The lore of this game is just useless flavor text unless you do something about it.

[Princeps Senatus]

I’m confused, didn’t you say you rather they didn’t touch the game after release and should leave it to modders? Now you want TW to listen? Can you make up your mind?

The reason the historical inspiration matters is because it’s the historical inspiration TW used in their dev blogs and built the game on, but it barely goes skin-deep. We’re obviously asking it to mean something more in-game, in the hope it’ll make the game even slightly immersive.

 

[FireBlazinCandy]

I’m confused, didn’t you say you rather they didn’t touch the game after release and should leave it to modders? Now you want TW to listen? Can you make up your mind?

Aigh, exactly. TW stated they were going to continue patching it after release, so as I said, I would much rather they didn't and left the game alone, but again to be clear, they won't do that so the next best thing is to complain enough that they cop on and fix it.

The reason the historical inspiration matters is because it’s the historical inspiration TW used in their dev blogs and built the game on, but it barely goes skin-deep. We’re obviously asking it to mean something more in-game, in the hope it’ll make the game even slightly immersive.

Unfortunately that is not what happens as it has happened many times before. All it does is deviate from the main subject until it's just two people going back and fourth about little anomalies in the others text, spell checking and paragraphs from Wikipedia about some cherry picked historical event.

I'm asking you to not make another thread devolve into that, because it gets no one anywhere and kills the thread. You can see it happening in this very thread. You have those complaining about Bannerlord-specifc lore, and those (including you) giving a history lesson about real history as if there are two completely separate conversations happening under this thread.

TW aren't going to make any changes to the game because four of yous have agreed/disagreed that the Northern Empire swings more toward the Byzantine Empire than the Roman empire. We all understand there are characteristics similar to history, but this isn't history, this is a game, which has its own lore. Lore that has little resemblance to history except for some aesthetics. Were talking about the lore.

 

[Princeps Senatus]

Ah, then I’m afraid you’ve misunderstood me. I don’t care about the historical debate, but about the lore. I pointed out places where TW has *tried* to make the Empire factions feel different, mostly in the armor. I point out the historical connections only to show how they’re consistent with the lore that is supposed to show them as different.

What I WANT is for those differences to be more than just what crowns people are wearing, by actually carry over to gameplay. I want this topic to be about the game.

 

[Goyyyio]

Would be awesome to have unique policies, marriage outcomes, inheritance, more lore flavor, troop trees, and succession/voting mechanisms but I suppose that fell to the back-burner given all of the reworks and refactors to other core logic (and in-house porting of consoles) took the time for.

Guess it'll be mods then

Well that's what I expected of this game, you know, like any good strategy game. The point of playing a different faction is that you have a different experience each game, but the design team just chose to do nothing with it. So many factions with cultures completely different from the other, and nope, it's all the exactly the same lmfao, who designed this

 

[Goyyyio]

I feel like every thread descents into one person trying to out history-buff another. We should set up a history section for these people to argue which fake faction from a video game - with barely any lore and who share almost Identical armour sets - is based loosely on which real historical civilisation which may have spanned over 1000+ years and who's armours and policies have changed drastically within those years.

C'mon guys, yous sound the opposite of what you think you sound like. Were here to moan about certain parts of the game enough so that TW may listen, not listen to something you just ripped from Wikipedia and divert the thread (again) into a history D-swinging competition. You're all correct and very intelligent, congratulations.

I do not care about history at all (i do not care about a woman ruling at all, who tf cares about real life history in a fantasy world, it's based in real life not an exact copy after all), my problem is when the design team doesn't do anything with their own writing, and instead makes the world feel dull and repetitive 3

 

[Younes]

I'm asking you to not make another thread devolve into that, because it gets no one anywhere and kills the thread. You can see it happening in this very thread. You have those complaining about Bannerlord-specifc lore, and those (including you) giving a history lesson about real history as if there are two completely separate conversations happening under this thread.

TW aren't going to make any changes to the game because four of yous have agreed/disagreed that the Northern Empire swings more toward the Byzantine Empire than the Roman empire. We all understand there are characteristics similar to history, but this isn't history, this is a game, which has its own lore. Lore that has little resemblance to history except for some aesthetics. Were talking about the lore.

Pretty confused about what you're trying to say. You're trying to say we shouldn't talk about the lore of the game and real life history, despite the fact they are closely related?

Bannerlord isn't some brand-new fantasy nations or cultures, it has obvious influences from real life counterparts.

 

[FireBlazinCandy]

Ah, then I’m afraid you’ve misunderstood me. I don’t care about the historical debate, but about the lore. I pointed out places where TW has *tried* to make the Empire factions feel different, mostly in the armor. I point out the historical connections only to show how they’re consistent with the lore that is supposed to show them as different.

What I WANT is for those differences to be more than just what crowns people are wearing, by actually carry over to gameplay. I want this topic to be about the game.

Seems like I did. I tried to nip something in the bud that wasn't sprouting . Apologies for that mate .

I do not care about history at all (i do not care about a woman ruling at all, who tf cares about real life history in a fantasy world, it's based in real life not an exact copy after all), my problem is when the design team doesn't do anything with their own writing, and instead makes the world feel dull and repetitive 3

Yeah. Totally agree. Idk why but I check in on this and the subreddit and I'm seeing the exact same posts by countless people about how shallow and dull this game is. The latest post I saw which is titled "Bannerlord and Warband" is bringing up similar points to this thread - that's there's nothing in the game. They state that the game is fine from a technical standpoint, but from a roleplaying and more perspective it's bad. And TW keep choosing to ignore this glaringly obvious point that is constantly being brought up. This game is basically that mobile game Adventure Capitalist on the lore front. A couple of clicks, sit back and have the money roll in.

I would even rather only focus on playing as a female character for the rest of my playthoughs if it meant that it had even a lick more flavour of lore (being sexism) to the game like Warband had. And I wouldn't put this down to 'wokeism' or whatever Fox News is calling it these days, I would honestly put this down to pure, unadulterated laziness, based on the rest of the game severely lacking life and lore.

You're trying to say we shouldn't talk about the lore of the game and real life history, despite the fact they are closely related?

We all understand there are characteristics similar to history, but this isn't history, this is a game, which has its own lore. Lore that has little resemblance to history except for some aesthetics. Were talking about the lore.

@Younes You didn't read my post at all.

 

[bbaydogdu]

I don't care about the vanilla lore. Every time I start a campaign I create my own lore that suits my playthrough.

 

[Alyss]

I don't care about the vanilla lore. Every time I start a campaign I create my own lore that suits my playthrough.

But your imagination has 0 impact on gameplay, which is what people are asking for

 

[FireBlazinCandy]

I don't care about the vanilla lore. Every time I start a campaign I create my own lore that suits my playthrough.

What lore can you concoct when the responses you give an NPC, whether it's your friend, your wife, your enemy is "Nevermind" or "I must leave now".

 

[HalfMetalJacket]

I just make my own lore to justify funky troops and ****.

 

[Danny5]

The idea of the game had potential of coming up with a descent lore...but guess not

 

[Lord Grindelvald]

I feel like every thread descents into one person trying to out history-buff another. We should set up a history section for these people to argue which fake faction from a video game - with barely any lore and who share almost Identical armour sets - is based loosely on which real historical civilisation which may have spanned over 1000+ years and who's armours and policies have changed drastically within those years.

C'mon guys, yous sound the opposite of what you think you sound like. Were here to moan about certain parts of the game enough so that TW may listen, not listen to something you just ripped from Wikipedia and divert the thread (again) into a history D-swinging competition. You're all correct and very intelligent, congratulations.

Why'd you call us out like this?

 

[Antaeus]

It's like every other element in the game. There has to be just enough to make the game plausible, but not so much that the game has to sacrifice other things to fit it all in.

The game's lore doesn't need to be deep in this context. It just has to be deep enough. Although I appreciate that may not be enough for many people.

 

[FireBlazinCandy]

Why'd you call us out like this?

I had a large glass of wine last night so was feeling knarky. Don't take it to heart

 

[five bucks]

We all understand there are characteristics similar to history, but this isn't history, this is a game, which has its own lore. Lore that has little resemblance to history except for some aesthetics. Were talking about the lore.

The thing is that this is just wrong. Bannerlord doesn't have "little resemblance to history". It is literally real history/life copied directly and then with the names, timeline, and events shifted around a little.

The Roman Empire began as a tribe who overthrew a kingdom and founded their own city with the legendary founder Romulus. This tribe became a republic with tribunes, but due to decline of republican values eventually became an empire, that conquered the Celts and spanned almost the entirety of the continent barring the far north, and also spread to the shores of the southern sea. Eventually, having difficulty maintaining their empire, they had to hire out recently migrated foreigners to act as mercenaries, including William Iron-Arm, who rebelled and took a large western chunk of the empire for himself. After a catastrophic defeat at the Battle of Mankizert which involved Byzantines, Turks, Arabs, Normans and Varangians all fighting, the emperor was deposed, and it became apparent to all that the empire was in rapid decline.

The Calradian Empire began as a tribe who overthrew a kingdom and founded their own city with the legendary founder Calradios. This tribe became a republic with tribunes, but due to decline of republican values eventually became an empire, that conquered the Battanians and spanned almost the entirety of the continent barring the far north, and also spread to the shores of the southern sea. Eventually, having difficulty maintaining their empire, they had to hire out recently migrated foreigners to act as mercenaries, including Osric Iron-Arm, who rebelled and took a large western chunk of the empire for himself. After a catastrophic defeat at the Battle of Pendraic which involved Calradians, Khuzaits, Aserai, Vlandians and Sturgians all fighting, the emperor was deposed, and it became apparent to all that the empire was in rapid decline.

The world map is also pretty clearly the real world map as seen through a wacky distortion mirror: it has snowy Scandinavia, the Mediterranean with a Cyprus-like island, the eastern steppes, the green fields and forests of western Europe, etc.

The different Bannerlord cultures are identical in almost every way to a conglomeration of real life cultures. And are also explicitly stated by TW to be directly based on them.

Anyone who thinks Bannerlord lore has "little resemblance to history" either doesn't know Bannerlord lore that well or doesn't know history that well.

 

[FireBlazinCandy]

The thing is that this is just wrong. Bannerlord doesn't have "little resemblance to history". It is literally real history/life copied directly and then with the names, timeline, and events shifted around a little.

The Roman Empire began as a tribe who overthrew a kingdom and founded their own city with the legendary founder Romulus. This tribe became a republic with tribunes, but due to decline of republican values eventually became an empire, that conquered the Celts and spanned almost the entirety of the continent barring the far north, and also spread to the shores of the southern sea. Eventually, having difficulty maintaining their empire, they had to hire out recently migrated foreigners to act as mercenaries, including William Iron-Arm, who rebelled and took a large western chunk of the empire for himself. After a catastrophic defeat at the Battle of Mankizert which involved Byzantines, Turks, Arabs, Normans and Varangians all fighting, the emperor was deposed, and it became apparent to all that the empire was in rapid decline.

The Calradian Empire began as a tribe who overthrew a kingdom and founded their own city with the legendary founder Calradios. This tribe became a republic with tribunes, but due to decline of republican values eventually became an empire, that conquered the Battanians and spanned almost the entirety of the continent barring the far north, and also spread to the shores of the southern sea. Eventually, having difficulty maintaining their empire, they had to hire out recently migrated foreigners to act as mercenaries, including Osric Iron-Arm, who rebelled and took a large western chunk of the empire for himself. After a catastrophic defeat at the Battle of Pendraic which involved Calradians, Khuzaits, Aserai, Vlandians and Sturgians all fighting, the emperor was deposed, and it became apparent to all that the empire was in rapid decline.

The world map is also pretty clearly the real world map as seen through a wacky distortion mirror: it has snowy Scandinavia, the Mediterranean with a Cyprus-like island, the eastern steppes, the green fields and forests of western Europe, etc.

The different Bannerlord cultures are identical in almost every way to a conglomeration of real life cultures. And are also explicitly stated by TW to be directly based on them.

These threads descending into these replies is what makes the thread insufferable to stay engaged with.

The world map is also pretty clearly the real world map as seen through a wacky distortion mirror: it has snowy Scandinavia, the Mediterranean with a Cyprus-like island, the eastern steppes, the green fields and forests of western Europe, etc.

Oh so everything and everywhere.

If it was a map like the European Mod has made where it's a copy of Europe than I would agree with you, but they needed a map with snow, forest and sand so they came up with the current map. North - snow, Middle - forest, South - Sand. Same with nearly every map in a video game.

You can cherry pick historical events to fit the Bannerlord narrative all you want. History is massive and it no doubt TW used it as inspiration for when they attempted to implement lore. But brother, the campaign narrative 'Neretzes' Folly' is a couple of paragraphs long with overlapping dialogue about an ambush and one usurping another. It's not that hard to find similar events in history.

You're giving TW far too much credit. If they added a lot more lore, dialogue and conversations with NPCs and wanderers about the world of Calradia then you might turn out to be correct. But in its current state, not so much.

Anyone who thinks Bannerlord lore has "little resemblance to history" either doesn't know Bannerlord lore that well or doesn't know history that well.

I could be wrong, but Im pretty sure this whole thread, and many others, are pointing out that there is no lore in Bannerlord.

 

[five bucks]

Oh so everything and everywhere.

If it was a map like the European Mod has made where it's a copy of Europe than I would agree with you, but they needed a map with snow, forest and sand so they came up with the current map. North - snow, Middle - forest, South - Sand. Same with nearly every map in a video game.

Doesn't matter what other games do, the question is whether Bannerlord's map is very similar to real life, and it is. You cherry picked out/intentionally ignored most of the other similarities I pointed out: the Mediterranean equivalent, the Sahara equivalent (which is even called the "Nahasa" - very subtle), Nordland's long peninsula in the north as the equivalent of the Nordic peninsular countries, the Caspian Sea equivalent in the east, the northern sea which is like the Black Sea, the placement of Danustica (a highly fortified city) on a confluence of rivers which creates a chokepoint between east and west just like Constantinople did; the Cyprus-like island... Bannerlord's map has far more similarities to the real map of Europe than just "snow in north, sand in south and forest in middle."

You can cherry pick historical events to fit the Bannerlord narrative all you want. History is massive and it no doubt TW used it as inspiration for when they attempted to implement lore. But brother, the campaign narrative 'Neretzes' Folly' is a couple of paragraphs long with overlapping dialogue about an ambush and one usurping another. It's not that hard to find similar events in history.

You are once again glossing over the many, many similarities which I have already pointed out because they're inconvenient to your argument and you don't want to look wrong.

Bannerlord's lore has many, many similarities to history and they are all very easy to spot, because ever since Warband this game has just been ultra-low fantasy, real life but changed a little bit.

Hell the year of the time period is the same: 1084. How many hints do you need?

You're giving TW far too much credit. If they added a lot more lore, dialogue and conversations with NPCs and wanderers about the world of Calradia then you might turn out to be correct. But in its current state, not so much.

I could be wrong, but Im pretty sure this whole thread, and many others, are pointing out that there is no lore in Bannerlord.

Then like I said, you don't know the lore well enough. You clearly haven't been reading the encyclopedia, talking to all the NPCs, or reading the backstory or culture descriptors.

Now I am not saying the lore is delivered well. A lot of it is hidden in town descriptions. But it's there.

 

[Madijeis]

The lore that is described in the Enyclopedia is all very interesting and cool: Charas the original capital that was abandoned and fell, the betrayal in Lageta, the harsh climate of Danustica... As a passionate Souls player I've grown to like hunting bits of lore, however hidden they may be, in order to gain as much knowledge about the setting as possible.

The thing about Bannerlord lore is that it cannot escape the veeeery small confines of text boxes in an encyclopedia, and the lines of dialogue in the main quest. The city scenes aren't used for environmental storytelling and you aren't rewarded anyway for seeking stories inside of them.
Charas, despite being the cradle of the Calradian Empire, shows no sign of its original architecture, same goes for Paravenos and really any city that has changed hands in its history (I don't mind the former Palaic cities having their cultural heritage erased, that could become a well told story of cultural g*nocide) shows no sign of its supposed original occupants. Let alone the possibility for exploration, quest variety is also a problem: the triggers for "issues" to pop up pay no heed to culture or settlement, you are never going to get Vlandian only issues or Khuzait only issues to flesh out the cultures, let alone Charas exclusive issues or Marunath exclusive issues.

I'm going to direct very faint praise for Battanian towns, since they really look like remnants of a once prosperous civilization, approaching its doom within 170 years. Though no context is given to these ruins beyond the "decline" narrative.

As a huge history buff myself, I think we should thread with caution when discussing the lore of a game like Bannerlord. The year is 1080 AD and yet the Roman faction is still going (not well, mind you, but alive still), as well as a Celtic faction (though on its last legs as well). How would these armies look like if they lived long enough to witness the advent of heavy cavalry and the decline of heavy infantry? It's alright to use history to have some standards for what you can expect, but we shouldn't take it too far. The Calradian empire looks like a declining Rome but it's not yet fully "Byzantinized" to me.

 

[FireBlazinCandy]

@five bucks

Okay ya' really boring me repeating yourself now and as I knew would happen, some lad with a stiffy wanted to come in and give a history lesson on another thread, derailing it. How surprising that it happened again. I don't agree with you, the lore is bad and needs a lot more improvement. Whether that's with more influence from history or not. Toodle-doo now.