[Update]: The long wait is now finally over - Mount & Blade II: Bannerlord has now arrived onto Steam Early Access!

As the legends have foretold many, many eons ago, Mount & Blade 2: Bannerlord has now entered the Closed Beta stage! And yes, this does mean that the general public will now finally have a chance to see just what Mount & Blade 2 has to offer after its extremely long and fairly secretive development.

Do temper your expectations, however, as the initial Closed Beta will be fairly small in scope. The plan is to directly engage the current testers and quickly release patches in order to refine the multiplayer experience, after which Mount & Blade 2 will move into a significantly larger Open Beta.

When exactly this will happen, the developers haven't commented, but given the wording it does seem like the Open Beta will be coming at some point in the near future. However long that might be, I must admit I'm still extremely happy to see Mount & Blade 2 actually take its first steps towards an official release! It certainly was a long wait, that's for sure.

You can read a little bit more about this beta test, as well as the team's plans for the future, over at Steam.