Mount & Blade II: Bannerlord Interview With TaleWorlds CEO Armagan Yavuz

Mount & Blade is a game I've spoken about at length. From my impressions piece earlier today, even to dropping its name in articles for titles that have some similarities like Conqueror's Blade. Following my hands-on time with Mount & Blade II: Bannerlord, you can read my impressions here, I got to speak at length with TaleWorlds CEO Armagan Yavus.

We spoke about everything from the development of the world and how easier it will be to interact with the world, to the development of your character and the sweeping changes made there. Of course, no interview about the game could go without also covering sieges, battles, weapons and when the game will eventually be released.

 

Chris Wray: Let's start with the obvious. How are you? How has your Gamescom been so far?

Armagan Yavuz: I'm very good. It's been very busy but people seem very happy with what they have seen so far.

Chris: So with Mount & Blade II, can you tell me how will you build on the previous titles and their expansions?

Armagan: Our basic philosophy and vision was to expand on everything. We want to make everything better, more majestic and more realistic. In the first game, we had a lot of great feedback about the game but a lot of people found it difficult to get into. We wanted to remedy that, make the game much more transparent and understandable without sacrificing the depth of the gameplay.

Chris: So to enable people to get into the game that much easier, more accessible? How are you doing that?

Armagan: Yes, exactly. We're trying to do that in every aspect of the game. For example, the menus are much clearer now. They're better organised and structured. Also, you can right click on anything to open up an explanation for it. You can hover over anything and you'll get a tooltip describing how the stat is performing. For example, you can look at your party speed and it will say you are getting 10% bonus for the horses you have and maybe a 3 or 4% lower because you are fighting too much. The game will describe itself and explain itself.

Chris: It certainly sounds more user-friendly and accessible.

Armagan: I hope so yeah.

Chris: So, do you have any expansion on the building in Mount & Blade II? Can you build your own city?

Armagan: We have a lot of improvements across the board. You can't build your own city from the ground up, but what you can do is take existing cities and upgrade and improve them. We will also reflect that on the 3D scene as well. For example, you will start with a city or castle with wooden palisades. When you walk around you will see the wooden palisades. If you can invest and upgrade that, you will upgrade them to stone towers and the gameplay will change accordingly.

Chris: And how about factions, have you made any changes to that system?

Armagan: There are a lot of things like that. You'll be able to have your own family. For example, if you have a brother you'll also be able to have him command a party. If, say, you go on a campaign, you'll be able to order him to hold the fort and defend your land for example.

Chris: So on campaigns, you'll be able to have your own factions and go to war with others?

Armagan: We call it a clan, but definitely. You can have your own clan and go to war. You can also join one of the existing kingdoms and try to rise up there. You can even find ways to take over the kingdom and try to become master of the world.

Chris: I remember in Mount & Blade: Warband, for example, you could control your own city. However, it was difficult once you expanded and manage other cities. Are there improvements in place to make that easier?

Armagan: Town and castle management is much easier to use now. The game is also a little different from Mount & Blade in that if you take a town, you will also automatically get the villages so you'll have the entire area. We also have a system inside a kingdom where there is political conflict and a system to do various things. So you could manipulate the kingdom so you can control some towns and castles that are close to each other, even though you are not the king. Of course, if you are the king, you will have more tools.

Chris: Moving onto sieges, do you have any new features like new weapons or methods for sieging a town or castle?

Armagan: Definitely. Sieges are one area we've really focused on. You can use a lot of different siege tools and engines, like towers, catapults and trebuchets and more. You can order your soldiers to use them but also take control and use them yourself. We want it to be very haptic and interactive, everything to be usable. We want very action oriented and interesting sieges.

Chris: What I did notice is the inclusion of different environments and specific battle areas. Has there been a push to improve on this, also to include very specific areas like mountain passes, caves where bandits hideout and such as that?

Armagan: We have tried to work a lot on environments. There is definitely a variety but we have been working a lot on realism. We are using specific software that will model wind erosion, water erosion and other geographical processes so the terrain is much more realistic and interesting.

We also have a different variety of specific areas that depend on where the hideout is. It can be a cave system near the sea, in a forest, it could be a little village. We have a bunch of those. We will also have different scenes that place in such as a mountain pass. The way we assign which scene you will play is based on the location you are on the world map.

Chris: Will you have any extra features in the campaign for Mount & Blade II. Will there be any stories related to the fact you have a family and such as that?

Armagan: We will have a very basic storyline that will get you into the game. Basically, it will be a story to introduce you to the world, let you understand the kingdoms, who is who and help you understand the game mechanics. Then it will take a back seat and allow the players to play the open-ended game freely.

It won't be there to guide them down a linear, scripted story. That's how we like to develop the story in our games. It's there to help you understand and get you into the game. We think it's much more fun in our game to allow the player to have freedom and make their own story.

Chris: To keep with the emergent storytelling that featured in the previous titles. With that, will the game continue with elements of that? So, for example, with your clan can you develop it over time. For example, find a woman, marry her and have children? Also, will you be able to bring in allies to your clan as you were able to in the previous title, promote them and give them areas to control?

Armagan: You can definitely marry in the game and have children. The timeframe will probably to too limited for some things. Eighteen years is a long time in our game, so for example how feasible it will be to be able to play as your children. You will have a family system though.

We will also retain the companion system in the game. You will be able to hire and recruit companions to your party. There are also so many ways we are expanding how useful they are to you. We have designated roles now. For example, you can assign one companion as your quartermaster and another as your scout.

Also, once you have towns and castles you can assign them as your governors to bring bonuses to the towns and castles. They can also defend the areas better. There are so many different ways in which the companions will be used.

Chris: Could you explain if there are any changes to how the characters are developed. Are there are any changes in stats, skills and abilities?

Armagan: The character has undergone quite radical changes. We have redesigned all the skills, we have eighteen different skills now. Each skill also has to be practised individually to improve them. For example, if you want to increase your trade skill, you need to trade a lot and make a profit. Also, if you fight with a one-handed sword, you only increase your one-handed skill.

Chris: So the skills are raised specifically based on your actions?

Armagan: On your actions, yes. Each has its own experience. Players can still drive that process by putting focus points into individual skills. The focus points do not directly increase the skills but change the pace at which skills are learned.

Chris: Similar to an experience booster of sorts? So if you have a focus point in a skill, rather than earning one point you may get ten?

Armagan: Yes, exactly. So it's quite useful. Each skill also then has something like twenty different perks. Each perk can give you a specific bonus in various areas. It is usually the case that as you learn the skill, many perks will open up, you cannot have all the perks together. For example, you may have two perks available at one point and you will have to select between them.

We have made the system to not allow you to become superhumanly powerful. You will have to have a good strategy and make a clever character build.

Chris: Have you made any changes to the weapons and the battle system? From what I played, there certainly feels to have been some alterations in the combat.

Armagan: We already had a good variety of weapons but we have focused on changing the system a little bit. We now have a system that is more physical based and also based on a crafting system. We now have a crafting system where you can put together parts and create your own sword, axe or whatever.

It also does a sort of physical simulation to drive the stats out of the parts that you put together. It allowed us to remove the old kind of items and weapons where we just assigned stats the way we liked. We have turned everything, at least the melee weapons at least, are created this way.

Chris: Is this crafting system also based on the skill system? For example, can you place two very high powered weapons together and still result in a poor weapon or even fail?

Armagan: Exactly, yes, crafting is also a skill. You can also have a companion work on it. As you do the crafting, though, the more skill you have it can give you a bonus to the stats of the weapon that you craft. It can allow you to get stronger and higher damaging weapons.

Chris: Will it also apply to armour?

Armagan: Currently no, we don't have an armour crafting system. Maybe it's something to look at for the future. It is technically much more challenging than the weapon crafting system. You have to make sure the armour doesn't clip and more, which is a bit of a headache.

Chris: Do you know roughly when you may release Mount & Blade II? also, are you looking at early access?

Armagan: Early access is something we are talking about, it's a possibility. We don't exactly have a date, what we want to do is keep things simple and stay focused, make sure we make the game we want to make.

Chris: So it'll be ready when it's ready?

Armagan: Exactly

Chris: Will you also be looking at launching consoles as well as the PC? If so, will you release simultaneously or the console version at a later date?

Armagan: Consoles are something we are definitely interested in. We were able to release Warband on PlayStation and Xbox so we very much want to release on consoles as well. As for the release, we honestly don't know at this time.

Chris: Do you have any rough idea when you may be ready? Of course, it's ready when it's ready but could we be looking 2020 or even further?

Armagan: We don't really want to speculate on a release date that we might have to postpone and disappoint the players. Most of the early game is ready now but a lot of late game features like kingdom management, town management and sieges have made good progress but we need to polish them up and make sure they're at a good standard before we can release.

Chris: Excellent. Thank you for your time.

Armagan: Thank you, such a pleasure.

 

Follow Wccftech on Google to get more of our news coverage in your feeds.