https://www.pcgamer.com/au/mount-and-blade-2-launches-in-early-access-on-march-31/

As a M&B fan, I will ultimately buy and play the game, but...

... after 8 years of development...

... going early access just seems deflating. I remember my excitement a few years back when we saw siege footage, but now it just feels like it should have been finished and tested in-house years ago. Early access just feels "cheap." Bannerlord will probably be fun -- and I certainly played a lot of M&B across platforms -- but where I should be excited that the game is closer to release, the words "early access" just deflated me... again

Sorry for repeating myself. It's late!

Once again, just wishful thinking on GoG's side, then.

Well, we might still get it, maybe even day-one once development is finished and it's officially released.

The Arkham Knight cover should have been hint enough ;)

Ah Bannerlord, good old vaporware. How many decades has this been developed for, now it’s finally moving into indev for a few decades. Then some nice exclusivity periods. In fact I don’t see it ever actually being released, let alone being released. Shame.

That's Galaxy 2... you can add (almost) any game to it, regardless if you own it on GOG or not. Even console games (which, if they can be emulated on PC, you can also start from Galaxy).

Personally I think that 8 years should be the normal development time for any Taleworlds game, remember that the first Mount and Blade also took 8 years to make, from 2000 to 2008. It only made sense that Bannerlord would also take 8 years to make. People shouldn't go into video game consumtion expecting to be hyped. Nowadays theres tons of games out there that are epic, even if its just some hack and slash game like Dynasty Warriors. Or even other games like Warband such as Starsector.

I also think that people waiting for the "real release" and not the early access one are "the real MVPs" here. More power to you guys, at least you guys will be experience the fully polished version of the game after all. Personally I'm going buy the Early Access version, considering I've first bought the Early Access of the first Mount and Blade (version 0.606) over on Taleworlds back around 15 years ago so it doesn't matter to me as much.

And compared to 0.606 a game like Warband feels like a fully different game.

Imminent release!
Any day, scratch that. Any year, scratch that. Any decade now!

I am wondering if they are trying to make the game too complicated. I really like the relative simplicity of the first game.

I'm sure you are right, but having come on board with Warband (after those 8 years), the wait -- punctuated by a few years of teases and YouTube videos -- has really dampened my interest. If it was going to take this long, I almost wish I hadn't heard a word form Tale Workds up to now... that they'd kept it all under wraps until just prior to release. Granted, I'll probably be quite excited on release day (heck, I even bought the console version of M&B Warband)... a couple of years ago I was beside myself... but right now I'm just numb from the wait.

Ultimately, just hope after this wait, that it's good!

Missing story, can't make your own kingdom, weapon crafting system is not present... all that in a nice early access alpha for 50 bucks. After all those years, this is delusional.

Thats why falling for any hype is the wrong approach. Stay cool and wait it out, 8 years ain't really that long if you put things into perspective and theres tons of other games that at least make you forget about Mount and Blade once in a while :>!

I know about people who actually want to wait for the full release, instead of buying the Early Access version. Some more hardcore fans even think that 8 years isn't enough and have a tolerance level of a quarter century (or how long it took to "complete" programming a game like Nethack).

To put things into perspective, people are waiting almost 5 years now for the next big Terraria update. The thing is that Terraria hype has subsided since its out for such a long time. Hype really is the problem people should discuss here.

Its also the reason why TaleWorlds kept so silent about this game, they knew they fucked up by showing widely accessable videos about the game. Back in the 2000s people didn't have YouTube and actually had to follow blogs during the time where Yahoo still was a valid competitor against Google. Nowadays everything is very accessable and that makes things ultra-easy to hype up, even though Bannerlord doesn't really seem like massive overall improvement compared to modded Warband (there are people considering Bannerlord as a sort of Warband 1.5 even).

I kinda do agree that the Early Access version is a little bit overpriced but I'm sure that tons of people will like it still. There really aren't any games like the TaleWorld ones. Too bad that the most excluded thing during the early access phase will be the lack of modding tools.

IT'S HERE, GO BUY IT!

https://www.gog.com/game/mount_blade_ii_bannerlord