It turns out that, while broadly correct, I wildly underestimated Torn Banners reversal of fortunes.
We had to reckon with the fact that things went really wrong.
And we had to change the studio.
We had to change the way we were doing things to fix it.
It was a really clear, fundamental warning sign.
From the outside, its not clear why Mirage went so awry, although there are clues.
But this doesnt account for the extensive internal struggles Torn Banner suffered during Mirages development.
When Medieval Warfare launched, Torn Banner were essentially still a modding team, with 13 members working remotely.
But this organisational effort ended up taking precedence over the vision of the game itself.
How you empower designers versus programmers really changed between Unreal 3 and Unreal 4, Piggott explains.
The only silver lining in the failure of Mirage is that it was Mirage, and not Chivalry 2.
The first Chivalry was successful in spite of itself, Piggott says.
It had some things that were really good and a lot of weak areas.
The maps, meanwhile, were very limited in scope.
We actually didn’t have a proper castle in Chiv 1, Lofstrom says.
The idea of big maps in multiplayer games is nothing new.
But Torn Banner faced several unique problems when implementing them into Chivalry 2.
Moreover, most competitive multiplayer games with large maps these days are shooters.
Creating a large-scale melee combat game causes its own problems.
But you might’t do that for too long, you’ve got to open it up again.
So level design is always playing with the squeeze on the players.
Crucial tomaking Chivalry 2 fun, therefore, was minimising the frustration of death.
Torn Banners solution was twofold.
First, Chivalry 2 makes a small and yet vital adjustment in how players return to the fight.
It became obvious that we cant always spawn standing still.
Were coming in with our unit, with our squad.
Were running into battle to save our friends… and then that just felt great.
And we did it for basically every spawn.
The other key ingredient in Chivalrys bloody alchemical brew is humour.
Unlike Mirage, Torn Banner was confident in its vision for Chivalry 2.
Nonetheless, there were still some concerns.
As a small team, we can’t build that forever game, Lofstrom says.
So there’s a focus on pure fun and moment to moment gameplay.
We don’t have to be the game called Chivalry that doesn’t have horses, Piggott says.
We wanted to make the best horses ever, he says.
We’re always trying to sell you on the worlds and the conflict and the Civil War.
So the faction being introduced is part of the evolving story of the Chivalry world, Lofstrom says.
That phrase evolving story is telling about Torn Banners intent.
Certainly, the Tenossian update is far from the final chapter in the games story.
It’s probably important to say how much more is coming, Piggott says.
The Steam launch is the biggest update.
And Torn Banners ambitions dont end there.
We’ve got some of the best people from AAA studios joining us, he says.
There are lots of good signs right now.
