Mount & Blade II: Bannerlord - Missed opportunities on historical context

[BrokenFang]

Mount & Blade II: Bannerlord - Missed opportunities on historical context I did up a video disusing the Missed opportunities of not using a real world map


more Historical Context both talked about in my video

and

 

[JustinTime49]

While I do understand your points, I disagree. Calradia, although inspired by the real world, is entirely a fictional realm and should be treated as such. For example, one of your points regarding Battania being destroyed makes sense lore-wise, as they do not exist within the sequel Warband. I think the issue if you could even call it that, is that Calradia's lore isn't very rich, an issue considering how generic the premise and setting is.

Take for example Tolkien's works. Between the Silmirillian, LotR, and Hobbit the world building and lore can rival that of our own world, allowing us to really invest ourselves in this fantasy land that is inspired by medieval armoury/conflict. Calradia does not have that level of depth and passion poured into, and tbh, I never really expect or expected it to.

 

[BrokenFang]

Thanks for taking the time to write the post, I understand that it is a fictional world. But my point is is kind of a waste it's perpetuating the white noise it doesn't actually benefit anybody, they use a real world map player base might actually learn some geography and some names of real-world castles maybe even motivate some individuals to go visit those ancient sites. It's entirely a waste they're putting man-hours into creating fluff and white noise which doesn't benefit anybody. They could actually shift to historical context and it would greatly benefit the player base and their General intellect

 

[Eneas21]

I think that going for a fictional world is a good idea, what really its the problem here is that its a boring world, I mean they could shape the land and make a cool world map with an atractive geography, instead they went like a big mass of terrain and all kingdoms get thrown in it, it feels weird.

On the other hand, Europe, the north of Africa and the East feel very interesting as a setting even in just geographical terms. So it wasnt neccesarily a bad choice to go fictional, but it was poorly done.

 

[BrokenFang]

I think my point is lost

 

[Riffraff99]

I am the opinion that Calradia is a good setting.
There are some points i dont like on BL Calradia (like Sargot) but thats not major.

Tbh i dont like how they designed the lore, it feels so empty and boring, and the existence of Sandbox Mode shows i am not the only one wich think like that.

 

[vonbalt]

While i understood your point and have both 1257ad and Viking Conquest as my favorite mods for warband for the historical setting i kinda disagree with you.

Not everything needs to be "educational", we've played through Europe's map in a hundred different games and sometimes a fantasy setting adds alot to something, in the case of M&B is that it allows plausible anachronism since Calradic cultures while similar to RL ones evolved different and have their own unique twists by their lore.

For example, in a historical setting like Viking Conquest the unit roster is very limited and cultural differences are minimal because these people shared lots of similar equipments and tactics like cores of spearmen, skirmishers, scouting cavalry, elite household warriors forming a first line of heavy infantry etc, that's also why the 1257ad devs made cultures shared between many kingdoms like western european, baltic etc, they were too similar to justify the work of making separated troop trees for each of them.

In the anachronistic setting of Calradia it allows a greater range of equipment and inspiration from a broader era, they have falxmen for example that were used in antiquity fighting early medieval knights, something that didn't happened in real-life, they managed to place a norman-like faction at the same time of a "crisis of the third century" inspired event in the imperial civil war, these wouldn't be possible in a historical setting, you would need to pick a date and then mold the map on the events that really happened there.

 

[Ulfhedinn_]

Caraldia allows a scenario in which you can enjoy "realism" without being bound by historical criteria.
Almost like a parallel universe. And I find that formidable!

 

[BrokenFang]

While i understood your point and have both 1257ad and Viking Conquest as my favorite mods for warband for the historical setting i kinda disagree with you.

Not everything needs to be "educational", we've played through Europe's map in a hundred different games and sometimes a fantasy setting adds alot to something, in the case of M&B is that it allows plausible anachronism since Calradic cultures while similar to RL ones evolved different and have their own unique twists by their lore.

For example, in a historical setting like Viking Conquest the unit roster is very limited and cultural differences are minimal because these people shared lots of similar equipments and tactics like cores of spearmen, skirmishers, scouting cavalry, elite household warriors forming a first line of heavy infantry etc, that's also why the 1257ad devs made cultures shared between many kingdoms like western european, baltic etc, they were too similar to justify the work of making separated troop trees for each of them.

In the anachronistic setting of Calradia it allows a greater range of equipment and inspiration from a broader era, they have falxmen for example that were used in antiquity fighting early medieval knights, something that didn't happened in real-life, they managed to place a norman-like faction at the same time of a "crisis of the third century" inspired event in the imperial civil war, these wouldn't be possible in a historical setting, you would need to pick a date and then mold the map on the events that really happened there.

Wow, well-written counterargument. All four of the one I've enjoyed reading the most. For me personally subconsciously memorize all these fake names that have no relevance and just filled my head with white noise. And I think one of the best litmus test or if the game need something that there's a mod for it and how popular that mod is oh, it's pretty obvious if a mod gets 1.9 million downloads it should be refined incorporated into the game at some extent. But what I've really gotten out of this conversation is that the map is really lackluster and maybe my desire for it to be realistic, is the fact that the map isn't adequate and its original setting. That seems to be the majority of the consensus here. It just seems like there's a bunch of Miss opportunity to incorporate thousand years of History with little nuggets of information. But I had yet to seen a good map mod that is not bugged out or has issues oh, but I think this conversation shows that they need to go back and do a rework on the map

 

[vonbalt]

Wow, well-written counterargument. All four of the one I've enjoyed reading the most. For me personally subconsciously memorize all these fake names that have no relevance and just filled my head with white noise. And I think one of the best litmus test or if the game need something that there's a mod for it and how popular that mod is oh, it's pretty obvious if a mod gets 1.9 million downloads it should be refined incorporated into the game at some extent. But what I've really gotten out of this conversation is that the map is really lackluster and maybe my desire for it to be realistic, is the fact that the map isn't adequate and its original setting. That seems to be the majority of the consensus here. It just seems like there's a bunch of Miss opportunity to incorporate thousand years of History with little nuggets of information. But I had yet to seen a good map mod that is not bugged out or has issues oh, but I think this conversation shows that they need to go back and do a rework on the map

I'm kinda divided in this cause on one side i love history but on another i also love fantasy settings and lore that take inspiration from RL but add it's own unique twists, Tamriel from the Elder Scrolls series being a favorite of mine for exactly this having cultures so similar to ours while so alien at the same time, it's awesome.

Also i completely agree with you on the map part, Calradia as a setting is a great idea but the implementation is far from ideal to me, especially this last revision of the map we got with the early access that has lots of nonsensical geography (lakes that don't make sense, mountains everywhere etc) making the map more similar to MOBA lanes than a real world-map, we've had discussions on this for ages in the forums.

One thing i also particularly dislike is how each kingdom is a monolithic culture except for the empire torn into a 3-way civil war, there really should be more factions sharing the same or similar culture to spice things up in my opinion, Vlandia for example being so warlike and with many barons disliking the pacifist ways of king Derthert don't have a single independent duke or split kingdom sharing the same culture? for real?

One of my favorite mods for exactly this reason is Calradia Expanded for adding more numerous fiefs and moving them to places where they make much more sense and it's Kingdoms submod that split each faction into 2-3 ones, the Vlandians for example are split into Royalists vs Rebels which is awesome to me, the Aserai are split into 3 factions to make it more interesting instead of having one faction dominating the entire southern part of the map and so on.

 

[Ananda_The_Destroyer]

1257 AD mod will return for all my educational needs.

 

[yangot]

I think the hard part of making a game based on history is accuracy. There are many version of history and every version will be incorrect to other people. Bannerlord is fine enough.

Its better to leave historical version to modders since they have more freedom creating their own version of bannerlord, and its more convenient

 

[Askorti]

Thanks for taking the time to write the post, I understand that it is a fictional world. But my point is is kind of a waste it's perpetuating the white noise it doesn't actually benefit anybody, they use a real world map player base might actually learn some geography and some names of real-world castles maybe even motivate some individuals to go visit those ancient sites. It's entirely a waste they're putting man-hours into creating fluff and white noise which doesn't benefit anybody. They could actually shift to historical context and it would greatly benefit the player base and their General intellect

Not all media needs to be educational. If you want to learn geography and names of real life historical places, you have other games, tv shows, movies, music that will fill that void for you. M&B does not have to add to that.
They are putting in man-hours to serve a goal, make money. And that effort was not wasted in any way, shape, or form, given how many copies were sold.