MOUNT & BLADE II:
BANNERLORD
Great mods are available already. By Christopher Livingston
This looter had to pay
the head tax.
12
EXTRA LIFE
NOW PLAYING (^) I UPDATE I MOD SPOTLIGHT (^) I HOW TO (^) I WHY I LOVE I REINSTALL I MUS T P L A Y
for Bannerlord, while a paid version
will unlock 50 of them. It doesn’t take
long to set up and configure, and
before you know it you’ll be galloping
across the battlefield and giving
orders to your soldiers by simply
saying them out loud.
It works really well, too! It’s
honestly much easier than tapping
function keys to direct your troops,
which requires a lot of key combos
you may not have memorized yet.
With Screamerlord, you can react
instantly to the battle without having
to lift a finger, and just give a shout
when your troops need direction.
BIG UP YOURSELF
Speaking of yelling, you probably
already know the wonderful sound
you hear at the end of every single
successful battle: Your soldiers
erupting with throaty cheers of
triumph. After a long fought battle
where your victory may have been in
doubt, hearing your soldiers cheer as
the music swells is a real payoff. Hell,
even in battles where you dominate a
lesser army or a handful of scrubby
looters, hearing your soldiers loudly
cheering is still awesome.
The problem is, you can’t join in
the celebration yourself... unless you
install the Cheer Mod, which means
you can raise your sword and shield
to the heavens and cheer right along
with your happy troops. The mod is
configurable, letting you pick
between an automatic cheer or one
you trigger with a keypress. However
you choose to set it up, seeing your
W
e had a long wait for
Mount & Blade II:
Bannerlord to finally
reach us—about eight
years, by my count.
And the moment it finally arrived
in Steam Early Access at the end of
March, the modders pounced.
Mods for Bannerlord began
appearing almost immediately, and
continue to arrive every single day.
The Mount & Blade games have
always been flexible, and the
newest entry is no different.
And already we’ve seen some highly
creative mods, including a trio that
are all based around the same theme:
Yelling. A mod called Screamerlord,
for instance, lets you use your voice
to give orders to your troops while in
combat. Your real voice! The name is
a bit misleading because you don’t
need to actually scream—just talking
into your mic will do the trick. If you
like yelling, though, you should go for
it, because there’s definitely
something to be said for getting really
immersed in your character.
The mod uses VoiceAttack, a
speech recognition program. It’s a
premium voice tool, though there is a
free trial you can use to see if it’s
something you want to pay for. The
free version of VoiceAttack will let
you use 20 different voice commands
A MOD CALLED
SCREAMERLORD
LETS YOU USE YOUR
VOICE TO GIVE ORDERS
TO YOUR TROOPS
WORLD BUILDER Mods for earlier Mount & Blade games we want to see
1
LAST DAYS
OF THE
THIRD AGE
I like Calradia, but
my heart belongs to
Middle-earth.
2
BEAR
FORCE II
Star Wars made a
great match for
Mount & Blade’s
sandbox.
3
A CLASH OF
KINGS
Maybe we can give
Game of Thrones
the ending it
deserved.
4
GEKOKUJO
Japan’s
Sengoku period is a
fanastically
tumultuous setting
for adventure.
5
WARSWORD
CONQUEST
Mount & Blade
meets Warhammer.
Bannerhammer-
lord? We’re ready!