Mount & Blade II: Bannerlord Developer Blog - Gamescom 2018 Recap

This week's developer blog for Mount & Blade II: Bannerlord recaps the team's experiences from this year's Gamescom and shares a number of gameplay videos recorded during the trade fair. Check out the link above for the assorted videos, or read a quick overview below:

Greetings warriors of Calradia!

Last week, we had the pleasure of attending Gamescom to present a hands-on demo of the singleplayer sandbox campaign of Mount & Blade II: Bannerlord for the first time. Attending this kind of event is a lot of work, but at the same time, we had a lot of fun! More than 500 journalists, YouTubers, streamers, and even fellow developers from other companies came to our booth in the 3 days that we were present at the event. It was great having the opportunity to show what we are doing and it was humbling to see everyone so excited about the game!

Now that the dust has settled a little bit, we want to summarise some of the coverage that has already been published. Even if you have already watched a video or read an article about our demo, you may have missed some details or content. As we explained a couple of weeks ago, the demo we showed was really vast: three characters, each in their own region and with plenty of things to do.

The demo itself consisted of gameplay from the early-game phase of the campaign. Guests were able to explore the world and meet its inhabitants, take quests from notables, trade, enter tournaments, take part in gang fights, and meet their enemies on the field of battle. It was quite a lot of content to squeeze into 30 minutes of gameplay, which is something we will definitely keep in mind for any future events.

Finally, all of your comments and feedback during and after the event have been warmly received. We are still working our way through all of your questions and have decided to dedicate next week’s blog to answer as many of these as we can. Until then, make sure to keep an eye out for additional gameplay footage and articles coming out from our guests at Gamescom.

And if videos aren't your thing, PC Gamer offers their Bannerlord impressions in the form of a text article. An excerpt:

“How do you have so much money?” asks the Mount & Blade 2: Bannerlord booth manager at Gamescom as I end my half-hour session. People trafficking, my good man. During my short time with the game I made thousands fighting bandits, taking prisoners, and selling the prisoners on to a local town. A guy in town paid me for neutralising the bandit threat as well, and I steal some extra armour for myself after battle. I'm making money all the way down this chain.

It's refreshing to be dropped into Mount and Blade 2's medieval sandbox with no objectives whatsoever. There are no arch demons to thwart, or evil kings to overthrow, I'm free to quest for riches and better pants instead.

Like the first game you can hire warriors and fight alongside them in third-person battles, and as a mercenary you're free to take jobs with any town vendors you fancy. You can enter towns and wander up to a quest-giver, or pick them from a menu screen to save time. As you complete jobs they will like you more, and you can hire more advanced soldiers. Soldiers level up after battles and evolve into better troops over time.