If you’re a PC gamer, chances are you’ve at least looked in the general direction of the modding community once throughout your time in the hobby. From greatly expanding mechanics that were already available in the game to bringing massive new worlds for you to explore and conquer, the modding community continues to tweak titles and bring hundreds of additional hours to titles that were already beloved. I couldn’t fathom attempting to play through Skyrim without dozens of mods; although to be fair, I have well over a thousand hours in it and have never touched the main quest beyond the first couple of missions.
Instead, I’d find myself idling the time exploring upgraded forests and smarter enemies, a massive magic system overhaul, or new hoes where my adventurer could rest after a long day of doing very little other than glaring closely at table textures and parallax.
The modding community is, frankly, a very big deal for PC games. It’s beloved, held closely by the community, and celebrated for each title that arrives that embraces the possibility of mods.
Mount & Blade II: Bannerlord has opted to embrace that community as TaleWorlds Entertainment has in titles past, and it bodes rather well for everyone involved. While the release of Bannerlord into Steam’s Early Access program has been, for lack of a better term, greatly anticipated, it’s release has also soured more than a few dispositions as the title struggles with Half-Life 3 syndrome. Yet TaleWorlds Entertainment has been pushing patches out far faster than anyone expected, making grandiose changes for balancing and to stymie crashes, from FPS stuttering to kingdom snowballing.
Still, for some, it simply isn’t enough.
Thankfully there’s a monumentally robust modding community found on NexusMods, one of the premier modding community websites in the world. This past weekend, NexusMods passed 1,000 total mods created for Mount & Blade II: Bannerlord, and the mods are offering heaps of content and tweaks for the user that is interested. From pop-up dialogue boxes that let you know a settlement you own is being raided, to NPCs that can help you recruit hordes of warriors far too eager to die in your misguided attempts to conquer, to settings that ensure that the warriors you recruit have an equal chance of being either a male or female, the sheer amount of content that is viewable through NexusMods alone can appear stifling at times.
Yet for a title that has only just begun their Early Access journey on the Steam platform, it’s a brilliant move that ensures people are occupied with TaleWorlds newest foray, even if the final version is still a way out on the horizon. The question must be asked, however: where’s the Thomas the Tank Engine mod?
