An idea I m happy to see the back of, is the notion that graphics is a one-way sliding scale towards photorealistic perfection. While I m certainly fond of games that exhibit hyperbudget beauty along the lines of Metro: Exodus or Shadow of the Tomb Raider, I m equally – probably more – excited by those who eschew realism in order to utterly master a particular aesthetic. Often, this takes the form of homage. Think Cuphead s take on surrealist 1930s cartoons, or Void Bastards comic book style. For my money though, nobody s done it quite like Stoic Studio, the developers behind The Banner Saga.

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>Banners, then and now, are often a curious amalgamation of plain communication and naked aggression. They re well-known as heraldic devices, displaying a coat of arms to identify one side to the other on the battlefield, usually just before they were about to attack each other. However, they re also just a means of communicating who or what a place or thing belongs to. If you re shipwrecked, the flags on the boat responding to your frantic SOS can tell you where you are and who is about to rescue you. Even today, flags are used this way. Ships still use flag signalling to send messages without the need for radios. Warships still hoist battle ensigns, huge flags to stand out in the smoke and chaos of a pitched battle, showing that a ship is ready to fight, and which side it s on.

In The Banner Saga, every clan, including your own, has a banner that flies overhead as you travel. But there isn t as much talk about the clan’s actual, physical banner as there is about what it represents: forging unity from the lack thereof, creating a clan rather than fighting others, and the rite of passing on stories to later generations.

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My 2018 in games had me dealing with failure in multiple ways. Designed to move further and further away from the fantasy of the all-powerful player ever looking for an appropriate challenge, these games teach to forgive and accept forgiving someone a past hurt, accepting the lack of a perfect solution to a problem. From the satisfyingly familiar to a type of game I would usually avoid, 2018 had it all. (more…)

Stoic finished telling their Viking-y fantasy tale earlier this year with The Banner Saga 3, and now only violence remains. Yesterday they launched the turn-based tactical RPG’s Eternal Arena DLC, letting players fight on and on in customisable sandbox battles. All the game’s heroes, villains, and maps are yours to toy with, and it has a weekly challenge with leaderboards too. Eternal Arena is probably the Varl’s idea of heaven, though probably less so for the weary humans of the deathmarch caravans. The DLC is free for Banner Saga 3 Kickstarter backers, because it was a stretch goal, and a couple quid for everyone else.

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From the outset, everything in The Banner Saga seems designed to encourage you to be careful. As you lead your caravan towards safety, you try to keep people alive by rationing food, managing the number of your followers and weighing the dangers of the unknown. Anyone who has ever given a soldier in XCOM a custom name knows that it takes very little to get attached, and The Banner Saga builds on this by giving you plenty of chances to get closer to the people in your army.

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The Vikings have long ago invaded the coasts of pop culture on their dragon-headed longships and carved out their own Danelaw in the realm of video games. In recent years, they ve grown even bolder, taking over most genres from RTS to RPG, classic point and click adventure to action, with an utter disregard towards distinctions between AAA and indie. They ve settled in Hellblade and Frostrune, Dead in Vinland and The Witcher 3, God of War and Crusader Kings 2, and of course, The Banner Saga trilogy. Luckily, it s easy to spot a Viking. Horned helmets, mead-filled drinking horns, bloody battle axes and grim miens are a dead giveaway. When in doubt, tempt the suspected Viking with loot, then wait and see whether or not they can resist the urge to pillage.

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After waiting two long years for the final instalment of Stoic’s fantastical strategy trilogy, The Banner Saga 3 begins in the best possible way. It picks up where the second The Banner Saga 2 left off, and one of the first things you get to do is punch your scheming arch nemesis – who probably made your last moments of that second game a right misery – square in the face.

You can punch him so hard, in fact, that you can permanently break his nose for the rest of the game. It’s an immensely satisfying moment in a series that, up until now, has been more a war of attrition and bleak perseverance than anything else. Sadly, it immediately goes back to being a bit grim again, and pretty much stays that way until the credits start rolling. Is it the ending we’ve all been waiting for? Here’s wot I think.

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It’s nearly time to sharpen your axe and wade once more into the beautifully illustrated frostbitten apocalypse that is The Banner Saga. Stoic’s strategy-RPG series was always planned as a trilogy, and the third and final chapter is excitingly close, now due out on July 26th, two days later than first expected. Within, a new trailer that could be considered spoiler-laden for those who haven’t played through the second game, so go do that first.

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The bearded warrior looks exhausted. Part of a band of mercenaries, he blinks slowly at us. Even while the player chooses their next words, the crease-eyed humans and horned Varls of The Banner Saga 3 stand there, blinking slowly. Their hair fluttering, eyes searching you for intent. These are quiet moments of incidental detail. Twitching moustaches, billowing capes, tensing fists. They are looping animations, designed to bring life to otherwise static moments, but they are a smooth and subtle reminder that The Banner Saga remains one of the most beautifully animated game trilogies in existence. This tired axeman is just one of the finely-drawn fighters of the series finale. Arnie Jorgensen, Creative Director at Stoic, seems happy to let him rest.

It s really gratifying for me personally, as one of the people involved, to finish it, he says to me, while showing the game at GDC. Not only that but we re finishing it to a better degree than we started… We re not just finishing it, we re finishing it strong. (more…)

Stoic’s Viking-y RPG trilogy will conclude with The Banner Saga 3 on July 24th, publishers Versus Evil have announced. The strategy RPG trek has seen tough battles and difficult decisions so far, but the worst is surely yet to come. Our boy Brendy recently talked to Stoic and will have more to tell you about the game later today. For now, coo, look, a release date. This is months ahead of the Kickstarter’s worst-case prediction of December 2018, so good on ’em. (more…)