2. I have chosen the game Mount & Blade, because it is a fun game with its
innovated combat and what it stands for in the gaming industry as an indie
game.
The content in this presentation will be:
 The history of the game and its developer
 The gameplay
 Player created content
 My own gaming experience
 Conclusions

3. Mount & Blade is a medieval, single- The story behind Mount & Blade is quite fascinating. A
player, open-ended, action role- Turkish husband and wife, Armagan Yavuz and Ipek
playing pc game. Yavuz founded TaleWorlds and began the production of
the game.
To explain the game as simple as possible;
it is a sandbox game that combines With the insight of never completing the game they come up
turn based strategic movement and with a very interesting idea; offer the full game of
recruitment and real time combat purchase as soon as possible at a cheap price.
with RPG elements. As development goes along, they listen to a lot of people who
bought the game. The developers fixed or put in new
It is developed by TaleWorlds which is an things the players wanted and released build after build.
independent game development They raised the price as they added new features.
company, located in Turkey.
This form of digital distribution helped the game getting a
It is published by Paradox larger audience with help of the so called “word of mouth”
Interactive, which is a Swedish video effect. This aided funding the product so they could
game developer/publisher. complete it. Even hire in professional people who also has
made every new build of the game distinctly better.
Because the designers actually listen to their audience, they
frequently visited their own forum and took in every
suggestion and complain and tried to fix this in to their
new builds.

4. The player starts out in Calradia, a fictional world
resembling 11th to 14th century Europe, where there is
no magic, healing potions or otherworldly creatures.
Once a united kingdom, but now has split into five smaller
factions, the Nords, Swadians, Rhodoks, Khergits and
Vaegirs. Which represents substitutes for archetypes of
the medieval world as Mongols, Vikings, European
medieval knights and so on.
You create a character, first looks then assigning, his or her
The world of Calradia.
starting skills by a series of questions such as your
background before turning to the life of a mercenary
captain, a warrior, a nobleman or a merchant etc.
After finishing creating your character, you will be put in the
world with no more than a horse, some rusty weapons
and little coin in your purse. Here you can do whatever
you want, whack some bandits that roam the lands?
Sure why not, get some better equipment or sell them to
get some more coins.
You can join tournaments to raise your renown or take
quests for the people or kings and lords. There are quite
some options but they generally end up with you
putting together a small group of men, either as
mercenaries or in time as a nobleman to one of the five
kings. The stat screen, here you can level up your
character.

5. Mount & Blade has a innovated combat and you can The battlefield can contain only a few soldiers
choose from a large vary of medieval or hundreds for really intense combat, you also
weapons, swords, crossbows, axes, spears and so have siege battles to take over castles or towns.
on.
You can fight mounted on a horse or take the The player experience risks, goals and rewards.
enemies on foot. You directly control your own As an example you get more renown if you are
character but you will have your men with you highly outnumbered in a battle or you can gain
that will act on their own. a castle if you take it over by besieging
it, something that isn’t easy. If you get in a fight
However you can give them basics commands like with a large enemy force you could risk losing
“charge”, “hold this position”, “follow me” and all your men or get captured and spending a
some more. long time in their prison until you escape or
The combat is fairly simple but complex in its own your king pays the ransom.
way. Left click to attack and right click to block.
But you control the direction of the attack with
the mouse. As an example move the mouse back
and you will thrust with the sword.
Also, as I wrote before, this is not a fantasy game, so
no healing potions or magic. You are not some
superhuman that soaks up hits after hits like a
sponge. So it takes some skill to block the
attacks and swing at the right time.
However you can’t die in the game, you get
unconscious if your life goes down to zero and
believe me that can happen with one blow.

6. The modding community for Mount & Blade is
incredible.
There are mods that improve the
graphics, animations, sounds and not to mention
the added content like more armor and weapons.
Then there are the total conversions like different
maps, adding rifles, cannons and even making the A screenshot of a total conversions that
game follow new campaigns like Lord of the adds rifles and new troops to the game
Rings, Warhammer, the 100 Year War, etc.
Some other mods just enhance the vanilla game and
others implant new things, like sea battles and
battle size changer. It allows more men at the
battlefield, up to a thousand at once.
Mount & Blade in its vanilla form, no
graphical improvements

7. Taking my own gaming experience I can say that I have
improved quite a lot at the combat. Before I did miss a lot
when charging with my horse and swung my weapon.
Now I can come at full speed, make a perfect hit, turn
around quite easily and then cut down another enemy.
For the mood I can go from happy, satisfied, amused, worried
and angry.
Some examples are, if an enemy charges me from behind or
whatever with a lance and it knocks me unconscious
instantly. I will get mad, but it is also a kind of good
feeling, because you don’t feel invincible, you are just one
of the other soldiers.
Me playing Mount & Blade with a lot of
I will get happy if I win a hard battle or sad if I loose and so mods, improved graphics is one of them.
on.
The combat for me is intense, rewarding and most of all fun,
they did a great job with this.
I worship the mod community and their hard work they put in
all the wonderful mods.
After months of hardcore gaming I may lose interest in the
game and take some time away from it, then return some
weeks or months later and finding some new mods being
released and the game is fun again.

8. My conclusions are that Mount & Blade is a deeper
game that I originally thought with its clever
design.
The designers have really listened to what their players
wanted. TaleWorlds made a wise decision when it
came to the digital distribution they used, not only
did they help them finishing the game and get
noticed, but also they have showed the gaming
industry that you don’t need millions in founds to
make a great game. Some clever thinking, great idea
for a game and a lot of hard work is enough.
The innovated combat is also something that is deep
and sure others have tried to implant it before but
TaleWorlds really succeeded. I hope other
developers take notice at this.
When it comes to player created content I hope that it
will get more and more supported by developers
because it will help the gaming industry a lot.
Mount & Blade really shows how mods can enhance
and make the game even bigger and better with the
help of a modding community.