In February, a trio of former BioWare vets announced a somewhat mysterious but gorgeously drawn new project, The Banner Saga. Today, theyâve unveiled a Kickstarter campaign for the game, which comes with some further information about their plans and designs.
https://lastchance.cc/the-banner-saga-to-begin-waving-this-summer-5889382%3C/a%3E%3C/p%3E
The main emphasis of the development seems to be on creating and preserving player choice, and through decision to give players a sense of ownership and participation in the story. The theme is repeated often throughout their description:
The choices you make as events arise have a huge affect on how the story plays out â who survives, who dies, and whatâs worth saving. Add people to your caravan as you travel, or lose them when tough decisions arise.
Your choices in dialogue and throughout the game truly affect the story and the people around you. A mature story for adults means forming relationships and making tough decisions.
In The Banner Saga you canât take anything for granted. We want it to feel like a good tv mini-series; the world doesnât revolve around you, itâs about how you deal with change.
The Kickstarter description also gives a slight elaboration on the turn-based, strategic combat revealed earlier, indicating that throughout the game, players recruit NPCs with different skills and tactics to their cause and must rely carefully on tactics to rather than force to succeed.
Talking with Gamasutra, one of the Stoic Studio founders, Alex Thomas, explained:
âFor us, more than anything, The Banner Saga is a chance to take a risk. Hereâs the bottom line â we wanted to make a game that you can really influence, that feels like a TV miniseries. Youâre not watching superheroes, youâre watching people with their own motivations and desires that you can relate to. You want to see what happens to them and how they deal with conflict.â
âThat, more than anything, is what we want to capture. Weâre basing our gameplay on this one imperative, and every system informs another to come back to this idea. Weâre so desperate to play a game like this â a game for adults about adults, a game that isnât a sex and violence power fantasy, that weâre making it ourselves.â
Stoic Studiosâ website still indicates that free multi-player combat for The Banner Story is âcoming soon,â but, alas, does not indicate when âsoonâ might be.
When ex-BioWare devs make their own strategy RPG [Gamasutra]
The Banner Saga [Kickstarter]
