Mount & Blade II: Bannerlord Development Progress Update

PC Gamer has rounded up excerpts from a number of TaleWorlds’ developer forum posts and interviews pertaining to the current progress of Mount & Blade II: Bannerlord. Unfortunately, aside from generalized statements of work being done there isn’t much else there. Rumors of external testing are firmly denied, the likelihood of a co-op campaign remains slim, and a playable version of the game within two months is considered unlikely. While these tidbits may seem lackluster, sometimes knowing what not to expect is just as important as the opposite.

Here are a couple of quotes from Frank Elliot, TaleWorlds community manager:

Regarding the studio’s efforts on improving combat systems, for instance, he said TaleWorlds is working on “everything really, just making combat look and feel great in every sense!” He provided a more detailed response to questions about character aging and mortality, a feature that’s been mentioned but not detailed, but ended up in roughly the same place.

“Unfortunately it’s not the right time (or really the right platform) to talk about unrevealed aspects of these features. Nothing is a guarantee and although we try to avoid it, everything has the potential to be changed entirely or dropped altogether; such is the nature of game development,” he wrote. “However, we have made every effort to ensure that features we mention are either fully/partially implemented or planned with a very high degree of certainty (which isn’t a response to the actions of or reactions to actions of any other company—it has always been our approach!). We don’t just mention things without consideration and permanent character death is still something you can expect to see in the game. That hasn’t changed. It’s simply the case that discussing finer details of the feature wouldn’t be appropriate right now, to avoid giving information that could end up misleading, in relation to Bannerlord as a final product.”

Elliott did emphasize that no external testing has yet taken place, saying, “Anyone who tells you otherwise is either misinformed or lying!” He also addressed rumors that development had run into trouble because of the departure of a key person. “Our previous lead engine programmer did move to another company some time ago. About a year… I think? But that’s not the kind of thing that would stop a game from getting finished,” he wrote. “While he is a brilliant computer engineer and a lovely bloke, we have a fantastic team of engine programmers and I think they’re working very well.”