We've been looking forward to Mount & Blade 2: Bannerlord for a long time now—a really long time. It's not that we haven't seen progress on it. We got some promising hands-on time with it just a couple of months ago at E3, in fact. But on the whole, developer TaleWorlds Entertainment hasn't been overly communicative with its fan base about the new game, a shortcoming it acknowledged—and promised to address—in a message posted today on Steam.
"We realize that we haven’t communicated with you as frequently and as openly as we should have. We failed at connecting with our community, and sometimes it might appear as if we are not paying you as much attention as you deserve," TaleWorlds wrote. "We are incredibly grateful for having such fantastic support and we were unsuccessful in letting you know just how much we appreciate you being there for us over the years."
To improve its relationship with Mount & Blade and and make the Bannerlord development process more "transparent," TaleWorlds said it will start a new weekly blog, with posts going up every Thursday. "You will get to know who is behind Mount & Blade, the diverse and talented team of designers, artists, programmers and others that make the game possible; you will glimpse our struggles and hopes, our daily work, and our favorite parts of the game," the studio wrote. "We hope that you enjoy the read and also that it makes the waiting easier!"
The announcement coincides with the departure of Frank Elliott, longtime community and PR manager for TaleWorlds:
The first blog post is actually the announcement of the new blog series, so there's not much more to be seen—including, unfortunately, any indication of when it might actually come out. We said in April that Mount and Blade 2 "is on a mission to be 2017's best RPG," but a release date (even a tentative one) still hasn't been announced. Given that we're now into August, I'm starting to think that maybe we were being a little optimistic.