Going into a game like Mount & Blade, you can be fairly sure of at least two things: The game will feature a blade, and someone will likely have a mount. For more information on this unique title, however, we were given a helpful tour by TaleWorlds and Paradox Interactive, the game’s developer and publisher, respectively. Mount & Blade, we have now learned, will present players with an open-world experience, allowing them to forge an unrestricted path through the medieval realms of Calradia, hiring armies, befriending and manipulating lords and nobles, building their character’s skills and reputation, and laying siege to entire cities. And, as expected, they’ll get to do most of it while riding a horse and wielding a blade.
The phrase that comes to mind when looking at Mount & Blade is “rough around the edges.” The game has been in development for several years now, and while TaleWorlds has spent that time building a number of exciting gameplay features and combat systems into their title, a few of the game’s visual elements are starting to show their age. The countryside environments of Calradia never seem to change much from one battle to the next, taking place on fairly nondescript plains or mildly-textured hills, and the game’s pitched battles frequently seem to feature enemies who gather together in a tangled mess of clipping limbs and weaponry. However, players may be inclined to overlook the aging graphics thanks to the game’s emphasis on engaging battles and groundbreaking horseback combat — there’s little reason to worry about the quality of the landscaping while you’re busy slicing someone’s face off at a full gallop.
Mount & Blade’s combat engine looks to be an exercise in unique and memorable moments, driven by detailed physics and a range of control options. TaleWorlds boasts that the flow of combat will be driven by a long list of vital statistics — the damage done by each swing of the sword will be governed by not only the hit location, but the angle of the blade, the speed of one’s mount (where applicable), and more. Players will further be able to conduct these detailed swordfights according to their own levels of skill; novice players will be able to use a simple directional system of attacks and blocks, while hardcore players will have the option to use completely manual controls for every parry, feint, and thrust. At its most basic, this combat system will see players facing off against single opponents or small bands of highwaymen, but as the game progresses and the stakes begin to rise, players will be riding and slashing their way through fierce battles against dozens of on-screen foes, alongside an equally large player-run army of mercenaries or loyal soldiers, involving up to 100 on-screen characters (not including horses). A wide variety of weapons (and accompanying tactics) will make themselves available to players and enemies, allowing mounted fighters to bash their enemies with maces or skewer them with polearms — unless, of course, their mount is felled from afar by crossbows, longbows, or even thrown weaponry.
The progression of the game, of course, will be dependent on the player’s choice of direction. Mount & Blade does not have a story, in the traditional sense — the game has no overarching plotline, nor does it have an ending of any kind. TaleWorlds has engineered the game to be a pure open-world experience, allowing the player to go where he wants when he wants, consort with any of the game’s characters and factions, and live out his life as a lowly merchant, a bandit king, or even a wealthy landowner. Our tour guide compared the game repeatedly to Sid Meier’s Pirates!, drawing parallels between the various optional quests, NPC factions, and infinite paths to player-defined success. Also similar to Pirates! is the fact that the game will never end — either in success or failure. An expert swordsman can befriend (or betray) every major character in the world, overthrow every kingdom and town, and raise an unmatchable army, but the game won’t conclude until the player decides they’re done. Similarly, a clumsy fighter will find themselves gutted, impaled, and crushed, their armies overrun, and will find themselves on the bad side of every major mover and shaker in Calradia, but will never find themselves facing a “game over.” Mount & Blade is a game that runs towards realism instead of medieval fantasy; there are no magical healing potions, but TaleWorlds allows for the players’ outstanding “heroism” to let them cheat death in the face of defeat — they will lose armies, reputation, and valuables, but never their lives — thus allowing them to rebuild. Players who want a stronger challenge, though, can set up the game to auto-save at every turn, thus removing the ability to quickload your way out of a battle gone sour.
As much freedom as Mount & Blade has, the possibilities for what can be done inside — and outside — of the game really have players excited. TaleWorlds has generated an enthusiastic group of amateur content creators for Mount & Blade, allowing players to make use of the game’s unique combat engine in new and unexpected ways through an officially supported mod community. The game’s developers are doing their best to include their community in the creation process, as well; apart from simply taking suggestions through the game’s forums on a regular basis, two of the staff writers for Mount & Blade are former members of the mod community. TaleWorlds intends to keep all of the modding tools freely available for download after the game’s official retail launch. Players of Mount & Blade can look forward to extending their game value through these amateur expansions and conversions, as well as a few game expansions that TaleWorlds are hoping to deliver themselves, in the future.
What’s really the most telling feature of Mount & Blade’s open-ended gameplay and development potential is the way in which TaleWorlds went about creating the game. We asked Armagon Yavuz, co-founder of TaleWorlds, what sort of combat study or motion-capture had gone into creating Mount & Blade’s deep combat engine, but Yavuz replied that it had been the other way around: “The real studies we made into medieval combat came after the combat system was designed. The combat engine was designed around the idea of directional defense and directional attack, and good timing, and feints. These are all active in medieval combat, as well — these are all concepts that are used in actual swordfighting.” He added, “Of course, we learned later that actual swordfighting is a lot more complicated, so in later entries in the game series, we’ll explore those, as well, and find ways to translate those into gameplay.”
In short, TaleWorlds is gambling that Mount & Blade’s in-depth combat will be engrossing enough that any number of game features and expansions will fit neatly around the engine, allowing for the game’s open world to have truly limitless borders. We hope to see more of Mount & Blade in the future — stay tuned for hands-on impressions later on.
Mount & Blade is scheduled to release for the PC, through digital distribution and traditional retail, on September 16th, 2008.
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