Five years after its initial release in Early Access, and two and a half years after its full release, Mount & Blade 2: Bannerlord is officially slated to get its first expansion, called War Sails, next summer.
The announcement was made late last night at the Future Games Show Spring Showcase, after a short teaser campaign by TaleWorlds. The teaser images suggested some kind of release related to vikings and the wider naval sector, and in the end this conclusion was 100% accurate as War Sails is expected to introduce to Bannerlord on one hand the familiar Warband faction of the Nords, and on the other hand a whole gameplay system related to naval combat and exploration!
According to the official announcement accompanying the expansion's first trailer, War Sails is expected to introduce the following:
- The Nords faction, alongside a new island region to the north of the game map where their home lies.
- A Naval Warfare system, with separate water and air physics, and the introduction of 18 different ships that will have separate boarding or ramming capabiities, and that can receive various kinds of upgrades.
- New companions, skills, weapons and cosmetic options.
- The free companion patch 1.3, which will introduce stealth gameplay to the game, as well as random encounters/events, among other things.
- New tools that will further assist in modding the game.
These are additions that, without a doubt, enrich the rather lacking (especially compared to Warband) experience that is vanilla Bannerlord. The ill-intentioned, of course, might say that many of the above are introduced by mods anyway, or that they're features that were originally announced as part of the original game but were eventually cut only to be released as part of the expansion a few years later. Either way, the War Sails expansion will be released on June 17, 2025,and we'll be here to try it out.
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