Mount & Blade II: Bannerlord – Future Plans

If you’d like to know what TaleWorlds Entertainment have in store for their sandbox RPG Mount & Blade II: Bannerlord, now that they’re getting ready to resume their usual full-time operations, you should check out this recent development update.

The entire thing is quite massive, so here are just the upcoming single-player features, and you take things from there:

Singleplayer

Switching the topic back to the game, in the short to medium term we intend to focus on the following priorities for singleplayer. However, please be aware that this is not an exhaustive list and you should expect a few additional surprises in addition to the planned features outlined below!

Battle Terrain System

The battle terrain system was initially announced in Development Update #7 and it was great to see the positive feedback that it received! The feature will provide a more strategic and unique experience for each and every battle by associating specific scenes with campaign map regions rather than terrain types, while also taking into account party positioning and orientation within the region to influence the initial battle setup.

Since the announcement, we have continued to work on the system and have notably increased the pool of field battle scenes to better support it. However, due to the sheer scale of this feature and the amount of work required, you can expect to see updates to this through the addition of new scenes long after it is made available to you.

Granting of Peerage to Companions

While adventuring through Calradia, it is almost guaranteed that you will pick up a companion or two to accompany you on your journey. These characters can fight alongside you in battle, or assist you with crafting, questing, or governing your fiefs. They may also be assigned to lead caravans or clan parties to earn you additional coin or influence. As your campaign progresses and the bonds between you and your followers develop, we feel that it’s only appropriate that you should be able to reward them for their loyalty and service by elevating them to the ranks of the nobility, if you so choose of course!

Order of Battle

While the Mount & Blade series has always emphasised fighting alongside and commanding your troops from within the thick of the battle, nothing speaks against establishing some order before you clash with your enemies!

This feature will allow you to assign troops and heroes to formations, as well as, give them orders and position them during the deployment phase for both battles and sieges.

Banner Bearers

Alongside Order of Battle, we are working on the Banner Bearer feature, which will allow heroes to bring their banners to battle and have them carried by soldiers within their formation. Not only will this make battles more colourful and visually diverse, but there will also be gameplay effects for the soldiers marching under each banner.

Party Templates

Another means to increase the variety of encounters and make AI party leaders feel more distinct are party templates. Currently, party leaders pursue largely the same “effective” template through their recruitment and upgrading of troops. We will explore and implement a greater number of templates that may be assigned to AI party leaders based on their cultural and character traits.

Cut Scenes

The sandbox simulation includes many significant life events, ranging from the death of a comrade to witnessing the birth of your child. Whether these are ill or good tidings, they are currently communicated quite abstractly. As such, we intend to give them more life and improve overall immersion by introducing several cut scene notifications, similar to the existing execution animation.

Looking a bit further ahead, we will continue to make progress in many other key areas of the sandbox, with some of our longer-term priorities being:

Sally Out Mission

Sieges in Bannerlord are quite dynamic events that can play out in a number of different ways, with one outcome being defenders sallying out to break the siege. Currently, the game will initiate a standard field battle for these encounters, which can be a little immersion breaking and isn’t truly befitting of the event. In the future, we want the sally out action to have its own dedicated mission that plays out on the relevant siege scene, making these unique events a bit more special. Forth Eorlingas!

Scenes

As always, and as our recent patch notes can attest to, work continues on adding a variety of new scenes to the game. In addition to Towns, our current focus is on creating scenes for the Battle Terrain System. Naturally, you should also expect to see improvements and updates to existing scenes, as well as, the addition of some new, more specific scenes. Claimant Quests

The setting of Mount & Blade II: Bannerlord is one of turmoil, with the Emperor murdered and the Calradic Empire heading towards civil war. It should come as no surprise that such times of change provide opportunities to actors that would otherwise have stayed in the shadows. They may just need the right hero to help them press their claim…

Vocalisation

Yup, you heard that right! A portion of the dialogues in Bannerlord will be voiced in English. This will focus on areas that you are likely to experience often or in a meaningful way, such as greetings and conversations from the main storyline.

Other

Of course, we will also be working on maintaining, balancing and improving all of the existing singleplayer features and content. This is including further AI fixes and improvements, for sieges in particular, as well as, a continued effort to improve performance across the board. This extends to the polishing of any newly introduced content, such as War & Peace reasons, and balancing existing mechanics like Birth & Death rates, skill experience gains, and armour effectiveness. It also covers the addition of smaller mechanics, like an AI death chance in simulation battles, an option to respec perks, and the ability to retire the active main character.

Furthermore, we will continue to expand content such as issue quests, music and sounds, animations, models (including crafting pieces), artwork, and so forth.