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Since releasing into Early Access on March 30, Steam-favorite Mount & Blade 2: Bannerlord has had a number of patches. These have largely been aimed at fixing game-crashing bugs, but also updating with small quality-of-life fixes.

Since the April 1 patch, Bannerlord has received three new patches and a hotfix. Patch 1.0.3 was small, with just one fix: “Fixed a critical issue that corrupted save files after a certain number of saves.”

April 3’s patch was more extensive, with 17 different causes of game crashes being identified and patched. Patch 1.0.4 also introduced tweaks for increased stability and performance, removed certain debuffs that would hinder the player at night and balanced parts of the campaign.

Patch 1.0.4 also reintroduced over 200 items to the game and overhauled armor values and prices.

The April 4 update fixed yet more crash issues, as well as tweaking AI decisions to be more realistic. This includes making NPC lords “more selective when targeting distant settlements for hostile actions,” and making clans less likely to want to defect to kingdoms which have been aggressive towards them.

The latest update on April 5 is a hotfix, targeting a crash related to “archer weapon behavior in battles and sieges”.

Full notes for Patch 1.0.4, the most extensive of the latest updates, can be found below.

Multiplayer Crashes

• Fixed a rare bug that caused clients to crash in multiplayer when a specific combat network message is received in the wrong order.

Singleplayer Crashes

• Rare exception during siege fixed.
• Fixed a crash that occurred while traveling on the campaign map.
• Fixed a crash that happened after closing the banner editor.
• Fixed a crash related to a villager opening a dialog right after an enemy lord encounters the player during a raid village action.
• Fixed a crash while moving troops in the party screen.
• Fixed a crash while exiting the campaign map.
• Fixed a crash while dragging 0 item count tuples in inventory.
• Fixed a bug which caused a crash when breaking into an allied settlement under a siege.
• Fixed a crash concerning battle log entries when talking to a winning faction’s non-hero character if the player was on the defeated side
• Fixed a crash that occurred just before the fight with the hideout boss after the hideout has been cleaned up.
• Fixed a crash that occurred when a player vs NPC board game is over.
• Fixed a crash that occurred when attacking a settlement after being interrupted by a party in the siege preparation stage.
• Fixed a crash related to targeting routing mounted agents.
• Fixed a crash that occurred when loading the game after successfully collecting weapons as the gang leader requested in the Gang Leader Needs Weapon quest.
• Fixed a rare crash that happens in character creation when choosing an option.
• Fixed a rare crash that happens when caravan payments are processed.

Performance

• Fixed an optimisation issue with NPC pathfinding which led to a huge performance loss, especially in siege scenes.
• Fixed a memory leak issue.

Save & Load

• Further stability tweaks for save and load.

Battles and Sieges

• Fixed a bug that opened a siege battle instead of field battle when attacking a besieger party.

Combat AI

• Night debuffs, visibility limitation and extra aim error of ranged units have been removed.

Clan and Party

• Fixed the open hands issue in the banner editor.
• After some time during a campaign, some lords were remaining without troops in their party because of financial problems and constantly being harassed by bandits. Lords now manage their finances more effectively and take troops from garrisons if they are at risk of going bankrupt. This was one reason for the snowball effect in the campaign, with kingdoms being eliminated too easily.
• Minor fixes have been made regarding pregnancies.
• Fixed an issue that caused player clan members to get stuck in a settlement.

Kingdoms and Diplomacy

• Fixed an issue with defensive battles after a safe passage barter had been made.

Crafting

• Fixed an issue that prevented axes from being craftable at the smithy.

Issues & Quests

• Fixed a bug with the AI trying to attack at the end of Army of Poachers quest.

Other

• More than 200 items reintroduced to the game.
• Armor values and prices overhauled.
• Production of weapons and armors in towns tweaked.
• Aserai’s basic troop was Aserai Tribesman, however, it should be Aserai Recruit. This is fixed.

Full spoilers follow for Episode 4 of Westworld Season 3, “The Mother of Exiles.”

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Part of IGN’s Westworld Season 3 guide

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A lot of story elements finally came together in the latest episode of Westworld (read our review!), including an answer to one big question: Who is really inside Charlotte Hale’s body now? Despite speculation among fans that it might be Teddy or Clementine or some other missing Host, the reveal comes as quite a surprise: It’s actually another copy of Dolores! And not just that, but we’ve also learned now that most if not all of the Host control units Dolores smuggled out of the park are just copies of herself, copies which she has now implanted in a Host version of Martin the bodyguard, Musashi from Shogunworld, and of course the Hale imposter.

Showrunners Jonathan Nolan and Lisa Joy explained their thinking behind this big Westworld twist in a recent chat with IGN, which they said basically boils down to Dolores thinking “if you want something done right, you got to do it yourself.” Read on for what they had to say about the “Dolorii” and more!

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Explaining Dolores’ Plan

Most fans assumed that Dolores (Evan Rachel Wood) had smuggled her closest allies out of the park at the end of last season — as well as Bernard, who she apparently keeps around to keep her on her toes — so why did she choose this particular strategy of making multiple copies of herself? We asked the producers.

“There are a couple of ways of looking at it,” says Joy. “One is O.K., if you perceive of her as villainous, then she killed a lot of people, and got a lot of people killed in her quest to escape the park, promising them salvation — and then brought out a bunch of herselfs. Then again, she was the first host, so maybe there’s something to that. But on the other hand, you can also say she killed a lot of the people and got a lot of people killed in her escape from the park. You start from the same premise, and in seeing that suffering, she wouldn’t want to inflict it upon others again, taking that pain upon herself in this next movement.”

The producers think that this question about why Dolores did what she did ties back to one of the bigger themes of the show, which they’ve explored each season: What is the nature of good and evil?

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“Why does the phrase — the nature of good and evil — even exist?” says Joy. “Because it’s so binary and it presupposes an objective observer meting out a title of good or evil for every action or the sum of each action. How does that work? How does determination work? It’s a tricky quandary, and narratively though is a wonderful sandbox to play in.”

Who Is Charlotte Hale?

We’ve known all season that Tessa Thompson’s Charlotte Hale was actually a Host, but the question has been which Host. With her self-destructive tendencies, it seemed as though the real Charlotte herself might even be trapped somehow in the replica of her, subsumed by the Host’s consciousness (which, who knows, may yet turn out to be true — stay tuned!). As of Episode 4, it remains unclear why Charlotte is struggling so much, even if we do now know that she’s actually another version of Dolores.

“If one of the big questions in the show is nature versus nurture, if Dolores duplicates herself, from that point forward, do those copies remain the same person, do they start to begin to subtly change, and does the Dolores who’s pretending to be Hale start getting this sort of internal version of Stockholm syndrome because she starts taking on some of the characteristics of the person she’s pretending to be?” ponders Nolan. “Does she kind of hybridize her own personality with the personality of Hale? Does she become sort of an improved version of who that person was? Potentially a better mother, a better partner? Does who Hale was start to infect who Dolores is and vice versa?”

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One has to wonder if the other Dolorii will begin to exhibit similar changes to their personalities as time passes, although it sounds as though the major focus in this area this season will be on Dolores Prime and Charlotte-ores (or Dolorotte?).

“Even beyond whether or not you think that Hale’s personality is beginning to kind of soak into Dolores’, different things are happening to these two different characters as the season progresses,” says Nolan. “One of the things we’re interested in is you take two people to get to the same person. The show’s about identity and agency and free will. You take two versions of the same person and essentially bifurcate them down two paths of experience. Is there a point at which they diverge, is there a point at which they potentially even come into conflict with each other? So it’s something we’re excited about.”

Westworld’s Behind-the-Scenes Dark Knight Connection

Nolan of course co-wrote The Dark Knight and The Dark Knight Rises with his brother Christopher, and he says in a funny way there’s a connection to that experience and his work on Westworld. The original 1973 movie Westworld spawned a lesser-known sequel in 1976 called Futureworld, and that film actually shares some plot elements with Westworld Season 3 — namely, the notion of replacing powerful world figures with Host duplicates.

Nolan laughs about the similarities and says that he and Joy never looked at Futureworld when prepping the season, though he did know the original film from his youth when he and his brothers would watch it on London weekend television and then a “scratchy VHS copy.” (In fact, he says that when they were brought the concept to turn it into an HBO series, he couldn’t quite get his head around it — “My mind immediately went to like a sort of a Love Boat kind of show where every week Dolores and Maeve would conspire to help a troubled young married couple right their wrongs!” he laughs. It was Joy who cracked the scenario they landed on eventually.)

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But as for that Futureworld connection, as Nolan says, “there’s nothing new under the sun.”

“We had headed in a pretty similar direction, which I love,” he says. “It’s analogous to when we were working on The Dark Knight. Paul Levitz, who was the publisher of DC at the time, and a lovely, lovely person, on every movie he would send us a big box of comic books, talking about the characters that Chris wanted to explore for that film. And he sends a big box of Joker comic books and I read some of them when we wrote the movie, but I realized only after the fact that somehow I had missed the first appearance of the Joker! Chris was in production on the film, and I went back and I read it and I was like, ‘Oh my God, it literally has a scene where he dresses up as a police officer, and all the other criminals decide that they’re going to kill the Joker.’ There’s actually a lovely feeling there of standing on the shoulders of folks like [Westworld creator] Michael Crichton and, in the case of Batman, Bob Kane and Bill Finger and Jerry Robinson and kind of trying to think in the same space they do. And finding yourself walking in their footsteps is great fun.”

Westworld Season 3 is currently airing on Sunday nights on HBO.

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Talk to Executive Editor Scott Collura on Twitter at @ScottCollura, or listen to his Star Trek podcast, Transporter Room 3. Or do both!

Warning: Full spoilers for The Walking Dead’s “The Tower” follow…

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It’s no one’s fault, of course, but The Walking Dead’s tenth season is leaving us with a passable in-between chapter that’s ultimately designed to be a cool-off “set-up for the finale” affair. Could they have just made a better episode overall? Sure, but “The Tower” stands out even more as middling chapter because it’s what we’re being left with for a long while. The actual finale, “A Certain Doom,” has been postponed to a later, unnamed date.

While in a lockdown scenario (a familiar feeling these days, blerf), Negan and Lydia came to teary terms, Carol apologized to Kelly, and Daryl solidified his bond with Judith. All the while, they tried to wait out the Beta herd, which the towering former-country music star wound dumping into Alexandria in hopes of ending the conflict once and for all. In the next episode, we’ll presumedly get the last bash with Beta, complete with a ton of brutality (and maybe some notable deaths), along with the official meet up Stephanie (and hopefully some other faces from The Commonwealth – maybe even Maggie).

But for now, we just have to leave things hanging as the show goes out on an earnest whimper. “The Tower” had some meaningful exchanges featuring people looking for both clarity, sanity, and forgiveness, but in the end it really was — just like what Daryl was doing — a perimeter sweep.

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Juanita Sanchez – aka Princess

The episode’s best parts involved the full introduction of loopy loner Juanita (Paola Lazaro), who prefers to go by “Princess.” I understand that she might grate on some viewers, but I felt like her peppy energy and kind intentions really helped the show, which features very few, if any, characters like her. And I really enjoyed how much Ezekiel would light up around her. It started with him laughing at her walker street art and then just morphed into an overall appreciation of her sunny disposition. As a former wide-eyed optimist himself, who also used a regal moniker, he was able to latch onto her the way Yumiko — who sort of felt overly grumpy here — could not.

After leading Eugene, Ezekiel, and Yumiko on a dangerous scenic route, involving a minefield, Princess was able to break down a little bit and become a layered character who the gang could see as more of a tragic figure than comic relief. And then the show wisely pulled from Eugene’s own past, as a lonely liar, to help make her relatable. Is it a risk bringing her into the mix, from a zompocalypse crew standpoint? Most definitely. Her judgment is way off. She means well but she can’t fully be relied on to make smart choices. But it’s probably worth it just to have someone around, a true survivor, who’s not a glowering a-hole.

Anyhow, Princess — and her wild, erratic vibe — was part this chapter got right. Also, we know Ezekiel doesn’t have a lot of time left so it’s good to see him smiling and enjoying someone else’s company during his final days. Without Jerry around, Princess feels like a good pairing for him.

Side Quest(ion): Anyone know what city this is supposed to be?

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Daryl and Judith

Judith told Daryl that she’d spoken to Michonne, since that walkie chat apparently happened when Hilltop was on fire, or soon afterwards. She didn’t tell him about the Rick breadcrumbs because she knew how long and hard Daryl had searched for his friend’s body out in the woods and she was afraid he’d leave to help Michonne track Rick down.

It was a sweet moment and one that helped solidify Daryl’s presence on the show even more, as the one true anchor, but it was also kind of ushered in by an odd moment where Judith felt bad about leaving a dead Whisperer in the woods. Not that Judith needs to be heartless, but her asking that Daryl actually pick up and carry the woman’s dead body somewhere else didn’t feel like something Judith would request. The Whisperers put her fiends heads on pikes. They burned down an entire town. She can feel bad about things, but also realize that you can leave an enemy carcass in the forest.

Throwing in a few other exchanges here…Negan felt the need to try and make amends with Lydia. Which does make sense given what he did to her, her mom, and also his need to win the love and respect of kids. All in all, their uneasy understanding felt kind of rushed given the baggage between them. The show chose to go the “screaming and punching” reluctant hug route, which is sort of a narrative shortcut for reconciliation.

And Carol got the “okay” from Kelly, who basically forgave her for maybe/probably getting Connie killed. Carol got the “you can’t give up everything about yourself because bad things happen” nugget, which is actually good advice for everyone on the series. Mostly, the scene just stood as a sad reminder that we won’t get any resolution regarding Connie for a while.

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So what are y’all’s thoughts abut this default finale? Are you upset the freakin’ cat gave away everyone’s position? Do you think Aaron and Aiden are dead meat? Are you ready for the big hospital battle…eventually? Let us know below…

This review contains spoilers for Westworld Season 3, episode 4, “The Mother of Exiles.” To refresh your memory of where we left off, check out our Westworld Season 3, episode 3 review.

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Part of IGN’s Westworld Season 3 guide

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One of the clearest advancements Westworld’s third season has made over previous seasons is its speed. This is not only a brisker, more exhilarating show than ever, with an emphasis on lively action set pieces and propulsive high-stakes drama, but also a more direct and conventional work of narrative storytelling — one that no longer wastes time meandering or withholding information to trite effect. Of course, this is still a staunchly complicated series, and there are no doubt many theory-upending twists to come. But puzzles that would have remained unsolved for weeks in prior seasons are now being answered almost as soon as they’re introduced, and the result feels smoother, sharper, and more focused. Four episodes in, this strikes me as the principal reason Westworld Season 3 is so good.

Last week was all about Charlotte Hale, the nominal head of Delos who was murdered at the end of the second season and has since been replaced by a host. The question of which host occupied that human simulacrum was the subject of fervid speculation: Dolores escaped the park with five host pearls, and it seemed plausible that the one living as Charlotte could be Teddy, Clementine, or perhaps even her father, Peter Abernathy. (Some galaxy-brained Redditors developed an intriguing left-field fan theory that it was Caleb, once again proving that Westworld is a magnet for conspiracies.) In any case, the question seemed unlikely to be answered anytime soon, and the true identity of host-Charlotte was positioned to become the definite ongoing mystery of the season.

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Charlotte is Dolores. So is Tommy Flanagan’s steely Martin, and so is Musashi, who has been whisked out of Shogun World and serves as the head of the Yakuza in Singapore. As it turns out, Dolores escaped Westworld not with several host allies in her possession, but with copies of herself, and she has been installing them in host bodies to orchestrate her elaborate master plan. As a matter of strategy, this makes sense — she already tried to recruit Teddy to her cause once, but even after some canny reprogramming, he couldn’t rally behind her. No other host in Westworld is as capable, ruthless, or as resourceful as Dolores, except maybe Maeve and Bernard, her chief adversaries. So who better for Dolores to enlist than more Doloreses? (Dolori?)

This information is revealed in three ways simultaneously. Bernard learns it from Martin, with whom he tussles at a glamorous sex party attended by their mutual target Liam. (Shades of Eyes Wide Shut: I loved Dolores’s quip, entering the party, that the human world was more like Westworld than she expected.) Maeve learns it when she barges in on the Yakuza, finding Musashi in charge. And William — half-deranged and perpetually drunk, never sure if what he’s seeing is real or fake, like Marion Cotillard in Inception — learns it when he chats with Charlotte, who summarily blows his mind before having him committed. It’s this last one that’s the most shocking, for us and for the character in question. Deemed unfit to run Delos, his duties will now fall to the second in command — Charlotte, which is to say, Dolores. This relationship keeps getting more complex.

These revelations are stunning, not least because the timing was so unexpected. The long-term implications are even more fascinating: Bernard wrongly assumed that Liam had been replaced with a host, but he’s right to suspect that any human could be one. If Dolores is able to replicate herself indefinitely, how can we trust that anyone in the real world is in fact real? Of course, whether a character’s a host or a human is a question Westworld has posed repeatedly since the beginning of the series. But out of the park, as Dolores roams future Los Angeles on a mission, the possibilities are endless. It’s a terrific twist on an old gimmick, and I suspect it will be used to great effect as this season continues. (Share your theories about who could be another Dolores in the comments.)

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Now that the action has converged in the real world, our heroes are finally ready to contend with one another — beginning with Bernard and Stubbs, who descend on the sex party to kidnap Liam and save him from being replaced by a host. It was inevitable that Stubbs, the season’s bodyguard and major heavy, would eventually duke it out with Dolores, but their brawl in the club is even more impressive than anticipated. Westworld’s fight scenes have never been better. Their superhuman fisticuffs are well-shot and well-choreographed, while Evan Rachel Wood, dressed to the nines and drained of affect, is so amazing as the host-turned-Terminator that she seems born to be an action hero. I’m eager for every future opportunity for Dolores to kick ass, and I’m certain there’s much more of this to come.

Dolores isn’t the only latent superhero: over in Singapore, there’s the indomitable Maeve, whose powers include the ability to control any device powered by a computer. As she tears her way through the urban underworld, she glides through gunfights unscathed, turning uzis on the baddies wielding them and unlocking top secret doors with her mind. She gets a big, thrillingly choreographed fight scene of her own, too, and one in a different style — we switch from an American influence to an Asian one, as Maeve and Musashi go at it with katanas. This battle is just as superb as the other, culminating with an exquisite shot of Maeve lying defeated on the floor, swirls of blood and white matter pooling around her body. It’s a dazzling shot that demonstrates the show’s knack for indelible cinematic images.