Will the game have more focus on lore, worldbuilding, and story?

[Attembourgh]

I'm a lore kinda guy, I like to read books during elementary, and that trait will carry while I am alive. Will the game have more effort put into the world building of the Calradian universe? When I played Warband I was hooked by the beginner quest that (falsely) advertised the game as a bloodridden, cruel world where backstabs are frequent, innocent people get lynched, and nobles dirty the faces of peasants with their boots, only to find out that it was just some copy pasted text that is formatted over a template for beginner players, and you never hear from the merchant again.

I hope that Bannerlord won't go this route, and try to fill the gaps with randomly generated quests, and instead take the time and effort to hire writers to actually keep players hooked. Heres some of my suggestions to help give Calradia more "life" if I could write any nicer;

1: More interesting quests. More quests involving interesting people, not randomly generated quests. More story, human emotion, and plot happening in the background than just "deliver these cattle to a village". You can instead spruce it with more plot such as "Deliver these cattle bodies to an enemy village. The cattle are filled with illegial drugs, and will be used as a Cassus Belli against the Barian Clan of Vlandia". Don't care if they are hard to randomly generate. Most randomly generated quests are boring anyways.

2: Interesting characters that interact with the player. More unique NPCs in specific locations, funny characters, deceiving characters, heroic characters, stupid and smart, more depth and personality. Overall just make them more human than just having 5 set personalities for the entire world. They need to talk, have lots of dialogue prepared, not randomly generated from a set template.

3: A Story Mode. The sandbox can be unlocked after you complete the story mode. Much more immersive and realistic then to just be thrown into the world with no directions and forced to talk to programmed robots like Warband.

 

[Attembourgh]

Before you bring up the factions blogs, please remember that worldbuilding is only just part of the long term dedicated project needed to make an immersive world. If possible, I suggest more dev blogs about things like:

-Example quests. If I were to deliver a letter to a lord, what drama can I expect to face along the way?

-Focus the dev blog about the life of one ingame person. Maybe write about a village elder's life when the (player) meets him to recruit some troops while suffering pressure from the lords of Battania to give more troops. Just some food for thought.

-Explain more of why such systems came to be. Like how Arenas are now standard in towns because of the influence of the Empire, explain how Taverns, and the decline of the Minor factions. Why bandits are still a threat even during peacetime.

 

[Mad Vader]

Judging by the first games, the people responsible for design are boring pro-sandbox people. Any world-building will be incidental, depending on how creative a dialog-writer felt that day. I wouldn't hold my breath for an Elder Scrolls depth of lore.
As far as the story is concerned, I think that in some blog they mentioned a SP campaign quest-chain, but either it will be half-assed (because the Sandbox people don't want to give you a strong pro-RPG identity) or they made it so complex and involved that it's one of the causes of delay. They certainly stopped mentioning it, meaning that it's not nearly done.
I don't read the blogs, so I would appreciate if someone who does, explains what's the latest about the SP campaign.

 

[Rupmalya.k]

I love TES series and Mount and Blade series both but for very different reasons.
Mount and Blade more now though.
I'll rather have Sandbox mode only at release with dynamic quests.
However I wouldn't mind Story mode as a DLC.

 

[lolbash]

However I wouldn't mind Story mode as a DLC.

 

[NPC99]

I don't read the blogs, so I would appreciate if someone who does, explains what's the latest about the SP campaign.

“I'm currently working on dialogs for quests. These can get quite complicated, because we want to have lots of small quests that offer meaningful branching choices but may also be given out by characters with different personalities. We're also trying to work out a main storyline quest that absorbs the player but complements the sandbox struggle for power rather than seeming like two parallel games.”
https://steamcommunity.com/games/261550/announcements/detail/1647623139641323383

 

[momcilo94]

The new personality system will definitely bring a different feel to the sandbox, but what you are looking for is hand crafted quests. I don't believe Taleworlds will focus on in depth story quests because their goal is crafting a good sandbox experience that can provide a dynamic story. Sometimes a sandbox can provide a more organic story which some people prefer, as the story unfolds via actions and events and less with pre written events. The ideal thing would be having both but that would require major resources.

What you can look forward to is that modders will definitely create the worlds that you are looking for, especially because modding will be much easier to get into than in Warband. However, if you are inpatient, there's already good story mods in Warband, if you want I can recommend you some.

 

[BayBear]

Mount & Blade has always been an open world RPG with a strong emphasis on players creating their own objectives and stories. Pre-scripted storylines should be (and definitely will be) crafted in mods. I imagine a main storyline would be rather difficult to implement while still keeping the dynamic open world spirit of the game intact. I suggest that you take a look a good look at the blogs as many of your requests have already been addressed to varying degrees.

 

[NPC99]

Mount & Blade has always been an open world RPG with a strong emphasis on players creating their own objectives and stories. Pre-scripted storylines should be (and definitely will be) crafted in mods. I imagine a main storyline would be rather difficult to implement while still keeping the dynamic open world spirit of the game intact. I suggest that you take a look a good look at the blogs as many of your requests have already been addressed to varying degrees.

Viking Conquest had a main storyline that players could follow or ignore.

 

[BayBear]

Mount & Blade has always been an open world RPG with a strong emphasis on players creating their own objectives and stories. Pre-scripted storylines should be (and definitely will be) crafted in mods. I imagine a main storyline would be rather difficult to implement while still keeping the dynamic open world spirit of the game intact. I suggest that you take a look a good look at the blogs as many of your requests have already been addressed to varying degrees.

Viking Conquest had a main storyline that players could follow or ignore.

Lords can be killed in Bannerlord, the rules are different. It takes one swing of the sword or arrow to the face of a lord to totally dissolve the main storyline.

 

[NPC99]

Mount & Blade has always been an open world RPG with a strong emphasis on players creating their own objectives and stories. Pre-scripted storylines should be (and definitely will be) crafted in mods. I imagine a main storyline would be rather difficult to implement while still keeping the dynamic open world spirit of the game intact. I suggest that you take a look a good look at the blogs as many of your requests have already been addressed to varying degrees.

Viking Conquest had a main storyline that players could follow or ignore.

Lords can be killed in Bannerlord, the rules are different. It takes one swing of the sword or arrow to the face of a lord to totally dissolve the main storyline.

I doubt critical ai Lords can be killed in the early storyline phase of Bannerlord - later it doesn’t matter.

 

[Mad Vader]

I don't read the blogs, so I would appreciate if someone who does, explains what's the latest about the SP campaign.

“I'm currently working on dialogs for quests. These can get quite complicated, because we want to have lots of small quests that offer meaningful branching choices but may also be given out by characters with different personalities. We're also trying to work out a main storyline quest that absorbs the player but complements the sandbox struggle for power rather than seeming like two parallel games.”
https://steamcommunity.com/games/261550/announcements/detail/1647623139641323383

Thanks, that's it.
I wonder why we get blogs on reins and not on the many much more interesting things involving the main story and its quests. Apart from serious spoilers, I'm sure they would like to brag about the custom scenes, cutscenes and the single dragon in the game. 

Lords can be killed in Bannerlord, the rules are different. It takes one swing of the sword or arrow to the face of a lord to totally dissolve the main storyline.

If only there was a way to mark quest characters to be (temporarily) immortal. Alas, we are limited by the technology of our time.

 

[vota dc]

Starting quest could be longer because you start with lords that are enemies of your clan.

 

[Roccoflipside]

I'd like to see more growth within the sandbox, such as lords changing titles, towns/villages etc. changing cultures in obvious ways once they've been held by a different culture long enough. Especially with the offspring feature, as well as entire clans being able to switch sides, it would be awesome to see Bey butterface so-and-so from the Asserai, son of Lord Harlaus so-and-so of Vlandia, riding towards you after you murdered his father and exiled him and his family when you came to power. That's the kind of story I hope to get out of BL, and I hope it's a new story every game. As long as the game doesn't bog down in the middle like wb, I could play a game that grows its own story organically like that a million times

 

[NPC99]

We want for it to be possible for companions to die (and give the player, say, a motivation to avenge them) or, alternately, for a player to appoint lots of companions to lordships.
https://steamcommunity.com/games/261550/announcements/detail/1647623139641323383

So what happens when a companion dies after you have appointed them to a lordship? Presumably the same as when an ai Lord dies. Someone must inherit leadership of their party (assuming it won’t just melt away). Maybe that’s the first time your companion’s sibling, son, daughter or right-hand henchman steps out of his/her shadow and takes over. Will their relationship with you be the same as your old companion or random? They might blame you for your companion’s death, rationalising a bad relationship, which could stir up Bannerlord’s end game. Alternatively, they may love you but be wholly unsuitable to lead a party within your clan - are you stuck with them?
In Warband, you chose a vassal based on their stats/relationship and they performed in line with that, but they couldn’t die and pass on command to someone with unknown/random stats/relationship. Bannerlord could get quite interesting if those who inherit ai Lordships aren’t stats/relationship clones.

 

[Terco_Viejo]

I have a feeling Steve Negus must have done a good job of it. In some screenshot of the last gamescom, you could read about Geroia. I am sure that in Bannerlord there will be a deepening in the lore. The question I always ask myself is: will there be a tangible connection between Bannerlord and Warband events? In principle when playing our game we would be creating ucronias to the historical flow that ends in warband...

Edit

隐藏: Geroia reference

Personally I don't prefer a story driven; if it exists, there's no problem...everything adds up. However, I would like independent stories that can eventually become intermingled.

 

[NPC99]

Bannerlord was always touted as a game to experience the decline/collapse of an empire. The empire is stronger than any other faction, but is split by civil war into three waring factions, giving the other barbarian factions the opportunity to help drive nails into its coffin. Hopefully, TW have engineered it so that the three empire factions are irreconcilable and the other factions are out to settle old grudges.
I prefer that kind of context to one where enmities are random and ungrounded.

 

[Mad Vader]

I have a feeling Steve Negus must have done a good job of it.

Steve "Feudal Realism" Negus tries, but he is one of the Sandbox People (what I mean by this is that good stories are not a priority). He has occasional fancy flourishes, because as a coder he also writes his own dialogs, but the overall quality of writing in the past games has been uneven with plenty of stock dialogs and other game text that could be written by anyone.
What they need is another native English speaker with more imagination and the team authority to put more original lore into the game, not only as game text, but in visible, playable and killable form. This is what you expect from professional game development teams, even when they are handicapped by their non-native-English-speakerness. The Witcher guys did it.
Sadly, what they'll end up with are carbon copies of real medieval cultures. They might as well give them back their historic names and pretend it's an alternate history of Earth, instead of a new world.

隐藏: Pictured: Sandbox People hiding behind some feudal realism.

 

[Attembourgh]

Judging by the first games, the people responsible for design are boring pro-sandbox people. Any world-building will be incidental, depending on how creative a dialog-writer felt that day. I wouldn't hold my breath for an Elder Scrolls depth of lore.
As far as the story is concerned, I think that in some blog they mentioned a SP campaign quest-chain, but either it will be half-assed (because the Sandbox people don't want to give you a strong pro-RPG identity) or they made it so complex and involved that it's one of the causes of delay. They certainly stopped mentioning it, meaning that it's not nearly done.
I don't read the blogs, so I would appreciate if someone who does, explains what's the latest about the SP campaign.

Bannerlord has been in the making for 9 years, it isn't fair to compare it to a small project made by a man and his wife 8 years ago, so I have high hopes for the story parts of the game to be much improved especially since the company has expanded to up to 200 people. But still, you are right. Most of the dev blogs has been focusing on multiplayer, the color of flags and horses, and a once in the blue moon mention of the history or lore of the universe they are trying to make. If you removed the factions blogs, there is probably only a paragraph or 2 left explaining the world of Calradia. A very despair inducing sight when you think about it that way.

I don't read the blogs, so I would appreciate if someone who does, explains what's the latest about the SP campaign.

“I'm currently working on dialogs for quests. These can get quite complicated, because we want to have lots of small quests that offer meaningful branching choices but may also be given out by characters with different personalities. We're also trying to work out a main storyline quest that absorbs the player but complements the sandbox struggle for power rather than seeming like two parallel games.”
https://steamcommunity.com/games/261550/announcements/detail/1647623139641323383

I don't think this approach is going to work. There are already countless examples of this failing in the Japanese visual novel industry. Usually it ends these two ways

1) There is one "true" ending where the story is "canon" and the rest of the endings are joke endings, or written with only half a heart of dedication. And it is always a slog to read. Whats the point of even putting multiple endings when the sequel or writers only care about just 1 of it?

Heres an example of this happening in one of my most hated games in the VN industry, Root Letter. The premise is that the MC received a late letter 15 years later from his female pen pal in high school. The possible endings after completing all the quests and doing mystery detective work is as follows:

-Crossing Paths ending: The MC finds out the truth, that Aya, the pen pal just decided to leave to go to Africa, and sent everyone a thank you letter thanking everyone who contributed to her high school experience. and tells the MC that she would much rather stop the friendship as "just illusionary penpals" and never to meet.

-Cursed Letter: Turns out you were talking to a ghost, and she kills everyone she writes to

-Princess of Himegori: Aya is a supernatural being who turns eveyrone who reads her letters insane.

-Government Plot: This is the worst one of all. Turns out everyone is a government spy, and trying to hide the fact that Aya was an alien, and then sent you to a mental facility.

-The "True" Ending: Turns out Aya fell in love with you, it was all just a test to see what kind of person you are then she and you happily marry and the end.

All of these endings leave major plot holes I can bother to explain, since it requires the player to replay the game multiple times to know the story, overall foricng me to play 100 hours of writing that goes nowhere, and plot holes still left unexplained. At least the soundtrack was good.

Bannerlord was always touted as a game to experience the decline/collapse of an empire. The empire is stronger than any other faction, but is split by civil war into three waring factions, giving the other barbarian factions the opportunity to help drive nails into its coffin. Hopefully, TW have engineered it so that the three empire factions are irreconcilable and the other factions are out to settle old grudges.
I prefer that kind of context to one where enmities are random and ungrounded.

Hopefully, but it seems like the general consensus of this thread is that most of the players don't care about a believable world and engaging plotline, would much rather focus on dopamine inducing gameplay and leaving modders to write the story, which, if you ask me, is a lazy excuse to let TaleWorlds skimp on the storywriting aspect. I do not want to see modders write a story, usually google translated from Russians and Chinese modders, or meme stories with references to stale Reddit memes. I want work made by a professional team, which TaleWorlds clearly has the funds and ability to employ.

I have a feeling Steve Negus must have done a good job of it.

Steve "Feudal Realism" Negus tries, but he is one of the Sandbox People (what I mean by this is that good stories are not a priority). He has occasional fancy flourishes, because as a coder he also writes his own dialogs, but the overall quality of writing in the past games has been uneven with plenty of stock dialogs and other game text that could be written by anyone.
What they need is another native English speaker with more imagination and the team authority to put more original lore into the game, not only as game text, but in visible, playable and killable form. This is what you expect from professional game development teams, even when they are handicapped by their non-native-English-speakerness. The Witcher guys did it.
Sadly, what they'll end up with are carbon copies of real medieval cultures. They might as well give them back their historic names and pretend it's an alternate history of Earth, instead of a new world.

隐藏: Pictured: Sandbox People hiding behind some feudal realism.

You understand me perfectly. The went ahead to rename major cultures into fictional names, yet abstain from giving them their own personal identity to make them more interesting. Its really disappointing. If I wanted to see some medieval Europeans duke it out, I can just read a history textbook. Whats the point of renaming the Normans to Vlandia if the only difference is that they exist in Calradia?

The Empire is the most interesting of all the factions, as they are obviously based on the Romans, but now they are designed with their own armors and themes, and given their own history and people we can relate to and play with. I am especially interested in the Rhagea queen, and Arenico's mad sassy daughter.

The Battanians are a close second, but they seem to be built as the stereotypical "barbarians"and no interesting characters in their ranks. They exist only to be fodder for the mindless adrenaline chasers to beat for high scores. Battanians are humans too. Make them act like human beings, not fodder for the player to gain EXP.

 

[Terco_Viejo]

I have a feeling Steve Negus must have done a good job of it.

Steve "Feudal Realism" Negus tries, but he is one of the Sandbox People (what I mean by this is that good stories are not a priority). He has occasional fancy flourishes, because as a coder he also writes his own dialogs, but the overall quality of writing in the past games has been uneven with plenty of stock dialogs and other game text that could be written by anyone.
What they need is another native English speaker with more imagination and the team authority to put more original lore into the game, not only as game text, but in visible, playable and killable form. This is what you expect from professional game development teams, even when they are handicapped by their non-native-English-speakerness. The Witcher guys did it.
Sadly, what they'll end up with are carbon copies of real medieval cultures. They might as well give them back their historic names and pretend it's an alternate history of Earth, instead of a new world.

隐藏: Pictured: Sandbox People hiding behind some feudal realism.

I understand perfectly what you're saying, and I largely agree. Who knows...maybe Taleworlds in its methodology has a space for documentation and documentary revision  . Similar to the Polish CDprojekt, despite its impeccable quality as a studio (except for controversial downgrades), always had Sapkowski material as the basis on which to create. On the contrary (here is the rarity of Terco_Viejo defending Taleworlds; I am surprised  ) Taleworlds has sketched its Calradic world in previous deliveries taking references from the medieval real world by means of easily recognisable archetypes; and it is here in Bannerlord when all lovers of lore expect a qualitative leap. 

It would be incredible, of course yes, we find the narrative power found in The Witcher, with decision making that alter history, a system of enemies aka system nemesis (+ permadeath bannerlord), etc ... But of course, this is when the conflict arises between narrative and gameplay. I wish we had in Bannerlord interactive narrative; unfortunately the will to implement that, is defined in the early stages of development. From my point of view, the narrative model where there is a main story works quite well for the M&B world, but this is complemented with numerous "quest" or secondary storylines.