Silmarillion mod for Mount & Blade II: Bannerlord

Hey Tolkien Lovers,

I am calling it. Sadly, despite being one of the most expected mods on Bannerlord - we just cannot bring this mod to life. And, believe me, we really really and really wanted to make this happen. I will tell you why.

Years ago when I announced the project even before the game officially released (You can check, Silmarillion is possibly the first total conversion mod announced publicly.), I was seeing the coming of Bannerlord as a great opportunity for the future of Mount&Blade and all of its mod makers, and I 0 sure about that. It was supposed to be a revolution and push all of us forward with itself. But, at least, for us - it was nothing but a disappointment.

I remember wanting us to be one of the most popular mods on planet earth and hopefully replicate the success of Prophesy of Pendor or TLD in warband with Silmarillion in Bannerlord. And, it happened. For a long time, we took a lot of attention and at one point we hosted a team of more than 40 developers in our team actively working on the project. We made a lot of progress just to break down the massive world of Silmarillion into a playable experience, and not like what the current AAA games do, you know - we had solid fantastic ideas to bring into genre of RPG. It was going to be a dream come true. It was truly an amazing experience to be part of that for months. We wanted you to feel the world, make you cry and smile like a proper LOTR experience.

Then, came the game. It was horrible for us. Combat was brought down to this arcadey attack and block kind of flow from the very high standarts Warband was at. There was no documentation on the API or coding database. No official coding support, we hoped that injecting .dlls was going to be the temporary method. Nope, that is how you code and no, thanks. Clearly, it was all over the place where every feature possible was thrown together without any filtering and even though they patched it, game still feels like uncompleted. Engine kept crashing, again with no debugging features. I could go and on about the issues with Bannerlord, but at the core it was really just that we really really disliked Bannerlord.

Slowly, over time, everyone went to their own ways and got busy with jobs. (But hey! We got plenty of people find their passion and get jobs in gaming industry, I will take credit for that!) Also I think I was the main responsible guy for letting the project go downstream, since I was trying so hard to like the game and still do something with the project. There is no way. If you can't have passion, you cannot do it. No way. (Unless you get paid.) So, I just let the project sit for a while, see things would change over time and maybe TaleWorlds will actually make things better. Well, that didn't happen. And, meanwhile, most of us are already working in industry and getting gigs and all that. And, despite that, we still wanted to make this mod happen. There were some truly outstanding people who worked on this mod, absolute pleasure to have them on board and no doubt, without them, I wouldn't have this far;

Ubal - My precious lead of concept art. He single-handedly drew half the world already, probably would have drawn all of it if we ever worked on the project actively. He is one of the last developers left in discord, but I know he is the only developer left standing at this point. Last guy to leave the sinking ship and I truly appreciate you for this. If anything, I am happy now that you are working professionally as an artist.

Will - It has been a while we talked, but he went off to do some great things in writing world. He was the guy who turned that massive world of Silmarillion into a playable experience with over 100s of docs of everything we could imagine. Such a great personality, always reliable. One of the last to leave as well. Enjoy England!

And KEYForce, Daisy, Melkor, Gothic Knight, SatoriLotus, Beasthoven, Athanor, Quirinius...and rest I cannot remember you anymore, but you know who you are!

We had fun, a lot of fun trying to make this at the time - some good times in discord. So, it really hurts me to cancel this project for good but then again, it is healthy to let it go. I am relieved that I am finally letting this project go and out of my mind after years. I actually might have went too far with this project even giving myself a couple of panic attacks, stress and anxiety over it, considering I have been modding Mount&Blade since 2009. One last project, I said but meh. There is simply no more enough time or energy to dedicate a project of this scope, specially as a lead.

I am sorry to disappoint you all who was waiting for this mod and also sorry that we won't be able to prove all the haters wrong but I think all of the development team including myself are just happy enjoying their lives and careers. I am working in hollywood now, so I cannot complain and this project was definitely in my resume, haha. And, I know some other people did too and now they have jobs! I think mostly that is what I am proud, this project contributed to some developers getting actual jobs. Because, remember - being a modder is just the beginning of being a gamedev. They do count in job applications!

If I made any enemies along the way, think of it as the heat of the battle. Sorry, John.

Fare thee well. Thanks for reading! Enjoy the rest of your day!
"Success is not final. Failure is not fatal: it is the courage to continue that counts."