Gremgoblin
Recruit
First of all, I want to state that I have my fair share of issues with this game that are not related to the quests or the companions or any of the features that are in the game currently, but rather those that are not in the game. My reason for mentioning this is that I think this game provides a really great framework for the future and it definitely is a game that can, provided enough work goes into it, become a really amazing game that we will talk about for years to come, on the scale of TES: Morrowind, for example.
However one thing that I have noticed is that the quests and companions really need some work. It's definitely not gamebreaking in any capacity and obviously, on the scale of priorities for what to work on, this is rather low on that scale. But once the game is stable enough and the issues that are making the game unplayable are fixed, this really should be taken into account and preferably fast.
However one thing that I have noticed is that the quests and companions really need some work. It's definitely not gamebreaking in any capacity and obviously, on the scale of priorities for what to work on, this is rather low on that scale. But once the game is stable enough and the issues that are making the game unplayable are fixed, this really should be taken into account and preferably fast.
- First of all, the quests lack character. It is surprising to me because this was the case in Warband too but at least we had variety in quests then. Now, we have 5 village elders who all lost their daughters somehow. It's like some sort of neo-feminist uprising (great idea for a plotline in the empire somewhere) where women decide to run off with unsuitable spouses to anger their father. But after rescuing the fifth damsel in not-so-much distress for a juicy 1650 denars, it's getting a little stale. Especially when the barter system is so entirely .. weird that I'd prefer not using it at all at this point. "Your father loves you, that's why he made those plans!" "Hmmm.. I see, go on," "Think of your family!" "Yes.. you're right, I will go back home." Meanwhile this Chud of a guy that she ran off with kinda just stands there and doesn't even interject or argue, he just kinda goes ''well ok then''. Where's the drama? Where's the heart wrenching attempts of winning her back? Hell, make it a deeper barter system where I have to use my barter skill vs. his to win her love/trust. This currently goes for all the quests, there's nothing interesting or unique about them but all of them have potential to be so much more. Transport a herd quest -> you only deliver half the herd, but nobody seems to give a **** aside from the person receiving the herd and even they just kinda go ''well ok then.'' Hello? I sold half your herd to a merchant in this exact same city and you as a big bad crimelord/gangleader don't even bother telling me I'm an idiot for doing that? Make them try to rip-deal me and not pay me! Make them do something! Now it's just ''yeah ok here's your money lol'' and that's it. Quest over, repeat ad infinitum, no permanence or consequences for my actions ever. This goes for literally all the quests that aren't main quests, they offer nothing but denars and a boring quest line that just takes time, no effort and most of all doesn't draw me in to wanting to know more.
- No quest variety. Like mentioned above, I'm saving the 5th village elders' daughter. Is there some sort of shortage of stuff to do in medieval villages? Even some mundane stuff like transporting wood to the market would be more interesting at this point if it came with a few unique choices to make. I know that this is early access but guys, come on, you could've just copied over most/all of the Warband quests as placeholders. There's just nothing to do in the game at the moment except fight and do the same quests over and over (and the writing is not that bad, but it is very clearly unfinished and very very rough) -- unless you particularly like sitting in a smithy for a few minutes clicking buttons and pretending you're a muscular smith (we really need a cinematic of your character at the very least hammering metal on an anvil. It couldn't be done in Warband but it can be done now because I've seen it done for other features; it might not be a real feature but at least it makes me feel like it is). Not that there is anything wrong with closing your eyes and imagining muscular men hitting steel, but it's not why I play Bannerlord; I play.. other games for that.
- The main quest line proves that we can have a (relatively) linear one-time only questline. Since a lot of the factions except the Empire are rather bland in terms of storytelling, we should be able to do questlines similar to the main quest for at least all the factions. I want to know more about Vlandia and I don't want to read a wikipage (show, don't tell) to do so; let us undertake a quest (maybe even a ye olde queste, since Vlandia is perfect for that) and do something. Maybe we need to recover a holy cup from a band of bandits, which sounds simple enough but it takes us through the backalleys of Pravend and Ocs Hall as we get pulled into more trouble than the cup is really worth; especially since we weren't even promised payment. It turns out that gang leaders are involved in this, and they're making it hard for us to get the cup back -- oh no it turns out there is more stolen goods here than just a cup. Etcetera etcetera. Maybe to give Sturgia some flavor, you could have two quests/a questline that branches where you can influence the entire nation where you're forced to pick between the boyars' interest and that of the Nords. Maybe some of it involves a questline where you go around with a troop of nord mercenaries without a master and you help them raid some villages to earn some rightly earned plunder, which of course the local boyars don't take too kindly to. Who knows, but it certainly would be more interesting than whatever we have now. Oh, and for the Aserai, let us do a quest in which we can side with the bedouin and their awesome tiger skins to overthrow the centralized government for becoming too decadent! Plenty of historical precedent for quests like these but none of them happen.
- Gang leaders really miss the marks for me. It'd be really interesting if we could become gang leaders or at the very least part of a gang leaders' group of associates. All I can do is do small time crime and beat up other gang leaders, which is not exactly how I imagine a medieval crimelords time is spent. There is so much potential here for roguery characters who earn their money skulking around towns doing bad **** and instead all we get is "I'm a wannabe-nobleman but I'm going to help this guy beat up some other criminals for like 50 bucks" which is not compelling or realistic at all. Crime is where the early game money should be made, performing odd jobs for gang leaders in their employment, not being their very poorly paid henchman that might beat up a dude or two in an alley sometimes. Let me steal village's horse herds for them, do some sneaking around a town and break and enter somewhere, maybe let me damage some dudes olive press because he upset the gang leader. And let the consequences be more permanent or persistent, whether they are positive or negative. I have an army of 50 well trained soldiers but this gang leader still treats me like I'm a poorly peasant with no money. Let me tell him to **** off at the very least.
- Gang leaders would be much more useful and interesting if we didn't start out as relatively well equipped noblemen. I'm unsure if this is a temporary setup while the other starting scenario's are figured out but I'm kind of annoyed that I can't start off as a literal nobody. With the new improved army system, I'm sure there are at least 20 ways we could start out as a variety of things; I want to start as a mountain/forest bandit and work for some other mountain bandit called Ogar the Castle, and work my way up in his employment. This might actually make the gear we get from these bandits useful, as we'd probably start with ****ty equipment (if any at all). All their gear looks badass as hell but it's totally useless for anything other than playing dress up with your companions -- which is fun but also gets stale too quick. Or let me start as a mercenary in a small mercenary band -- they're mentioned in the lore but there's like zero of them. The small factions don't strike me as mercenary bands either and really lack the mercenary aesthetic and vibe. They feel like extensions of certain elements of the game, like how the Brotherhood are robber knights. Then make them act like robber knights and not mercenaries without the name. The artwork of this game includes this one really badass image of a bunch of big, hairy, beardy dudes with axes. Where are they?! How do I play as one of them!? They're nowhere to be found and the closest thing is bandits vaguely resembling them with who my only interaction is either being murdered or murdering them! Why!? Give me a reason to reject superior gear beyond roleplaying, especially now that the combat has been revamped in a way that makes me no longer a god among men.
- Crossing over between the quests and the companions; why does everyone have a ''___ the ____'' name? I know this is the middle ages and surnames weren't really a massive thing until Napoleon in a lot of places and the clans are not necessarily the same as that, but does everyone need a ____ the _____ name? I could make a party full of ____ the Shieldmaidens and let them help me in rescuing ____ the Healer from ___ the Bastard, but it gets old. Can we get some prefixes, or perhaps even some simple one-word names? The gand leaders have them, why not companions or random quest NPC's? Why does Derngil need to be anything more than Derngil, why does he need to be a bastard? It's not like adding "the bastard" to his name makes his story any more compelling since we don't know anything about him given the shoddy set up of these quests. And definitely not if every other random guy is also called ___ the bastard. We desperately need some variation here and I don't think it'd be that hard to include that in one of the next few patches given that it's just updating the namelists and making some changes perhaps to how affixes are added or names without any affix/suffix.
- Also please please PLEASE include some information about naming conventions for the different nations. If I want to play as a Battanian it'd be really good to know that Battanian clans use a fen ___ prefix to their clan names. That way I can include them from the get go rather than editing it in after starting. Hell maybe if we ever get non-noblemen starts, the game could autogenerate one for us based on the location we were made noblemen in/the place we are from and we could edit that one if we don't like it. We have an auto-generate feature for names (and the names are sweet, actually) so we need one for clan names too now, and I really can't find a reason not to add this. Quality of life, baby.
All in all I definitely think that Taleworlds has some pretty amazing writers available to them as the details of Neretzes Folly are really interesting and probably one of my favorite story elements of the game. But beyond Neretzes Folly the writing is thus far quite shoddy, repetitive and just not interesting to read. Whether that is because this is just not an implemented feature or because writing/quests are the last on the list I don't know, it would make sense from a development perspective. But I paid 40 euro's for this, and hiding behind the shield of early access will not work forever. I've been rather disappointed with the quests, characters, storytelling and companions but I hope this can be fixed later. If not, then I think that unfortunately even Warband will have a stronger story, and that will be because the story is largely absent in Warband.