You might remember The Banner Saga from its days on Kickstarter, the project of Stoic Studio which includes a lot of long time heavy-weight game makers from Bioware. And I did say that this blog was about all things fantastical, and what's more fantastic than a story about giants, men and the end of the world?That's basically what The Banner Saga is about. You come upon the story as the sun stops in the sky and the gods are dead.
First you play the role of Ubin, an old Varl (basically their version of giants), collecting taxes and then as can be assumed in some sort of epic fantasy game; it all goes down. As I mentioned, the sun has stopped in the sky only a few days prior to your taking over the reins and the gods have been dead for longer. Some people are calling it the end of times, and let's be honest the evidence is certainly pointing that way. After a short while, which is long enough to give you a grounding in some basic history and work out how the game mechanics work, you find out that there is a flood of destructive armies called Dredge bearing down on you.
Later on you transport yourself over to the other side of the continent and follow another character, Rook. This time you're following a mainly human settlement as they deal with the death and destruction that the tide of Dredge brings with them.
It's turn based fantasy RPG game and it has a lot of elements that I really like in it. In fact, mainly what I didn't like was that it ended. It's not a really long game, but I think I'm also taking that from the other RPGs I like to play, like Borderlands 2, Skyrim, Rogue Legacy and Dark Souls, which let's be honest have a whole continent of playtime in them. Alongside the story (that we'll come onto later) that you manoeuvre yourself through, and the towns and hamlets that you encounter, you also have to worry about how you travel. By that I mean when you're marching; how long you want to march without rest (rest increases morale), dealing with random occurrences on the march (from attacks to births) and making sure you can stock up enough when you can to avoid any starvation (I did not manage that the first time around).
The art style was very well brought together so that nothing ever felt out of place within it. From the sweeping landscapes, to the towns and then down to the little arenas of combat. It was all well drawn, with as much detail as you could want from each of the screens, and well maintained so you still felt drawn in (forgive the pun) with it.
This also extends to the enemies that you face (excluding those humans or varl that you might be on the wrong side of). The Dredge, the way that they look really excacerbates the situation that you find yourself in that you're being chased by the inexorable. Starvation is hard fought against and if you're not careful you will find yourself losing followers like flies. Rest is weighed against the ever present threat that's looming alongside the scarcity of your supplies. It does an excellent job of making you feel frayed by both your task to reach your destination and the burden of making sure as many people as possible do that.
Now onto the story.
I outlined the brief jist of the story already, but I think that the way the game is structured really helps it along. You get options alongside the conversations as they talk, and because you're taking part in an epic adventure with both a heroic Varl and a hunter-turned-leader you really get the sense of the story from both sides. The epic and sprawling, but also how it affects the lowliest of people. This is most assuredly helped along by the fact that as you travel across the vast expanse, fleeing the Dredge, you need to scrape together from every village and hamlet that you possibly can.
I don't want to go into too much detail about the story, you know, spoilers. But I found that the pacing was good, the actual conflict was compelling and the characters were very interesting. That doesn't necessarily include the protagonists, which isn't to say they don't have their own charm, but when you're playing AS the character I think it's harder to fully flesh out and map a character when the player has the option of saving the orphaned kittens one minute, making them a lovely person, and then they also have the opportunity to follow that up by kicking an old lady down some stairs on top of a cliff for no reason (none of those actually happen).
The points at which you break from one set of characters to the other mark the Chapters of the game. I found that the moments the Chapters moved from one to the other were very well segmented. I'm not sure if I was expecting less because it's a game, but I was very impressed with the cliffhangers and how it made you want to come back for more. It is frustrating I think talking about the story, game-wise, because I don't want to give anything away that might affect anyone's in-game decisions!
Suffice to say the deliberate placement of your baggage train as of tiny, but potentially many, figures against the sweeping backdrop definitely accentuates the feeling of being overwhelmed with your relatively small numbers and the ever present dangers that your fleeing party faces.
So overall I thoroughly enjoyed it. It was a very sweet game (as in good... not as in sweet, it's kind of dark) even if it felt short. I can't remember if there are any more instalments of it coming out, but I would be very happy to have them. It's a splendid fantasy tale alongside good game mechanics and an art style that hammers home the feel of the story and ties it all together very nicely.
I would also like to point out that this is very much a game that changes depending on what you choose to do. Having only played through it once, (halfway through the second now) I may not be doing justice to the length of the game. There very much is a story to continue at the point at which I left it. So I'm hoping that either there is another instalment coming out, or if my choices led to the credits shorter than another choice would have.
If you're a fan of fantasy, role playing games, or general nordic mythology, I would definitely recommend this to you.
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