well, okay, that's how it was the first time I tried. I had to turn down the difficulty, because recruiting men in the expansion is almost impossible at the start, so maybe one in three villages would have two bandits waiting for me. With shields, so my bow was all but useless, and my seax even worse. I spent a lot of time getting killed. And it was totally unfair every time.

But, yeah, you might not be 'playing it wrong.' It might be that you prefer a sense of direction and don't particularly like wandering about and doing things for their own sake. Kill these bandits because they're there. Make money to buy better armour and weapons to kill bad guys and change the colour of letters above towns and then make more money. Just 'cause.

 

[meiam]

Im pretty sure I'm playing this game wrong? Tried multiple times to get into it, but failed each time, only finding the game to be rather tedious

To me warband is a terrible game with an amazing idea. The game has loads and loads of problem, it's not a game you just pick up because you hear good stuff about. It's a game you seek because its the closest things to some ideal game you sometime imagine but know it will never exist.

I mean, the control are pretty terrible (you can gain some respect for them, but it always stay awkward), the graphic are but ugly and there's no art style to save the day. The game has a bunch of weird decision, like not letting you chose your weapon in an arena fight or not letting you pick which unit you want with you when you raid a bandit settlement and instead giving you 2 medic who can barely hold a weapon. The huge battle are a massive disappointment since the number of unit on a map is capped at like 100ish with a few reinforcement, so huge battle of 400 vs 400 are just this slog since you have to do like 3-5 small skirmish in a row where the terrain inexplicably change every time. The AI is incomprehensible, with your ally sometime ignoring easy target in favor of going after certain defeat. And I could go on and on, but I still found myself sinking over 100 hour in the game because I just want this type of game to exist and be good.

 

[RedDeadFred]

Finally! I can't wait to see what they have to show.

Hey! I was going to say that. But ya we have been waiting so gosh darn long for this. I hope it doesn't end up bad.

Even if it's disappointing, the modding the community being as incredible as it is will surely make the game worthwhile.

OT: Warband is my favourite game of all time so finally getting to the see some of Bannerlord is more exiting for me than pretty much anything else that's been announced this year.