The long wait for Mount & Blade II: Bannerlord seems to definitely be winding down soon, as we see a list of achievements appear on Steam.
It’s been a long wait for fans, as they had to tell fans that they did not have a slated release date for the game as far back as five years ago.
At the time, developer Talesworld gave an in-depth explanation that went into the specifics of game development and their particular situation.
Bucking the trend in the industry, Talesworld isn’t owned by a large conglomerate. This meant that they aren’t accountable to shareholders to provide a ‘reasonable’ return on investment, limited by budget and scale. For Talesworld, as used to be the case for many game companies at one point, they had the leisure to decide when to release the game, and for that matter if and when to cancel it.
Talesworld also explained the broader vision they had for the game. Mount & Blade II: Bannerlord will have a gigantic sandbox campaign with many features, including fief and kingdom management, a trading system, diplomacy and relationship system, and battles with hundreds of combatants. The multiplayer section was also planned to have a matchmaking system, and even full mod support.
Five years later, Talesworld feels that they have built the game that they want to release, and on top of that, they have prepared ports of the game to five different platforms.
In our preview we had noted that multiplayer enables players to connect and engage with each other in both smaller scale skirmishes, and enormous battles with hundreds of players.
Talesworld was successful in building a giant sandbox world, and they also added many elements that were not even being talked about five years ago. They had demonstrated dialogue options and menus for army building, and suggested forges where players can muddle in weapon customization.
It is worth noting that Talesworld did not develop this game for five years in isolation, and in fact they had iterated on the game so well that we had covered their multiplayer class and persuasion systems. You can even note from the dates we had published these articles, that this game had continued to be a public work in progress.
Looking at the bigger picture, Talesworld announced Mount & Blade II: Bannerlord all the way back in 2012. This success at independent development makes one wonder if other game studios can duplicate this particular method of making games. But then, it may bring to mind what is most likely the longest game in development, Star Citizen. Star Citizen it has now raised half a billion in funding, but Chris Roberts still doesn’t see it ready for final release. If anything, maybe there are things other independent game companies can learn, about how to make a game like Mount & Blade II: Bannerlord and not like Star Citizen.
Mount & Blade II: Bannerlord will be released on PlayStation 5, PlayStation 4, Xbox One, Xbox Series X|S, and PC on October 25, 2022.
Source: SteamDB via Reddit
