Mount & Blade Interview

Rock, Paper, Shotgun interviews lead developer Armagan Yavuz on the recently released Mount & Blade.
RPS: Mount & Blade's most obviously unique feature is how it handles horse-based combat. Why do you think horses have been so badly treated in games so far?

Yavuz: Horse-based combat is a difficult feature to build into a game, because it requires some very complicated gameplay mechanics. We really wanted to incorporate horseback combat into Mount & Blade, though, to add another dimension of gameplay and give players a better idea of the exciting realism of medieval combat- no potions or spells, just the adrenaline rush of speeding toward your enemy on horseback and taking him out with a lance or sword. So we really took the time to develop the horseback element of the game to make it as realistic as possible.

RPS: What sort of games inspired you as creators? And linked to that, why did you decide to create games anyway? What do you love about them?

Yavuz: As I mentioned before, we were very much influenced by the feel of Sid Meier's Pirates!, along with other games such as Darklands, The Elder Scrolls: Daggerfall, Elite 2, and older Koei strategy games like Ghengis Khan. Each of those games does certain things very well, but we are especially fond of having lots of freedom and replayability.