Q: Game seems technically improved over last year, was this planned or did all the critisism made you work on technical concepts more?
A: Both. But we mostly work with a plan. But we have a priority system where we aim to improve things which break the game and when We're done, we move to visuals and cosmetics.
Q: Are we going to see more cosmetic improvements until 2020?
A: Definitely. As we announced the Early Access, we are working on making the game more stable, making features work correctly, and adjusting the balance and also improving visuals. We are giving the both parts (Technical and Cosmetic improvements) equal time.
Q: Early Access made me suprised, I wasn't expecting an Early Access although Warband released with EA, when we talked last year you said "We want to release the game in 2019", but the game is delayed to 2020, do you think that EA is necessary? Do you think that players will react, because people are saying "It's been years and all we get is an EA?". Does this make you unconfortable?
A: We are one of the first companies who used EA. In time, most of the developers used the EA in a bad way, some of them started the EA in really early stages of the development, some of them didn't even release the game even they promised to do so. This is why people think EA is a bad thing, but EA is a tool which we can use positively, our EA will not be like those, if we force ourselves a bit later we could even launch the final product. But we don't want to do it, we don't want to remove any feature so we will release in EA and we will keep developing the game, all in all I think this will benefit the players.
Q: When the EA stars in 2020, while playing the game will I feel like I am playing a full release or the game will be like in a beta stage.
A: Mostly, the game will feel like a full release, our game is not so linear where you play a certain scenario and every thing that will happen is certain. We have a open world where you can't determine what will, when will and where will things happen. So we have tons of combinations, in a more linear game you could say "This game has no bugs" after lets say 60 hours of testing, we don't have such luxury, anything could happen any time, so we have to put extra effort to make the game more stable.
Q: It's been years since you announced the game, and the hype kept growing, and people dream of a perfect game, 1- Does this scare you?, 2- Did you ever thought you announced the game too early?
A: Ofcourse we had regrets, like we could announce the game a bit later. But we were not thinking like "Oh we are going to release this game in 2019 lets announce this now." Even we have a super talented team, most of them didn't start the job with much of a experience. We learn the job while doing it. While developing the game, our standarts rise in time. Because of this we expanded the period of development. Does this scare us? No, we have expections out of a "Mount and Blade" game, and those can be different from what players expect. What we think is "Does the codes running in background written in a optimal way?" "Will our game crash when we make a change or is it more solid?" "Is the game easy to create mods?" "Is it easier to reach for modders?" then comes the "Is the game looking good?" and things get more complex and development time gets longer and longer.
Q: Did you ever thought "We MUST add this to the game" even this will delay the game, even if you are in a later stage of development? Or the other way around, "If we do this, the game will not be released another 10 years" and you removed the feature.
A: Yes. As painful as it is, we remade the GUI three times and it looks too pretty now. We started with a different system and we were like "This not going to work" and we changed it and we got stuck there too, when we see we are not getting the results we want -even if we worked on that too much, even if it is painful- we cut that thing and start making the new one which feels right.
Q: Do we have more intrigue in country management, can we send our man to other kingdoms to make trouble?
A: We valued politics and rivaliry in politics in country, we will see more intrigues.
Q: Are we going to feel the betrayals?
A: Unfortunately, yes. We don't have so much going on between kingdoms, unlike kingdoms have in theirselves. We use politics and infulence over anything you will do in a Kingdom. You have to gain infuelence if you want to make things work for you in a kingdom, lets say you just seized a castle, if you wan't your king - or queen- give it to you, you have to spend your infuelence. We have different noble families in game and they decide what will happen in a kingdom, you can arrange mariages to create an allience with a noble family. Apart from that you can marry for love - but that won't help you much.
Q: Can we customise our own banners?
A: You said "Did you remove anything", this is one of the things we had to simplify. Why? The game is so complex, we give too many information to player. When a player looks to the map, there is too much happening at the same time. We have to transfer the most valuable information to player, to do so we said "Different kingdoms and vassals must have clear flags, the player could understand which flag belongs to which family" So we simplified the banner customization and we valued readability.
Q: Will we able to play the game with a low spec PC?
A: Our friends in game engine departmend working too hard on this, but I still can't give a certain information. I think you can play the game with a new laptop - even it has low specs. But I cannot say how many years we can go back.
Q: Console?
A: Even I cannot give any valuable information about this, it is one of our goals.
Q: Are you planning to develop any IPs other than Mount and Blade?
A: I have game ideas full of folders. But starting on them requires investment and a plan, it is possible. But we will continue creating new Mount and Blade games because it has a meaning to us.
Q: We know the EA date, but when will the full release be?
A: Our main goal in EA will be clearing issues of the game and balancing it. We will not add too many features in EA so I think it won't take too much time
