"The world does not tell a story. There is very little sense of history or the impact of the passage of time. This is different from having a Main Quest line. Games can tell a compelling story without having a predefined narrative, just look at CK2"
How does CK2 do that? Also, not a great idea relying on someone else to have played the game to infer what you mean. The devs might not have played the game either, and thus have no idea how ck2 does this better.
Also, the point i was trying to get across in my initial reply to you was that you have many bullets explaining that a problem exists, without really addressing what the problem is.
You say that constant war is boring, but without specifically pointing out why. I can assure you, not being constantly at war, would be even more boring because then you would have little to do but attack looters/small bandit parties.
How does CK2 do that? Its quite simple, but complex at the same time. I have played CK2 for a very short time, a very very short time but I could see a story beggining to flow just in 10 minutes of gameplay. The reason is: dynamic design, diverse characterization, an immense amount of opportunities and logic, basic logic.
Lets say you want to start a war in Bannerlord. Attack a caravan. Yeah thats it. War started. Lets say lords want to start a war in Bannerlord. They just vote for it. There is no reason, they vote for kt and thats it.
Now try to start a war in CK2. You need a reason, you have to use a tactic, you send a messenger that claims that land, that messenger is your chancelor and he might deflect your kingdom and become part of the other ruler, now you have to think on something else, now that is part of your story, thats awesome!
That is a very little example but it translates to everything Bannerlord does wrong. There are no traitors, there are no political intrigues, there are no asssasinations, you dont get sick, you dont worry about your kingdom you dont care about anything, you have no other objective that isnt conquering land. Its the only avaibavle opportunity in Bannerlord. Conquering land. Its the only thing to do. If you want to do anything else the game wont permit it, they say you can be a trader, a mercenary, a lord, a whatever, that is a blatant lie because all of it is dull and boring and repetitive and you cant expect anything new to happen in this game, they're all fantasies you must imagine yourself, and you will never feel accomplished unless your objective is conquer land destroy army conquer land.
The main quest is an attempt to fix this issue of having nothing to do but it's probably the worst way to do it in a game that is intended to be a sandbox with different playthroughs, it makes you think what the hell where they thinking on. Putting all their resources to build a main quests instead of making actual characters with life and breath.
Take a devious lord, how is he devious? Is he mean, is he treacherous? Traits only affect if a lord will burn a village or not and if what charisma check button you must press, and that's it, it's completely superficial, while in CK2 traits make a difference on wether you will convince a lord to do this or that or on what action will he make afterwards. Just check any youtube video on Bannerlord and any youtube video on CK2, you will see how stories confluacte on each other in CK2, and how every story in Bannerlord plays out the same with different colors. Bannerlord is not bad as a simulator made in 2008 but it hasn't advanced in term of features since then, it's the same premise that got completely washed out.
It's so afraid to take chances that every faction has almost the same amount of town and castles instead of making one live in actual hell and that one being the most difficult to play into.