I didn’t mean for this to happen.
I needed money, that’s all. I had blown my entire fortune on the construction of a new mill in my fief, to increase the prosperity of the village and (as a nice bonus) its profitability to me in the form of taxes. Suddenly I found myself in the city of Werchek with a meagre 170 denars to my name and a force of 50 men to pay 350 denars at the end of the week. I had to get money, and I had to get it fast.
So I went to the nearest enemy village and started pillaging. Werchek is right near the border to the Vaegir lands, so it wasn’t far. The last time I did this, I gained 3000 denars in a couple of days of looting, and I met no resistance. But this time, a band of sea raiders showed up and rallied the villagers against me. I found myself in command of 50 well armed men faced with 65 very angry villagers and 23 sea raiders.
I placed my men on the highest point in the village and charged into the enemy ranks on my heavy warhorse. It was a massacre. In the end, even the women of the village attacked and fell at the end of my lance. I had slaughtered an entire village, but… it wasn’t my fault. It was those damn sea raiders.
I marched back to Werchek to sell all the loot my force could carry for an impressive 4000 denars. On the way, one of my lieutenants, Ysmira, stopped me to confront me with her dissatisfaction with the recent blood bath. I told her I had noted her objection, now fall back in line. I am not a good person.
Mount & Blade succeeded in making me feel like a right bastard, which is quite a feat for a game with basically no story. There is nothing in there resembling a plot. There is a narrative, sure, but it’s all up to you. What Mount & Blade does well is supply a wide range of features with which to form your own narrative: Warring nations ruled by rivalling lords, an economy that can be exploited to profitable ends, dynamically constructed tasks to gain or lose favour with villages or lords, exiled contenders for the thrones currently possessed by others, wronged ladies whose cause you may champion by duelling offending lords, villages you may gain lordship over, heroes you may recruit to your party, and armies you can raise and train from useless recruits to powerful veterans.
There’s almost enough of this to make for a compelling narrative. Unfortunately moments such as my brief confrontation with Ysmira are too rare and too brief. There was no long and detailed argument with her about the necessity or unavoidability of killing innocents in times of war, she simply informed me that she did not approve. The next time I raided a village, she had finally had enough and told me she could no longer face the harsh realities of war; then she left.
I want more of this. I want more frequent and more detailed reactions to my decisions. I want my heroes to develop an actual relationship to me, I want them to have opinions of me and I want to be able to influence those opinions. If only TaleWorlds had gone into as much detail with their emergently narrative elements as they did with the management and battle parts of the game, this would have been game of the year material.
Because the game is very detailed, but in other ways. Obsessive detail has been put into the management and battle systems of the game. Your actions, your abilities, and your force composition influence the morale of your army which gives you an advantage or detriment in battle. Troops may be wounded in battle rather than killed and will take some time to recover. Shields will deteriorate each time they are destroyed in a fight until they become entirely useless. Horses come in many varieties and may have special qualities such as “heavy” or “spirited” which make them better than their normal counterparts, but if incapacitated in a fight, they may become lame. Lame horses are slow and difficult to control, but can in time be trained back to their normal state, though special horses will become regular.
Mount & Blade is a big and epic game. It’s also extremely open. It’s not trying to be a great adventure like Lord of the Rings, instead it strives to be a simulation of being an adventurer, a rebel, or a lord in a land much like northern Europe ca. 1100-1300. Its greatest asset is its titular mounted combat, at which it excels like no other game I’ve ever played – though admittedly I believe the only other game I’ve played featuring mounted combat was Two Worlds, which was quite abysmal in most ways. Ramming your armoured warhorse through an enemy formation and spearing a knight on your lance is really quite a lot of fun, and though it’s a detailed and nuanced system, you quickly get the hang of it.
The game looks reasonably good too, though it’s obviously not Oblivion or anything like that. In DirectX 9 mode with everything set to max, it runs like a peach on my (less than cutting edge) machine and looks quite nice with dynamic lighting, ragdoll physics, and pretty solid character animations. Its world design is good too, with villages looking often quite picturesque and landscapes appearing detailed and natural. The environments in the game are also somewhat varied, from lush forests to frozen mountains, though the frequent reuse of battlefields can get pretty repetitive.
Finally, the game gets extra plus points from me for featuring a viking-like faction called The Nords. What they lack in cavalry, they make up for in infantry, and I have dedicated my first campaign to helping them conquer the Russian-styled lands of the Vaegir – and hopefully getting lordship of a castle or two in the process.
I guess I’ll try the demo, and hope it’s not very similar to medieval 2. Though maybe it’s not a bad thing if it is.. I loved that game.
You mean M2: Total War, right? From what I’ve seen and heard about Medieval 2 it’s completely different from M&B. M&B is tactics on a far smaller scale than Total War, and its overland map is strictly about your movement through the world rather than grand-scale army strategy.
M&B has strong tactical and even strategic elements, but it’s not really a strategic game – it’s more about management. It’s an RPG with management elements. And though you can order your troops around with simple commands in the battlefield (follow me, hold this spot, stand closer, charge…) you’ll mostly be playing the battles as an action game.
When you’re on horseback, it’s almost a game about running people over. Especially when you have a lance (which is a bit harder than swinging a one-hand weapon but ridiculously more effective), it’s all about lining up your weapon for a good solid strike. The mounted combat really is exceptional, as you would expect from a game about mounted combat
That’s reassuring. Oh and the demo is actually the game with level cap, I love indie developers. Now where is the co-op mode?
When I try the game I’ll post some thoughts. (if they are relevant)
A co-op mode would be incredibly epic, but it might be kinda hard to get it to jive with the overland map. I think I can think of a few solutions, but TaleWorlds seem to be focusing on some sort of competitive multiplayer component now.
It sounds good, but also as though our favorite game mechanic went under-utilized once more….
I’m mostly curious about what the management part of the game has done to make you like it
Traditionally managers are the realm of turn based strategy games, top-down tactics games, survival horror games and sports games…action games and rpgs rarely give you more to manage than an inventory and a skill tree.
Which I think is sad, of course – managing conflicting interests is essential to building a sense of depth when it comes to any decision making, and depth to real time decisions is all about.
So yeah. How’s this game different in it’s management scheme ? What’s it like ?
Addendum:
and *adding* depth to real time decisions is *what immersive gaming is* all about.
I don’t mind management, only if it’s excessive or if it’s the sole basis of the game – I mind micromanagement, not macro. M&B just lets you make the interesting decisions (upgrade your recruits to archers, infantry, or cavalry? Can you afford to hire more men? How to equip your heroes? What building to construct for your fief?) but you don’t need to micromanage.
For example, as long as you have food in your inventory, your men will eat it automatically, you don’t have to ration or anything like that. In other words, the management is streamlined enough to be fun and understandable without being so streamlined as to eliminate the meaningful decisions.
You also get to level up your heroes, which is awesome. It’s just a damn shame they don’t have more and deeper dialogue. That would’ve made the game truly fantastic
The mounted combat is quite good but once you’re on foot it feels really clunky.
Wondering is fun, but after a while, you realise there is really nothing to explore because everything is more less the same.
Unfortunately for me this game feels a bit shallow, there is not enough to do and there is also no story to keep me focused.
It’s not a bad game but it lacks “spirit”.
Yeah like I said, it’s a game that demands that you set your own goals. Overthrowing the king of a specific country by raising a rebel army in support of the exiled claimant to the throne is one I can see working well.
Becoming the marshall of a faction and supporting them in gaining control of as much of the land as possible is the one I’m using. Though on the shorter term, my goal is to raise an army of 100 and get my own castle.
I predict I will lose interest relatively soon, as games with higher production values and actual plots require my attention, sadly.
“Becoming the marshall of a faction and supporting them in gaining control of as much of the land as possible is the one I’m using. Though on the shorter term, my goal is to raise an army of 100 and get my own castle.”
Hmm.. I haven’t seen anything like that! Then again I was never very good with games that required me to set my goals.
Fallout 3 may be the exception, you have lots of quest, but on my second time I just wandered around the wasteland, and not only did I realised that I missed more or less half the game, I also enjoyed setting goals like, finding the railway gun, taking out every raider camp, finding every follower etc etc.
Fallout 3 set the bar really high.
Fallout 3 is a good sort of halfway station between storydriven games like Deus Ex and completely open games like Mount & Blade. M&B is definitely the most open game I’ve ever played in that it refuses you any kind of direction, and that makes it very demanding to play
nice story and description of the game i personally cant get enough of the game… i have one hundred huscarl and eleven nord veterans. i also own praven, narra four castles and counless villages. oh and the two hundred thousand denars also is worthy of mention
oh and raidin villages it totally cool in my book. cept ymirra never left me.
A well written piece Jonas.
hey do you know if they have this hame for xbox? i rely wanna play it but dont think my mo will let me put it on her pc.
Sorry, it’s Windows PC only.
It sorta feels like Dnd but not as free