Here's a video on how TaleWorlds went about designing elements of their world, from the history, to the landmass, to cultures, and how they all (in some cases quite obviously) borrow from the real world. It's also an exploration of what one can learn about worldbuilding from looking at an example like Bannerlord, or really the whole Mount and Blade series.
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My Links:
/ krosencreutz
/ rosencreutz
Rome video I mentioned:
• Is "Byzantium" Roman?
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Links to sources mentioned (diaries, etc):
Dev diaries
Aserai
www.taleworlds.com/en/Games/B...
Battania
www.taleworlds.com/en/Games/B...
Calradia/Empire
www.taleworlds.com/en/Games/B...
www.taleworlds.com/en/Games/B...
Khuzait
www.taleworlds.com/en/Games/B...
Sturgia
www.taleworlds.com/en/Games/B...
Vlandia
www.taleworlds.com/en/Games/B...
On cataphracts and Byzantine warfare:
pure.royalholloway.ac.uk/ws/p...
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00:00 Intro
02:28 Constructing a History
06:06 Constructing a world
10:36 Constructing Cultures
15:02 Battania
18:00 Sturgia
22:33 Calradia
26:19 Conclusion
29:10 Outro
That's a nice head you have on your shoulders.
That’s a nice HARVEST you have on your SEASON
Less talk more raiding!
This seems threatening
@@romulusnuma116 My men would like a word with you about your purse and your belongings.
i will drink from Your skull!
Stealing an entire town and rebuilding it brick by brick sounds like one of the evil things I would do in a game.
A weird coincidence is that there's a Danish children's book series about birds who literally steal buildings whole and a baker who has to convince them to give them back by baking them cookies. They're called Yggenytterne so maybe they're to blame here.
When Khosrow I sacked Antioch he captured all of it's citizens and settled them in a new Antioch back in Persia.
Have you heard of postal? Cathartic
@@KaantheKaan No he relocated them in Khosraws better antioch (that was the actual name)😂
Is this how the danes invented lego?
About Sargoth, if you read the lore for Sargot in Bannerlord, it’s mentioned ‘Sargot’ is the Vlandian language word for ‘Hill,’ and there have been many Sargots. I think that’s the reasoning they built in.
Reminds me of how in real life explorers will ask the name of a certain place like say.. some kind of desert, the locals will say "it's a desert" in their native language, and the explorers will take it literally and think it's called the "Desert Desert" and the name will stick even after they colonize it.
Or it could even be a case of York/New York sort of a thing
@@rangerstedfastwhich New York? There’s 3 in the UK, 6 in the US, and one in Ukraine, along with New York being an archaic name for the Crimean peninsula due to the amount of Anglo-Saxon exiles that settled there after the Norman conquests.
@@Pantsinabucket It doesn't matter which New York, there was still an original "York", the old and powerful city in northern Britain. Settlers often come to a place and name it "New MyHometown", something like that. As you pointed out, it's an incredibly common occurrence.
@@sethleoric2598 Literally Sahara Desert lore.
I love the worldbuilding in Bannerlord because it's deep but scarce, and its writers clearly know their history, which makes the analogues they create make sense in context.
if You love Bannerlord's worldbuilding i strongly recommend the Digital Companion audiobook (its up on KZhead, dont need to buy it if You didnt get it for free)
@@kuman0110 the audiobook was a real treat, thanks for the suggestion!
@@Ennio444 np ^w^
As someone who has studied 'Celtic' history and languages, I've always disliked how much more currency 'Celtic' has than and how little connection it has with actual historical and contemporary Celtic-speaking peoples. Honestly, outside of referring to the Celtic languages, it's not a very helpful or truly meaningful term. There's a lot of confusion in the terminology around Celtic groups in pop culture such that terms like 'Gallic' and 'Gaelic' are often confused, with many Rome TW YTers referring to 'Gallic Warbands' as 'Gaelic Warbands', and people conflating Brythonic and Goidellic languages and cultures. That TaleWorlds managed to avoid the mystical druid trap shows how low the bar is for anything 'Celtic' in pop culture.
Hey, people do think mayans incas and axtecs were the same thing and probably all mexican, so it could always be worse.
@@cseijifja Or that all of Africa is one culture.
Well can't blame people not interested in the subject for not looking into it, but they should also realize that what they know is very limited.
Gaerlic Warbands They take all your garlic and only your garlic.
@@rjbandit7712 shoo
I like to think the previous M&B world maps as being abstract. Geography is difficult without actual maps and things had different positions in the minds of dark age Calradians.
We move at the same speed in every direction, which proves that the world does have these proportions. But to hell with that. I prefer your idea.
@@zamzamazawarma928 Of course, you are right. But I suppose when you actually travel through wilderness you rarely follow a straight path. You zig zag through paths and lose sense of distance you've traveled. Unless you have a good pathfinder, then you can travel much faster.
I think TaleWorlds was always going to be backed into a corner regarding the depiction of the whoever the precursor Nords were going to be because (as the devs themselves have somewhat said) players are going to expect the stereotypical viking stuff. In the case I think it's very important to emphasize that virtually all popular aspects of the vikings are to some extent fiction; from the way their society functions down to the actual importance (or rather lack thereof) of concepts such as Valhalla. Trying to depict the Kievan 'Rus is made extra hard by the fact that the combination of non-stereotypical 'viking' elements and Slavic elements won't make them recognisable as "Nordic" at all by anyone that's invested in the viking stereotype. The big issue companies like TaleWorlds will encounter when they try to depict anything Scandinavian pre-1100 is that the current viking stereotypes are pretty recent developments from media such as the Last Kingdom and the Vikings series: twenty years ago most people probably still imagined horned vikings. A lot of the history buffs seem to assume that because our current image of the vikings developed in the last 10-20 years that they are much more accurate than earlier depictions... while those earlier depictions, *even with the horned helmets*, are actually probably a slightly more accurate depiction of the actual medieval Scandinavians than the currently heavily romanticised vikings with tattoos, egalitarian social structures and the Valhalla death cult stuff. There has been some pushback to this depiction as of late with several KZhead channels and games trying to lessen the stereotypical imagery, but I think it's really hard to shake such a stereotype off, *especially* when the historical alternative is that the Scandinavian 'vikings' didn't really differ all that much culturally and aestherically from their cousins on the continent: the big aesthetic difference between a viking and an Anglo-Saxon or Frank is that the Scandinavians tended to wear pretty long tunics that went down to their knees, while the latter two tended to wear shorter tunics... a cultural depiction like that isn't really going to attract a lot of people besides history nerds like me that aren't invested in warriors all that much 👀
Yeah the horned helmet depiction was a big one that came to mine for me too when I was thinking about ways the Viking depiction has sort of shifted around. A lot of cultural understandings of cultures and indeed presumptions of how we already understand them permeate media, and especially history games. It's sometimes hard for me to sift through if a game like Civ which cares enough to have a wiki is responsible for creating perceptions or falling into them cause they're a path of least resistance... or if they're victims of incuriousity.
I always find it funny how differently vikings are often depicted inside and outside of Scandinavia, mostly because we generally don't take them very seriously and most Scandinavian media about vikings or norse gods tends to be comedic. The viking age isn't actually a very important piece of our history since it by definition happened before the formation of any of the Scandinavian nations. So they're generally treated more as funny dudes you can use for whatever since everyone will know what they are but you don't need to treat them with the seriousness an actual piece of historical fiction would need. Historical accuracy therefore isn't very important because everyone is aware that this is nowhere near accurate and you have shows that even poke fun at the modern stereotypes.
@@hedgehog3180 "The viking age isn't actually a very important piece of our history" I don't know which of the 4 you live in, but it's pretty fundamental to our culture here in Denmark. Sure, we don't go around killing monks anymore, but the stories are still shared, we're still a sea happy people, we still keep the collectivism as a core pillar and religion isn't particularly important. Just because we don't conquer England on a monthly basis anymore doesn't mean we've shed our viking heritage completely, it's absolutely important. The reason we don't treat it with the same gravity as we do Christian stories and figures is because that isn't the viking thing to do, those guys loved to make crazy shit up for entertainment, just read the sagas, there's no way any of those lads did half the shit they claim. The reason we're still different is precisely our heritage and we should hold on to that, it's something to be proud of.
there's the widespread idea that the Norse culture of the time was wholly centered around raiding and pirating whereas in reality (like everywhere else) most of the population was engaged in agriculture.
@@plebisMaximus i mean considering the cultural prestige of vikings we're all happy to lean into it as a source of pride, but i disagree that most people would consider viking heritage "important", at least from any of my own circles here in Oslo, Norway. I do know a larper or two that take it many steps further but that's the exception rather than the rule.
I think the best "fictional history" game that does this is Disco Elysium, their history is a great parody of real life history and works very well; the few fictional elements somehow make it even more accurate to how history _feels_
I only played that game for a few hours, but I agree. The grungy, slummy city still aching from the ideological and physical scars of a war decades ago was really cool.
I'd definitely consider Bannerlord (and your setting by extension) to be fantasy, even if they take inspiration from history heavily and don't feature magic. Magic isn't required in fantasy, as much as people may expect it to be featured, as fantasy is a very broad genre. You could call it Hard Fantasy, stealing the term from Sci-Fi, or you could just call it something like Historical Fantasy considering the obvious historical inspiration
There's this genre in anime about a person from our world being reborn in a fantastical setting with different rules called Isekai. The experience of everyone in Bannerlord would very similar to people in a setting like that, watching some random person unfamiliar with the world achieve things no normal person could. In a way you get to play a character in a story like that. Or perhaps the whole genre is a retelling of the narrative players tell themselves as they play a certain kinds of video games? To me Bannerlord always feels a bit like playing an Isekai story.
Historical Fiction is a very real genre, fictional characters live fictional lives and plots in and amongst real people in real settings in real time periods. What you are talking about though is fictional settings very heavily based on and similar to this one, yeah, I don't have a name for that either.
Low fantasy.
@@fallingphoenix2341 yea but Bannerlord isn't an Isekai in that your character is a natural part of this world and was presumably born and grew up there
Isn't that just called "low fantasy"? Like "it doesnt go high up over the ground but stands pretty hard low on the ground of what possible-ish". I believe people called Martin's work low fantasy, despite the dragons and some magic. Then Bannerlord would be even lower fantasy
The observation about the Battanians often being in losing wars and how they are not present in Warband is really good.
8:25 to be fair the persian King of Kings did destroy the roman Antioch and taken all the inhabitans(≈) to build another city in his Empire and basically called it "the Better Antioch (that the romans can't equal)"
It could be that the local ruler has judged their ways better and to develope them he transported people good in their crafts in his lands, like the Hungarian king(s) did for saxons giving them land depopulated by the nomad raiders to develope it and guard it but mostly develope it.
I feel like light fantasy is the closet genre to a fictional world and history. Even without magic it’s still a form of fantasy but my exposure to the genre is extremely limited
Low fantasy is the term I've seen used in opposition to "high" fantasy with its magic and elves
Proper term is "historical fantasy", defined as: "Historical fantasy is set in a fictional world which resembles a period from history but is not that actual history"
@@PortaTerzo I feel like that's more for something like Assassin's creed but idk
@@s7robin105 Assassin Creed is alternative history, literally. You are going to the past and altering history.
Yes this is more in line with Historical Fantasy that is a work directly inspired by a period of history but set in a secondary world with often minimal magical elements. Most books by Guy Gavriel Kay fit into this mold The Lions of Alrashan being my particular favorite.
On the subject of Sturgians morphing into Vaegirs, there is a Sturgian clan called Vagiroving (with -oving being a suffix all Sturgian clans share, probably similar to real-world -ovich). Maybe the Vaegir guard took their name from that clan, perhaps being originally contracted from its leader, and then Vagirovings emerged on top in Sturgia to become a faction in Warband, similar to Khergits. Thus, 'Vaegir' in Warband would not be an exonym. Then again, it's possible that while the word 'Vaegir' does come from 'Vagiroving', it being applied to the descendants of Sturgians is an example of a people adopting an exonym, which isn't, I think, unheard of in history, or maybe again the two are unrelated.
That's an interesting point (and possibility) to bring up. The names in general are curious to me. I've seen arguments that the nobility is actually more Slav than Nord, and the opposite, more in line with history, but then there's just genuine mixes like Raganvad and his children sounding Norse in names, but his own father being Vadinslav (unambiguous where that one comes from, isn't it?) In the end I wasn't super sure how to disentangle the names, but it's nice to see people adding perspective.
@@Rosencreutzzz Ragnvand and his children might sound nordic because Ragnvand's mother is a Nordic princess with familial ties to the Skolderbrotva? thus the Grand Prince is part-nordic, his allies are nordic, knyazes are 'sturgic' (slavic) and so is most of the population
Wait thats make sense cause in warband, Nords Control West part of Sturgian land and Vaegir still controo the east. Coincidently, Vagiroving Control eatsern part of Sturgian which bordered Khuzait...
Love the vid but one of the things you missed about the Sturgians is that the current nobility in Bannerlord are supposed to be the equivalent of the Slavic chiefs and kings who would hire out the Viking (Nord) mercenaries that would later turn on them and replace them as the ruling class. Its mentioned in the Bannerlord lore that the Nords are a new group that came from outside Calradia to raid but eventually fell into a kind of mercenary work for the Sturgian nobility. By the time of Warband, the Nords have seized the western half of old Sturgia and the Sturgians have been left with the rump east as Vaegirs.
also (its only mentioned in Digital Companion audiobook i think?) but the Vlandian peninsula in the north east is actually the first region of Calradia heavily settled by the Nords, who were there even before Vlandia was actually founded, so i apprecieate that consistency that its also their core land in Warband and roughly where Tihr and Sargoth are
Sturgia is basically Kievian Rus'. I am Slavic and bunch of Sturgian lords that i can recognize their names also city in Sturgia is named "Sibir" and thats how we in Serbian call Siberia in Russia
@@SerboFaca1 we actually call siberia as sibir in russia too.
And they couldn't add a single Black African faction.
@@jasonhaven7170 Because game is based to medieval Europe and Middle East + Mongols.
As far as the Sargoth issue goes, one of the later Persian enemies of Rome built a copy of the city of Antioch and made Roman prisoners live there. If I remember correctly, its name translates to something like "Kusro's Better Antioch." Edit: I found the source I was using. The Persians used deportation as a tool of policy. Khosrow I captured Antioch in 540 during the Byzantine-Sasanian wars; the city was destroyed and its population was deported to this new city. Procopius has provided detailed information on the building of the city, though his primary source is pro-Sasanian. According to al-Tabari and al-Tha'alibi, the city was built on the plan of the Syrian metropolis and Khosrow I did everything in his power to make the residents want to stay. The city was built in a mesopotamian metropolitan style, and was named "Weh Antiok Khosrow" or literally "better than Antioch, built by Khosrow. Also known in Middle Persian as "Beh-Az-Andīw-e Khosrow" or "Better than Antioch of Khosrow."
That's the funniest shit I've heard all day, thank you for sharing
a lot of people tell me history is boring but they ignore all the stupid petty shit like this that people go and do
I think in the geography part you should have mentioned that while Mount and Blade: Warband was basically an improved version of the original Mount and Blade, they did have very different maps. Originally it was just a big square. Just for a little bit more changing geography, for fun. Also there's a lot of information about the cities in Bannerlord if you look at their page. Sargot includes something about being like, a generic name for certain types of towns. So the new Sargoth was named the same way but in an entirely different place. I actually really like the city pages they're fun to read.
I love the fact that steppe cultures are actually represented 🥰
Yeah. TaleWorlds is a Turkish company so it makes sense that they are including steppe culture.
I learned a lot from this one, thank you!
Love your videos man!
Found you ;^
@@dyn9726 lol hey Dyn!
@@Strat-Guides i swear im not doing this on purpose, i got recommended this video and seeing whats it about. Then im curious what the comment section think of it and i found you €:
Fantastic video. You're the first person I've come across that finally recognizes that the western bit of Aserai territory is meant to be an analogue for Tunisia instead of Morocco.
yes, also Quyaz is literally supposed to be Carthage, with according to lore a giant library filled with Cannic (Calradia's equivalent of punic) texts written in different language and alphabet (!!!)
@@kuman0110 I always see Quyaz as the Jerusalem of Calradia.
@@DestroyerOfOgis it can really be both! many things in Calradian history are inspired by many different, often separated by centuries, things. Like, the first glance, superficial inspiration (the armor, units, settlement architecture) of Vlandia screams normans and normandy, but their backstory and their relation to Calradian Empire screams Franks/Goths.
@@kuman0110 Vlandians draw inspiration from the Norman world and, in a wider sense, western medieval Europe. However in the game lore they are clearly meant to be analogous to Sicilian Normans. They are former mercenaries from across the sea who have taken over the former homeland of a great empire past its prime and beset by civil war. The game even goes so far as to give the first Vlandian king (Osric Iron-Arm) the same nickname as the first independent leader of the Sicilian Normans (William Iron-Arm).
@@DestroyerOfOgis Jerusalem is a better match for Iyakis.
The Ace Combat franchise has a fictional universe that also doesn't count as an alternate history because the nations are completely separate, but still have recognizable aspects to them (Modern Planes making up their Air forces, period appropriate pop-music. ). They describe their setting as "Strange Real" and is something I've borrowed when talking to my friends about more grounded fictional settings that don't put a lot of emphasis on technology or magic, but also don't take place in "the real world" or alternate history.
21:37 It's also weird because the Vagiroving are a clan in this game. Maybe that's where "Vaegir guard" comes from? "Kingdom of the Vaegirs" could rather have originated as the Vagiroving being the most powerful Sturgian clan left, and becoming an independent kingdom. Though that would have to involve going all the way from the easternmost part of Sturgia to the westernmost part. Edit: There actually is a lore basis for this. Alayen is the best source of Vaegir lore in Warband. He says two things that indicate something very interesting about the Vaegirs (and thus, the Sturgians.) "Just as the Nords can call on their kinfolk overseas, so does the Vaegir king call on his kinfolk from over the mountains" and "I am from the Vaegir homeland over the mountains, where the Vaegir lords lived before the Emperor brought them in Calradia." This establishes something interesting about the Vaegirs: they consider their homeland to be east of where they live during Warband, which would make sense considering that Bannerlord's Sturgians are mostly found east of what we could assume became the land of the Vaegirs.
☝️ that's interesting
BTW the Calradian Empire is actually mentioned quite a lot in Warband dialogue. So there is some backstory in Warband, but you have to read it in the manual or talk to NPCs.
One thing that's notable about Mount and Blade is that you can really tell that it was made by a studio that is not from western Europe. If a studio based in England would make a game like this we would instead have something not only more geographically constrained in terms of cultural influences but also most likely something a lot more stereotypical. Also I'd like to call this style of world building Robert E. Howard like. As far as I know he was the first to create new worlds from our own real history in this style. He even included steppe cultures.
Well, stereotypical for a western audience. I'd be curious to know how Turkish people feel connected to the lore in Bannerlord and how original it is to them.
Yeah the company is from Turkey.
Robert E. Howard-like is a great description. I never even considered that.
Howardesque, maybe? Either way that’s a terrific description!
And they couldn't add a single Black African faction.
I love how it kind of portrays late Roman/ Byzantine culture.. it’s pretty much spot on especially for a video game(aside from TW)
this is a ridiculously high quality and well researched video and I just want to give you credit for putting so much effort in.
Fantasy is absolutely the right term, magic is just common in fantasy because it fits the not possible piece of fantasy, the main definition is simply: the faculty or activity of imagining things, especially things that are impossible or improbable. So yea fantasy, it’s fantasy
I love how much research you've put into this. You've earned a subscriber. 👍
I've actually worked on my own Worldbuilding project that utilises the whole coloured marbles thing. There's one peoples- called sometimes the Libari or Mellans (it's complicated) who on first glance appear to be inspired by Roma or even Indian art and culture. Psych. My primary point of reference is actually ancient Greece (although the aforementioned culltures play a hand), but aethstetically alienated from classical depictions by including a tonne of deep and rich colour. In that lens, what may on first glance be a Sari may in fact be more analogous to a Himation, and the statues of gods too blur the lines of influence. There's also Greco-Bacterian influence, obviously. On another note- feathered Dinosaurs aren't dumb, people are just lazy when including feathers. I'd highly recommend the book All Yesterdays by C.M. Kösemen, Darren Naish, and John Conway- it's a revolutionary book which endeavours to imagine dinosaurs as real, breathing, living creatures, taking inspiration from the traits on modern animals that would not have fossolised, and imagining if dinosaurs had similar secret traits.
Calradia has always felt more like "We need a setting for our cool game, let's just make shit up" than a fully realized world with deep history and lore that takes into account how these are handled in the real world. Not to say they haven't put work in, but it's definitely on the lighter side compared to something like Tamriel, which I'd be super into seeing you make a video on at some point. I'm reasonably confident the idea to make large realistic battles, a robust system to let you command armies and a melee system that feels good to play came first and has always been the main focus of development. But with that said, they've definitely stepped up their game in Bannerlord, I hope they keep it up and flesh out the world even more.
Imagine finding out the world of some very popular fantasy franchise like lotr was just based off of some scraped concrete
Incredible video, can't believe I haven't seen any of your content before. Looking forward to delving into more of your videos, they all seem really interesting!
i think this type of analogical worldbuilding is really cool, another example to me would be the game suzerain (also it would be cool to see you make a video on that as well)
a cool thing is that there are off map factions in Calradia, if you talk to the ransom broker in the tavern and ask what happens to prisoners who don't get ransomed he talks about sending them to row boats of a faction that i forgot the name of but it was something similar to Genoa, so that faction would be Italian inspired by the merchant republic kind of theme, and then in the description of the khuzait town Akkalat it talks about a padishah which I think is like a Persian title, and how they are also declining like the Calradian empire.
I think the sexy jester would have been worth going back and adding
My head cannon for the phisical difference in map is that its a similar situation to historical maps of different eras where they would be maps of europe but some would be radically different and inaccurate and others would be more accurate
I'm so glad someone made a Bannerlord lore video.
26:35 early to the upload only to be met with feather-like dinosaur slander..! great video :) i've never played Bannerlord, and this has certainly piqued my interest into the games, especially as someone with a penchant for the Kyiv'ska Rus'. also, i just re-watched Kraut's video series on Turkish history and the comparisons to Anatolian geography and references to steppe culture groups were greatly appreciated, and how contemporary culture influences how we represent that (particularly in "realistic" informed light fantasy? genre certainly pending). much love!
The way you described the struggles with naming this genre I relate a lot to.
also, what is just super cool and i wish it was better represented aside from just by words, but still!!! i love two worldbuilding elements in Bannerlord: first one being companion intro dialogues. and lemme explain: while they are telling their story, we can learn about their respective cultures to an extent. For example, the companions of Sturgian origin with nickname Coalbiter have a backstory of being a sword-for-hire for what is basically trial by combat, and were resented by local community by it; and this tells us, the player, two things about Sturgian culture - that they practice iudiciary duels, that it is common enough that you can actually hire a guy to fight for you in it, and that in spite of (or maybe because of) the commonness of that practice, it is resented by Sturgian people. And all that from a pretty short dialogue with essentially a rando for hire. The second worldbuilding element i apprecieate (albeit sorta because i got it for free) is the Travels in Calradia audiobook from the perspective of in-world Calradian (Imperial) scribe and the detail put into describing even the frickin cuisine of those people, the local traditions, the history or organic organizations like forest brotherhood?? i find that very dope
also what i liked in bannerlord are those almost-unused cultures in it, so Darshi (Calradia's Persians and culture of the Ghilman mercenary faction), Nords (obvious, Skolderbrotva and Sea Raiders), Vakken (Sami/Finnish guys living semi-nomadically in Sturgia's forests and marshes, also the other forest-themed mercenaries), Karakhuzaits/Karakhergits (nomads who refused the order to settle down), and the Jawal people (who have much darker skin than other Aserai and wear leopard skin as armor so i believe they are supposed to be Nubian inspired) i really like how both "Travels" audiobook and companion or leader interactions expand on them tbf, even if the interactions and whole roleplay element of the game is sadly very neglected
oh Rosencreutz, how you struck the nail of my hyperfixation on the head
@@kuman0110 Where could I find this audiobook? It sounds interesting.
@@bernardoohigginsvevo2974 type Travels in Calradia into KZhead search :3
Very good video friend!
I love this, i'm subscribing!!
This managed to be informative withought being dry. Thank you for the deep dive
Hi, Bannerlord designer here. It feels weird when someone gets in your brain. Thanks for the insightful analysis.
One crazy thing I noticed is the geography looking like Turkey and the company TaleWorlds is a Turkish company
i think it's really funny how pretty much every game in the past 10 years with an original fantasy "medieval" setting that has a culture from that world's equivalent of north africa or the middle east just reskins the islamic caliphates/the turks and calls it a day with the exception of chivalry 2 of course which has what's basically the sassanid empire but as a matriarchal theocracy with cannons
Also just that western history tends to vastly overestimate how long the Caliphate existed so you'll have Caliphate like factions well into the high middle ages even though the Caliphate had fallen apart centuries before that era. Like there were a bunch of states claiming to be the Caliphate for a long time but that's the same as the Russian Empire claiming to be the third Rome. Imagine if in a game a bunch of classic legionairies wearing lorica segmenta showed up in the equivilant of the 1500s because of that.
And they couldn't add a single Black African faction.
11:35 this is exactly how bannerlord introduced this button one of most popular mods on release was a menu to teleport to whatever character,
This was pretty interesting to watch. Was hoping for a little more on the Byzantines compared to the Empire, but overall very enjoyable. It does feel like several different plots and themes changed over the development and were never quite rectified with one another. Even the length of Arenicos' rule seems out of step with how old everyone is. Feels like her should have ruled for 24 years, not 4. Good work.
Out of all M&B games, I have played With Fire and Sword the most. There's a lot of problems with WFaS, but for me the fact that it had a historical setting was a positive above the rest.
Yeah I get that. I think my favorite in terms of sheer experience was doing Warband with the Anno 1257 mod, but I also never felt like I got things just right to a point that I felt truly enmeshed in a faction enough to see the game through instead of just staying in the merc phase for a very long time.
Mount and blade is honestly so fucking underrated
Good video, I think my favorite part was the throwaway line mentioning the "stupid" look of feathered dinosaurs. I've always thought that and now I know I'm not the only one.
I think I might know why Sargot is way down south (in the land of traitors (fuck da rhodoks)). Back in the beta for the OG Mount & Blade, when Swadians and Vaegirs were the only factions, Sargoth was the Swadian capital. Might be a reference, or something they dug back up for the new game. Also, I think there's some lore snippet somewhere in Warband that confirms that the Forest Bandits of the Warband era are the descendants of the Battanians, though they aren't called that in Warband.
fuck da rhodoks?? swadian butterlicker 😡 rhodoks were based peasant revolt .... until they got their own nobility anyway lolz
Glad to have you back. Funny how you trick us into listening you ramble for half an hour. Anyway, there is a peculiar request I'd like to make. Can you checkout Stellaris' society research tech tree and comment on the "projection" of culture they make for FTL societies? They try to be vague as to allow things to fall into piece, but also kind of deterministic due go gameplay design.
I can't begin to describe what your videos are about to my roommates. I'm hooked though.
Excellent video! Again, nice to see some good analysis for a game series that generally doesn't get much. If coining a new term for the weird althist/fantasy situation is sufficient, could something like "convergent history" work? I.e, unlike alternate history that diverges from our established history, "convergent history" would start somewhere completely unfamiliar (different landmasses/cultures) and settle on something very similar to our own history?
that's a cool concept :0
I think Speculative History might be a good name, similar to how Specular Evolution has also become it's own genre. Basically fiction where the focus is on creating a more or less realistic world that either mirrors ours or asks what might be different if certain preconditions were different.
Great video !
21:36 also i think the exonym adoption worked for Sturgians/Vaegirs specifically because all the factions in Warband in some sense try to claim imperial heritage. So for the Veagirs adoption of that name may be a part of claiming the heritage?
The maps look like there was an ice age somewhere else on the non-forseeable world and the see levels changed
"Calradia is not a real place" IT'S REAL TO ME DAMMIT
louder!!!
im gonna f1-f3 on that guy for disrespecting Calradia smh
Just found your channel. I would definitely listen to an hours-long take on the cultural colonization and push backs of the peoples of Eora from the Pillars of Eternity franchise.
Calradia is literally just the late Roman Empire lol. It even has Constantinople with the Hagia Sophia in the intro cinematic
1:00 Fantasy history is usually the word
I like how considering warband takes place at the western part of calradia and the khuzaits are in the eastern part of the map during bannerlord, the khergits canonically conquered the entire empire
28:43 Oh I wish though. I mean, is there any game where you can play as a steppe nomad? And I mean a real steppe nomad who has to migrate with his cattle and family and has to interact with nearby clans and not a re-skinned town dweller living in a fixed location who gets cavalry buffs, how it is in Total War, CK, M&B and other games.
Someone should make Gmod Mongol RP🤣
CK2 is the best I've seen (but still far from accurate)
You can definitely make a Minecraft that'd fulfill that. You can simulate almost anything by just combining the right mods.
@@emmish64to be honest "Tribal" government in CK2 is still a sedentary, city building experience
@@macizogalaico not tribal, the Horse Lords dlc Nomad gov type. it is the most unique one id say
I’m pretty sure that in the description of Sargot the name just translates to some type of hill fort from an old language
It would be awesome if they introduced a feature and faction in bannerlord to go along with a sort of camping feature maybe make a camp somewhere on the map that you can leave your army at and walk around in makes upgrades build walls etc like a mobile city I think this was in warband at least in viking conquest I think. but you can upgrade the camp into a siegable settlement but upgrades take time and then there would be a faction that is completely nomadic lords settling in different parts of the map but the perk of this culture would be that once they setup camp they start the camp almost fully upgraded and decked out upgrades that would take days for you to achieve they would start their camps with but maybe make that faction stay in one place longer so they won't just steamroll everyone.
On the note of genre, I'd say it is low fantasy: First: And maybe it is a bit tangenty, but originally the Mount and Blade series was envisioned as a low fantasy game with a quest line where you kill Harlaus, who is then raised by a necromancer and comes back to die a second time. Secondly: The Song of Ice and Fire series IMO a good example, where it is somewhat similar to Mount and Blade, where the story is a somewhat reimagination of British mediaeval history, sprinkled with a bit more fantastical elements, like Dragons and The Others. As mentioned above, M&B also got close to that almost, but they went for a more mundane world in the end. Also on a different note, I hope that with Bannerlord, they commit to this world more, and may even change its prequel status to a more soft reboot status for possible later games. At least I'd be interested in exploring what lies beyond Calradia, even if it's to just wage more giant battles.
It would, in my opinion be super cool to make the Khuzaits nomadic. Like you have to go find where their camp has moved to and follow it and either catch up or wait until they stop and if you catch up the camp looks different than if you wait until they stop
The lore is that the Khuzaits were forced westward by other steppe tribes and conquered old imperial border cities. They're mor akin to Turko-Persian warlords/rulers rather than pure steppe tribes.
I feel like it would have been worth pointing out that TaleWorlds is a Turkish company during the bit where you compared Calradia to Asia Minor. I feel like it's meant to be inferred but it'd be worth it for the sake of the people who don't have that context and are newly-exposed to M&B development conceptually.
Great video
A few months back in the encyclopedia on console there was a name for a new culture
Really interesting video, I think its cool the cultures in the game are just like kind of amalgamations of what people who don't know a lot about history think of when they think of specific groups. I need a movie and/or video game with nothing but feathered dinosaurs that are painted statues.
will they follow us when we arent looking like weeping angels?
great video man! helped alot with my worldbuilding
I give the type of genre M&B has the title of Strangereal, named after the world of Ace Combat. It is a world which would be recognisable as our own at a first glance, nothing metaphysical or beyond the realm of possibility, though looking deeper you'll find it not to be our world at all. Of course this is an imperfect definition, so in general I use the ol' classic "I know it when I see it" to decide on which media would be Strangereal. At the end of the day its a setting designed to emulate the real world without wanting to think or worry about the horrible complexities associated with our real world. Fun to play around in, fun to create and occasionally even fun to explore.
I know pretty much nothing about game design. But I followed the Taleworlds dev blogs religiously, and I remember them talking about the cultural differences they were implementing. For example, the battanians and Sturgians had a greater emphasis on raiding culture, and players that engaged in the act of pillaging settlements could build their reputation quickly with battanian/sturgian lords. The opposite would end up being true with the valandians, where their societal values focused more on honor and chivalry. Thus, protecting peasants attacked by bandits would see you respected and admired by valandian lords and ladies. This had me insanely excited, for this concept had almost limitless potential. I began imagining the different cultural mechanics we'd see in the game, such as unique cultural festivals we could engage in. Wandering through battanian lands? Join a local archery/javelin competition, or a crossbow competition in Valandia. Trudging through the icy expanse of Sturgia? Head to town to engage in a bare- knuckle free-for-all brawl in the freezing cold! Last man standing gets a bag of coins. Or maybe head East and compete in a horse race with the Steppe folk! We see none of this in Bannerlord. The differences between factions come down to nothing except the units you can recruit from them. That's it. There are no cultural hurdles to navigate. No social etiquette to learn and master. Nothing. The game is a goodish battle simulator. Nothing more. Which is a massive let down, considering that M&B is an incredibly unique franchise, with no real competitor to speak of. There's so much untapped potential for this game and the world of Calradia, but whether it's due to mismanagement or some other unknown factors, the game is a skeleton with a thin yet attractive layer of skin hanging from its boney shoulders.
If I have to use to world to describe this “alt history so different from irl that the planet isn’t even the same” I’d say “para-history”. I feel like that encompasses the idea of “differentness” and “historicity” without bringing on the idea of it being somehow joined to real life.
Nice video, thx for the reference of the city A Corunha, I'm from there, greetings. Long live Battania Kingdom
Awesome video man your vocabulary and knowledge of history is 🤌
Tailworlds did a great job with the world building in Bannerlord. As someone who spent spent a lot time in Warband and loves real world history everything feels familiar but also new and refreshing at the same time. Im perfectly ok with the map reboot as after a while the warband map felt very dull. I definitely want to see something done with islands around Calradia too. Maybe add some minor factions that actually have fiefs and a naval system like the one from Viking Conquest.
I thought at first that Calradia was Anatolia when I played Warband because it looked so similar and especially the terrain and the placement of the cities reminding me of irl cities like Shariz feels like Antioch, Dhirim as Ankara, Halmar as Gazientep, Wercheg as Izmit, Sargoth as Yalova and many more. It seems like if somebody drew the entire map of Anatolia from mind and started recreating the history of Europe.
As far as genre names go, I like “evocative fantasy.” Fantasy which picks at familiar themes which act as both a reduction of a culture and an experiment of that culture(s) in a different world.
I really like anything that depicts the Eastern Roman Empire because I feel they are vastly underrated in pop culture and most depictions of them suck and are based on literal medieval western propaganda that try to discount them as not Roman and Greek. Like how CK3 literally made their culture Greek even though they considered themselves Roman and called themselves that. Games also generally fail to represent their government structure very well because it was so out of place for it's time period. Mount And Blade does a better job than most, even if it's just because the game isn't super complex in these departments. I also really like the layout of their cities, though they clearly are more inspired by Constantinople than Eastern Roman cities in general with all of their remnants of Roman architecture scattered somewhat out of time. The unpainted marbles thing might not even be an anachronism since by this time period many of these statues were so old that a lot people didn't even know who they depicted and might not known how they were originally painted or just didn't have the money to maintain them. The people of that time generally wouldn't have cared all that much about maintaining things that weren't churches or icons, and to be clear that's not a dig against them it was just a reflection of what was important to them. The legionary thing also isn't necessarily anarchronistic, a lot of old Roman terms survived well into the 11th century and while legionary wasn't one it did survive for a good while, and other terms such as Caesar survived the entire history of the empire. Other things such as battle orders also survived the entire history of the empire despite being in Latin.
They are depicted as Greek in CK3 because that’s what they were. They spoke Greek, lived in Greece (or historically Greek regions) and followed Greek cultural customs and the Greek form of Christianity. “Roman” may be how they thought of and described themselves, and how they modeled they government institutions, but they were still Greek. I believe CK3 gives them Byzantine heritage to acknowledge the Roman influences on their culture, in addition to some unique cultural tenets. In the mod MoreBookmarks+, they are depicted as a hybrid culture of Greek and Roman that emerged sometime during the 7th century.
telling the byzantine empire is rome because they are called rome is the same as thinking macedonia is not greek because they are called macedonia.
@@DovahFett > They spoke Greek And? Austrians speak German, does that make them German? Not to mention you're just wrong. The Eastern Roman Empire covered several different languages including but not limited to, Latin, Semitic dialects, Armenian, Coptic, Vandal, Lombard, and various Italian dialects. At no point except maybe the tail end was it linguistically homogeneous (and probably not even, Constantinople was a metropolis). Greek was just the language of administration. But like modern day India uses English in it's administration despite that not being their indigenous language. > lived in Greece (or historically Greek regions) Ahh yes those historically Greek regions of Anatolia and Thrace. Y'know because there had been such a thing as a Greek nation state at this point in history that could lay claim to those territories. The only "Greek" state that had controlled these areas was Alexander the Great's empire and the successor states, none of which had majority Greek populations, and also Macedon wasn't considered Greek before Alexander the Great. The only state that had controlled the area for long enough to actually spread it's culture was the Roman Empire, which is why the people living there considered themselves Roman even up to the 20th century. > and followed Greek cultural customs What does this mean? The crowds in Constantinople watched chariot races and used communal baths just like in Rome. They had a senate and the emperor called himself Augustus and the successor was called Caesar. Their flags bore the Chi-Rho symbol and their battle orders were in Latin. What part of this is Greek? There was no trace of ancient Greek culture like Phalanx warfare, Hoplites, City states that were either democratic or oligarchic. > the Greek form of Christianity You realize that this makes absolutely no sense to say right? Christianity wasn't a Greek religion, it originates in the Levant and was adopted by the Roman Empire. The only reason why you're even saying this is because of literal medieval Papal propaganda against the Roman Empire to try to de-legitimize them and justify sending crusaders against them. This makes about as much sense as calling Protestantism the Danish form of Christianity. > “Roman” may be how they thought of and described themselves, and how they modeled they government institutions, but they were still Greek Basically you admit that they were Roman in every way that matters, culture, identity, and government. Yet somehow you are able to decide that actually they were completely wrong about what they called themselves and they were actually Greek. An identity that would not come into existence until about 500 years after the Roman state ceased to exist. By this logic the Franks living in Charlemange's Empire were somehow French, Belgian, Dutch, Luxembourgish, Swiss, German, and Italian at the same time. Despite none of those identities existing yet. Like no matter how you slice it calling the late Roman Empire Greek is anachronistic and is basically just an invention by modern Greek nationalists to justify their own ambitions. It has no place in proper historical discussion.
@@TheLiquelique And Macedon wasn't considered part of Greece until Alexander the Great became the Great so you've literally just proven me right. Not to mention there's an entire geopolitical spat about whether or not Macedon is inherently part of Greece and both Greece and Northern Macedon came down on the side that it isn't. So I guess thanks for agreeing.
@@hedgehog3180Austrians are German in ck3
One of the first things that I thought when I looked at Bannerlord and saw the Khuzaits was “oh. Kazakhstan. Neat.”
What I find interesting in this franchise is what lies between the games, like Warband and Bannerlord. There are a few references to some "Republics of Geroia", "Balion" and "Lokti" that have next to no lore. There's also this boulder in Warband's map in the Khanate's empire. Dunno what that's about. I recall Baheshtur having a dialogue thing around there but I wasn't able to find anything online. It's there, but there's next to nothing about it. Wasn't it how the Khanate split in two, with the city people we play with being stuck there and nomads outside of Calradia? Then there's also the map changes from M&B proper to its Warband counterpart AND there's also all this stuff about the alpha when the game had a more fantasy element with a zombie King Harlaus. Man, I really wanna see TalesWorlds elaborate on these throwaway minor things that don't really matter at all. 🤷
I like describing this genre as 'non-supernatural fantasy', or 'fantasy without supernatural elements'.
It’s mentioned in the multiplayer mode that Legionaries aren’t technically called Legionaries anymore, but Legionaries are so famed in Calradia that these soldiers are still called Legionaries and the soldiers themselves still call themselves Legionaries.
Just like to mention that I think that the Griffin/Falcon and I guess now the Unicorn empire in the heroes of might and magic series especially HOMM V , but even Heroes VI and VII nails the asteistic look of something that is a mixture of Roman (early Western or pre divided period) and high medieval Western/Central European looking fantasy nation.
4:43 has not it been said in Warband that Rhodoks were some peasant/burgher rebels who broke off from Swadia and somehow decided to elect their own king? Something like a Switzerland, but which decided to choose its own king instead of sticking close to its principle of direct democracy?
yea! that's exactly that
I think "Speculative History" is good name for the genre since it's similar to speculative biology in a way.
I played both games, currently enjoying Bannerlord, and this was the headcanon that formed unconsciously: The Vaegirs and Nords, much like Rus and Scandinavians, came from pretty much the same root culture. Playing Bannerlord, I notice that it's mostly some unit types and lord's halls that feel the most "Viking", whereas the common people you see in settlements seem more like typical Russian serfs. Even in our world, "Viking" really just meant "raider", and wasn't the name of the Norse people. In my mind I pictured a split forming in the Sturgian culture, where the raiders or war-hungry members of society on the coasts did their thing, and the regular people further inland did theirs. Eventually they would become the raider Nords, great fighters but culturally and technologically lagging behind the organized and more civilzed Vaegirs. The Vaegirs might have been founded by a former member of the Vaegir guard(or maybe an imposter), and they used this strong name to unify the people.
The name of Vaegir comes from one of the Sturgian clans named Vagoroving and that’s where the Vaegir guard and the Vaegir name comes from
Feathered dinosaurs look cool as hell!
I always thought that Bannerlord serves as a retcon of some sort. With it being a prequel and all, I started to view Bannerlord as an alternate universe that takes inspiration and homage to the previous game/games.
i mean you can view it that way, but imo that prequel set ups Warband quite well For example in Vlandia you can see both Rhodok infantry and Swadian knight component, when they were still the same people and political entity, you have various signs of what will come in the future, the mentions of free south-vlandian peasants and their good relations with dey Meroc kings of Vlandia, the nordic Skolderbrotva existence and ties to the Sturgian grand prince, the Vaegir guard, the Khergits and Banu Sarran, familiar names for every culture like Jeremos or Firentos (even if sometimes weirdly ethnically misplaced, like Alayen being a Vlandian name instead of Sturgian despite Alayen being a Vaegir etc) The only thing that is a hard retcon unable to fit into both Warband and Bannerlord is the geography itself, history doesnt strike me as an alternate, but geography was retconned so hard even in the more faithful to warband pre-early access map, and in the public Bannerlord version is barely recognizable beyond just the general shape of western coast and placement of Praven/Pravend, Yalen/Galend and Jelkala/Jaculan everything past it doesnt match well or at all to the map honestly
Hearing the AOE2 music right at the start made me very happy :)
FINALLY some decent Bannerlord content
I enjoyed this.
I'm very fond of this genre too - me and a friend have been using the phrase "counterfactual modernity" to describe this kind of fiction set closer to our time - E.G. Disco Elysium, or Lara Elena Donnely's 1940s-inspired spy novels set on a continent about as similar-but-different from Europe as Calradia. Still haven't found a really killer term for applying the same approach to histories before the Modern period, though possibly flipping "historical fantasy" to "fantastical history" dislocates the reader enough to make them question your definition. Re: the painted statuary, me and my girlfriend have a long running bugbear that applies to almost any wooden structure in almost all medieval fantasy and historical fiction, be it games, comics, films or LARP: Where's the paint? Where's the varnish? No wonder all the wooden structures in fantasy look kind of grey and shabby and like they're falling to bits, there's nothing protecting them from the weather. As well as painted statues and temples, we're desperate for some painted houses, docks and carts!
Disco Elysium is clearly set in Calradia tho 🙄 /joke
I have never heard of "potato europe vs tomato europe" before, and it's wild to me that Columbian crops somehow distinguish halves of a continent they're not from. I guess there's butter vs oil, or beer vs wine, and this is just more popular/hip, but it's still wild. The giggles per minute on this video is way higher than most of your work.
I honestly never knew that sturgia was supposed to be the kievan rus but now that i think about it sturgia does have alot of slavic influence. good video
24:20 To answer the question of not looking “Roman” it’s cuz they’re wearing a pretty accurate medieval Byzantine style heavy infantry armor. Even down to the longer curved sword or mace they’re equipped with
Were making it out of Calradia with this one!