I just got into Fire and Sword. It's a very different experience. I thought it was tougher at first, and in some ways it is(stupid diseases killing half my army every 10 minutes). But it's also quite fun.
I started off, unsure really how to advance out of the lowly starting conditions you're put into, but I now had a gun, and I wanted to use it, so after the intial tutorial, I attack some looters. Slowly, and one by one they're brought down with my newfound gunpowder based power. "This is easy," I think. So I go after some bandits... big mistake. Taking down even a dozen melee enemies from range is nothing. Taking down 8 marksmen with muskets... that's a different story. I do get a few of them, but eventually I'm hit. I stumble around, trying to gain a foothold, somewhere, anywhere. Small jobs here and there just to keep myself and the few green soldiers who follow me fed. Months go by and I'm not making any progress...
Now, I don't usually play bandit characters. I have a certain amount of repsect for the hard working put upon villagers. I'll loot them in times of war, because that's what war requires, but I try not to do it for personal gain... This time though, I was getting nowhere. I was working for a week for various mayors, making barely enough to feed my army, and the fact that they rarely lasted long enough to be paid kept me from, well, going completely broke. So I broke down. I managed to save up a few hundred monies and with that I went around for nearly a week, collecting every recruit villager that could swing a stick and would be willing to follow me. With this small army, I would loot a village. I would find the coins I needed to buy even the most basic of equipment and with which to pay a professional army. Except I forgot that my 20-30 villagers were just that... villagers... and not all that suited to fighting even other villagers. Outnumbered something like 2 or 3 to 1, I was forced to retreat, broken once more, and desperate as ever, I did what I could to save up a few more coins... I was back to attacking looters again. Mayors would pay me a bit to do it and I'd get a few coins from the weapons... I didn't even pay attention to the prisoner list when I hit a group of three looters. I just thought I'd found an easy pay day, which it was. But a list of 20+ prisoners came up when I finished the battle, a lot of them professional soldiers and all willing to fight for me for free... at least for a time. With this, I tried again... with more success. This time the villagers, seeing my trained and fighting army, didn't even give me harsh glance. I burned their homes, took their goods... sold them all and bought more guns and got rid of my lame horse. I'm now in a position where I feel like I can make a difference in the world... off the backs of those poor villagers.
And you know what? I don't even feel bad about it. Which, in itself feels odd.
While not always true, Mount and Blade(and Warband) tended to push me, although not very hard, towards a more honorable path. I could usually manage to make enough money simply through skill and the enemy's lack of decent equipment. And occasionally an enemy with a lot of ranged attackers could give me trouble, but more often than not, I didn't have too much trouble getting started from humble beginnings and moving my way up to the lordly ranks. But these enemies I stepped on to propel myself upwards were always looters, raiders, bandits. And while they may have their own story I'll never get to hear, they were ostensibly doing bad things in their methods of survival.
The introduction of widespread firearms changed this dramatically... suddenly survival of small, "easy" battles was less about skill and more about luck. And I won't even claim to be making some great revelation here, because history writers have talked about this for centuries and much more eloquently than I can put it. But in no other game I've ever played, have I actually FELT, this crossover and the vast differences it causes in almost every aspect of (at least what's simulated) gameplay life and the way I'm forced to think about the game world.
While the game itself is fun, the combined experiences of the other Mount and Blades and the Fire and Sword variant have given me something extra to think about... not that I can particularly grasp it all that well at the moment, but it's something stewing in my mind. And I appreciate that more than any amount of momentary fun I might derive from it.
Author
Topic: Mount and Blade (Read 664766 times)