How to give a "soul" to this game?

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I'm no longer in my twenties and I've played a lot of games since 2007 or so when I first played M&B, so there is probably nothing this game could do to inspire the same awe.

I try to avoid going back and playing Warband, because whenever I do, the nostalgia gets ripped away and I realize just how jank that game was. But it was like the only one where you could ride on a horse and hit people while also being an open world at the time. And I hadn't figured out how everything worked (or didn't).
I echo this as well.
To tell the truth, I no longer believe in a positive evolution of this game for a long time. I also uninstalled it. I will re-test perhaps in ten years to see if there is finally something new... I'll say what I really think but I don't want to get kicked out of this forum. By not doing the right thing, other developers will end up releasing a better game without TW. I smell it. Good luck TW, I wish you no harm, but mocking your audience is not good long-term policy. I really hope I'm wrong. I'll probably try 1.9.0, if you manage to get it out. I hope she will surprise me, finally!
I had it uninstalled for most of its life span. Atm its a bad hack and slash game. There is so much potential left unaddressed. I give it another year of dev until they make significant gains.
 
I never go into cities or villages or castles because the game give me no need to. Apart from battles where i don't pay attention to the surroundings. The taverns could have strippers i wouldn't know.
Might because scenes are few,badly designed and have no interest.My hopes lie on modders.
 
I echo this as well.

I had it uninstalled for most of its life span. Atm its a bad hack and slash game. There is so much potential left unaddressed. I give it another year of dev until they make significant gains.
As I said on another thread, the bottom of my thought is that TW should have released a "battle version", without map, without sandbox and without campaign. Just an enhanced battle game (with a multiplayer option for those who like it). They could have focused on what they do best. They would have sold it for less but would have had fewer reviews. They would have been able to concentrate on what they do best: the battles. You like it or you don't like it, but there would probably have been a community of fans.

In parallel, they could have let a team work on other projects of "small RPG games" inspired by Warband, serenely, sheltered from criticism and in order to gradually expand the game universe with lore, stories , characters, without a map but with stories. We would have found the places we knew but with real NPcs. Still using their battle engine.

These "small RPG games" would have funded a team to work on a strategic "big version" (a kind of Warband 2 like Bannerlord but successful) and maintained the reputation of a small, imaginative and prolific studio. They could thus have worked on the big version without pressure while taking advantage of the other creations at the same time to flesh out the game. of the project to test it. Big games are "long" to create especially when they are very ambitious. It takes steps. And small "RPG" games would have made it possible to bring a "spiritual" dimension to the games.

It would have been more honest rather than releasing a kind of soulless Warband bis. "Short-term" trading strategies come back like boomerangs in the face even if temporarily it "pays off big". I understand that they had to bring in some money. But they took it like noodles.
 
I haven't dug into the modding potential and details beneath the hood of Bannerlord, but one of the limiting factors in basic M&B and Warband was the inability to place "inactive" objects into a scene, where they were invisible and intangible until/unless activated. To illustrate the problem:

With active/inactive objects, you can place additional scenery, buildings, walls, clutter, and so on, and have those items activated under certain conditions. Your character builds a village wall, so the wall becomes "active". It was always there, but now it's visible and blocks movement. The town gets more prosperous, so more "wares" and other clutter appear, or gets poorer and things are gone from the scene the next time your character enters. You can have one scene for the town, and all of the POTENTIAL objects can be pre-placed, to be activated or deactivated as the course of the game requires.

Without active/inactive objects, you need to make two complete versions of the scene for each "option": one with and one without the object(s) in question. Each combination of upgrades or changes requires its own complete "scene", so if you have 4 possible upgrades, that's 16 versions of the same setting. 6 choices and it becomes 36 different versions of the same scene. It gets unmanageable in a hurry.

M&B and Warband did not have this, I don't know whether or not it was added into Bannerlord's updated engine. If not, then I understand WHY a lot of proposed changes were NOT done, because it would be too unwieldy to do them with the current engine.
 
Technology wise this game is miles behind modern trends. Sandbox oriented RPGs are using since years procedural generation of terrain, textures etc. avoiding laborious hand-making of every single location in the game world. Weather it is galaxy or just continent size.

"Soul-wise" this game lacks voicing of npc's badly. It is often underestimated part of many games. Players, as humans, have more senses to absorb atmosphere of game than just sight. At least for me and my ears, I want to listen to the inhabitants of the game world speaking, not just sounds of objects hiting other objects emitting boom, beep, clink and ding-dong cacophony 😄
 
Technology wise this game is miles behind modern trends. Sandbox oriented RPGs are using since years procedural generation of terrain, textures etc. avoiding laborious hand-making of every single location in the game world. Weather it is galaxy or just continent size.

"Soul-wise" this game lacks voicing of npc's badly. It is often underestimated part of many games. Players, as humans, have more senses to absorb atmosphere of game than just sight. At least for me and my ears, I want to listen to the inhabitants of the game world speaking, not just sounds of objects hiting other objects emitting boom, beep, clink and ding-dong cacophony
Already, it would be necessary to write dialogues, even if I had to read them. And these dialogues must make sense, for that, you need a more elaborate "lore". You have to write it too. The first games of "Bethesda", "Elder Scroll", everything was worth reading. But it was so good that I didn't mind. The "old-fashioned" side, I don't care. The problem is the almost total absence of "surprising" interactions with npcs. Now, the introduction of sound effects in towns, taverns and villages, yes, I vote for it.

When the universe we discover is "well written", we forget that we have to read them.

On the contrary, we have fun discovering new details, new plots, new stories, new characters. If in addition, there is a little humor, it's even better.

For the moment, there is nothing to read, so "voices"...
 
I dont mind reading....when it is a book. For interaction with npc's I want to first hear them. Written dialogs are just like subtitles in movies for me.

I was positively surprised, after months of playing bannerlord and not touching so-called main quest, that Istiana (is it a correct name?) has few lines voiced! And she has a very nice voice indeed. I immediately "fell in love" with this npc...because it TALKS! 😍
 
I dont mind reading....when it is a book. For interaction with npc's I want to first hear them. Written dialogs are just like subtitles in movies for me.

I was positively surprised, after months of playing bannerlord and not touching so-called main quest, that Istiana (is it a correct name?) has few lines voiced! And she has a very nice voice indeed. I immediately "fell in love" with this npc...because it TALKS! 😍


I don't think you should dream, there will never be any dialogue, let alone voices.
TW made a lot of money with Early Access. Now they don't care.
 
Technology wise this game is miles behind modern trends. Sandbox oriented RPGs are using since years procedural generation of terrain, textures etc. avoiding laborious hand-making of every single location in the game world. Weather it is galaxy or just continent size.

"Soul-wise" this game lacks voicing of npc's badly. It is often underestimated part of many games. Players, as humans, have more senses to absorb atmosphere of game than just sight. At least for me and my ears, I want to listen to the inhabitants of the game world speaking, not just sounds of objects hiting other objects emitting boom, beep, clink and ding-dong cacophony 😄
I disagree about voiced npc's there is way to many characters for this happen and all those children will need a voice too. You would find the same voice replaying a lot. I think maybe if was xcom2 style with just a few phrases it may pass. I think what would work better if npc's had a personality type like in kenshi (made buy one guy) Slavers are slaves , the holy empire are the holy empire, cannibals will eat you. For me this can work if the traits allowed actions like honourable character could offer a duel in the talk tree for instance not every npc could offer this even the player would have to have the trait. This way all npc's would have actions that there allowed based on traits so they would be different . May be the next time you enter a empire city in peace time you get taken to a assassin attack hired buy a Empire lord you crossed. If you die the was murdered would pop up like when you us console to kill an ncp. If you hire assassins or spies failure of success could be done through a cutscene like in old total war games it would start the same but at the final moment to result could be seen then there is the killed ,captured, escaped end part of the cutscene , it work brilliantly that goes back to shogun 1 total war. which was released 22years ago.
 
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I disagree about voiced npc's there is way to many for this happen and all those children will need a voice too. You would find the same voice replaying a lot. I think maybe if was xcom2 style with just a few phrases it may pass. I think what would work better if npc's had a personality type like in kenshi (made buy one guy) Slavers are slaves , the holy empire are the holy empire, cannibals will eat you. For me this can work if the traits allowed actions like honourable character could offer a duel in the talk tree for instance not every npc could offer this even the player would have to have the trait. This way all npc's would have actions that there allowed based on traits so they would be different . May be the next time you enter a empire city in peace time you get taken to a assassin attack hired buy a Empire lord you crossed. If you die the was murdered would pop up like when you us console to kill an ncp.
Voice or no voice, I don't care. For me what is more important would be to have a campaign and a working sandbox. Only battles work in this game. Everything else is a fake game. A scam...
 
If you want to breathe soul into the game, you have to bring food for soul as well = faith/religion/church. It has always been essential and integral part of any medieval society. It could bring finally a layer for believable cassus belli and bring general template for interaction between different kingdoms.

Vlandia is monotheistic

Empire is monotheistic as well, but in conflict with Vlandia after big schizma of their once common religion

Battanians are pagans worshiping many old gods and are naturally opposing any monotheistic religions around.

Sturgians are in transition from poly to monotheism, internal strife old vs new

Aserai have new emerging monotheistic religion and are aming to spread it everywhere

Khuzait are worshiping sun, earth and water and in general don't give a damn about westerners fancy pantheon of gods. They just want to conquer = common enemy and PITA for the rest of Calradia
 
To compensate for a totally boring game mechanics, we would need a very dense background and lore to make us forget the game's weaknesses. However, there is nothing to discover in this game. When I started playing, I I said to myself when I discovered "Istiana", this is the introduction to a promising RPG dimension. But since the release of the game, it has not evolved. There is nothing to discover. It's all just pretense.
So either it's being created, but then why don't they communicate on this subject?
Either it's part of an aborted project, they could say that too.
If they don't make a big writing effort to give this game depth, a backstory, a real RPG dimension, this game will die.
 
I really would like intrigue in the game blackmail, rumours , spies , assassins (poison wine, a knife in the ribs, thugs in a ally way ) all could be brought with gold and influence . For me constant battle gets boring and peace time get dull trading gets dull. You can't make a more to be king of a faction without full scale war. Unless you make your own faction but that will lead to boredom too as there is nothing happen behind the scenes. It still have hope the the next updates change this or its going to be down to mods and it's not the rout i would like to take and that's only if people make them mods. The Sika mod its not what i am looking for through is big at the moment and looks good but i will be waiting unit full release.
 
I really would like intrigue in the game blackmail, rumours , spies , assassins (poison wine, a knife in the ribs, thugs in a ally way ) all could be brought with gold and influence . For me constant battle gets boring and peace time get dull trading gets dull. You can't make a more to be king of a faction without full scale war. Unless you make your own faction but that will lead to boredom too as there is nothing happen behind the scenes. It still have hope the the next updates change this or its going to be down to mods and it's not the rout i would like to take and that's only if people make them mods. The Sika mod its not what i am looking for through is big at the moment and looks good but i will be waiting unit full release.
I don't like "Sika" mod too. Not funny. Just mechanical, again. Boring again. It's up to the creators of this game to make it thrilling. There, the modders would have to do everything for them. It is mockery. Or, if TW can't make a real game, they contract with a company that can. Many games make sometimes very good partnerships. But it is also a "fear", because who says partnership, says new requirements and risks of dismissal. It's never funny. It's happened to others. Bethesda, for example...
They would need a partnership with a company that knows how to make great stories, build a lore, bring out intrigues, without breaking the basic game. Partners who know how to write and are used to working with developers... I'm not an expert, I'm not, but I have friends who have worked with Ubisoft or with the creators of "Life is Strange". There are real writers with them. Without going that far, because these are very narrative games, developing a backstory, a lore, characters, requires talent.
They were in the artistic team, graphic for some and knew well some "writers" for one. It was exciting for the developers because it allows you to be very creative. It's a nice approach to games.
 
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