Mount & Blade Preview

Mount & Blade’s recent publishing deal has piqued the interest of mainstream media, as GameSpy picks up the Indie title to give it a try. And they’re impressed.

All of this experimental gameplay was put together on a shoestring budget with literally years of community feedback. Being a small developer, TaleWorlds doesn’t have the big bucks to invest in cutting-edge animation, so the graphics of the game are decidedly dated. Individual screenshots look pretty sharp, and the town and castle environments are outstanding, but the character models sometimes move like puppets.

Don’t let the dated graphics stand in the way of the rich gameplay underneath, though. You can download a shareware beta of the game from the TaleWorlds Website or from FilePlanet, allowing you to ramp up a character to level six and see the game in action.

Mount & Blade has been picked up by Paradox Interactive for publication and distribution, so this indie game that’s been making its way through the forums is finally going to be hitting retail shelves and digital download services in the near future. We spoke briefly with Fredrik Wester, executive VP for Paradox Interactive, about what’s in store for the retail release of the game. He promised some updated graphics, more polish, and plenty more quests.