It’s Time To Stop Ignoring The Best RPG Trilogy Since Mass Effect
10 years ago, one crowd-funded game found excellence in execution.
We’re never satisfied with perfection. Perfect things are rarely given more than a moment to exist. They’re almost always seen as “the right thing at the right time.” Perfection is never allowed much staying power because we expect iteration and improvement, especially for something as commercial as gaming. There’s always room for more pixels, better lighting, or bigger maps. But every once in a while though, something perfect and timeless comes along.
Ten years ago, that was The Banner Saga Trilogy.
The first game in the series, The Banner Saga, arrived on January 14, 2014. Developed by Stoic Studio, a small team mostly made up of former BioWare employees, it began with a Kickstarter campaign. More than 20,000 backers raised $723,000, far surpassing their goal of $100k. It’s easy to see why it was successful: stunning visuals that invoke the work of Disney legend Eyvind Earle, a Norse-inspired setting, and a gameplay balance that’s a mix of XCOM, Dragon Age, and Oregon Trail.
A new video for The Banner Saga 3 looks at Bolverk, Leader of the Ravens.
loading...
Bolverk, one of the last remaining Varl giants and mercenary leader of the Ravens had a major role to play in Banner Saga 2. What will drive him now as the darkness threatens to take over the world?
Find out this summer when the final installment of the award winning RPG series launches.
Hey Bannerfolk! As 2018 approaches, I suppose you must be wondering how far along we are in development of Banner Saga 3! What's the status? Where's the final chapter to my epic saga? Why don't you just ship this thing already so I can know how it all ends!?! Well, I'm here to answer ALL your questions, because I'm the producer, and that's just what we do.
Banner Saga 3 is still in an Alpha state, but I'm happy to report that we are approaching the ‘Feature Complete’ milestone (where no more new game features are added and we start to iterate, bugfix and polish). These are the features and tools that our programmers (John and Drew) deliver to the designers (Matt and Alex) so they can implement content into the game (character conversations, combat abilities, and new game systems).
Speaking of the designers, Arnie’s creative team (Art and Design) are trying to get to ‘Content Complete’ so that we can consider writing and art assets to be ‘final, polished and ready to ship.’ The final pass on writing will happen this year, and the translation/localization process will soon kick off for 10+ languages. Isn't it exciting to think that the final chapter of the story is almost completely written? I totally know how it ends and I'm not even going to tell you. :o)
Our partner companies are kicking into high gear to deliver their final assets early next year:
Powerhouse Animation is compositing our in-game cinematics at break-neck speed to meet deadlines early in 2018. (Did you guys see their work on Battle Chasers and Castlevania? These guys are KILLIN IT)
This month we’re kicking off Quality Assurance testing to start gathering bugs to squash.
Austin Wintory is composing and delivering scratch music tracks (placeholders made digitally to stand in for the real tracks that come after recording). He’ll be tuning up the full symphony for orchestral soundtrack recording in January.
KPoW Audio is playing through the latest build and planning out sound effects.
Syrland will be recording voice over for some of our cinematics early in the new year in their intimidating Nordic voices.
Versus Evil is creating their marketing master plan, including in-person appearances for the team at many gaming shows (look for those announcements on social media in the new year!)
For those of you in our Kickstarter, many of the merchandise items have been manufactured and are on their way to our fulfillment facility - we continue to strive to beat our December 2018 deadline for those, and there should be some exciting updates in the new year.
Banner Saga 1 and 2 are also getting some love and bugfixing and we're hoping to have an exciting announcement in the new year that I'm not going to say anthing more about, because I'm the producer, and that's just what we do. -Your Truly, Zeb L. West [...]
@GameIndustry they talk to John Watson, technical director behind The Banner Saga 2 who feels they should of crowdfunded the second part of The Banner Saga.
Ultimately, Stoic decided on what amounted to an "almost 180-degree turn" for The Banner Saga 2. "Let's just close the doors, close the curtains, spend our own money and do it our own way, without having to answer to anybody. And that's what we did.
"About halfway through, when the money starts getting tight, we started thinking, 'why the hell didn't we get a Kickstarter?'"
The reason might well be success. The Banner Saga raised far more money from Kickstarter than Stoic had expected, and it went on to sell more copies than expected, too. That money could fund what they wanted for The Banner Saga 2, while also being tangible evidence of a community of people who would be interested in playing the next chapter of the story. Stoic decided to focus on making sure that the next chapter was even better.
"I think we dropped the ball there," Watson admits. "We thought that audience would still just be there. We really neglected our community during the development of Banner Saga 2, because we were focusing on our work. I think that was a mistake. We all agree that was a mistake."
The Banner Saga 2 launched for PC in April 2016, and the mistake was immediately clear. In its first few months on Steam, The Banner Saga 2 sold around a third of what The Banner Saga sold over the same period. When GamesIndustry.biz spoke to Versus Evil, Stoic's publisher, last year, Steve Escalante lamented a massive increase in the number of competing titles on The Banner Saga 2's launch week.
The Banner Saga has received a rather large patch for balance changes and to update the engine to the latest version. These changes bring some of the improvements from The Banner Saga 2 into the original game.
We've rebalanced the final chapter of the game. The final Bellower battle has been tuned to be more fair on Normal difficulty settings, and there are more opportunities for obtaining supplies and items in Chapter 6.
Banner Saga 1 has been updated to the latest version of the engine technology, and quite a bit of cleanup has happened under the hood. A few of the improvements seen in Banner Saga 2 have been incorporated into this build.
Please join our community to discuss these changes and other topics on our Official Stoic Forums[stoicstudio.com].
[...]
Changes in this build (2.36.02):
Final Bellower battle tuned to be less difficult (see below)
Chapter 6 supply opportunities increased (see below)
Upgrade '+' sign shows up on hero icons in heroes tent when appropriate
Extended tooltips in battle
on stat banner, buffs, and items.
on hazards such as slag-and-burn, coals, etc...
Match Resolution:
Consequences tab shows injured units
Achievements tab shows new achievements
Items tab shows newly acquired items
News Ticker on Start Screen
Injured units to not heal during travel, only when Resting in camp/village
Injured units' str penalty now equals the number of days of injury remaining
Nid now starts at rank 2 when she joins the caravan
Increased loot drop chance for winning the second wave of a battles.
Varl that join the caravan after the Godstone in chapter 3 now have supplies.
A FEW MAJOR CHANGES:
1. Bellower Final Battle
...has been tuned down for normal and easy difficulty. HARD Difficulty mode remains just as challenging as before!
Bellower's ARM/STR regen during the first battles was +6/+6 per turn
Bellower's ARM/STR regen during the second battle is still +1/+1 for all difficulties.
2. Chapter 6 Supplies
...towns in the final world travel have more supplies and items for sale:
Haukstorp, the first village after Einartoft which was ransacked by dredge (now 50 supplies at 10/renown, and 3 items) The first village past Sigrholm (now has 145 supplies, up from 98), and between 3-5 items.
Develop reports that Stoic faced some tough times during the development of the Banner Saga:
The makers of The Banner Saga discuss the biggest hardships they faced in bringing their vision to life
The Banner Saga is widely regarded as a success story. New studio Stoic took to Kickstarter to call for funding and raised far more than they expected. The game was released, critics were wowed and all was well.
But the team faced tough times as they worked on the acclaimed RPG-strategy title, and the growing development budget caused increased pressure and other financial difficulties. Determined to invest as much into the game as possible, one of the founders even maxed two credit cards before the project was finished.
With work well underway on a sequel, we caught up with Stoic's John Watson and Arnie Jorgensen to find out more about the biggest challenges they faced and how they overcame them.
[...]
Looking back, what was the biggest challenge/difficulty and how did you overcome this? Jorgensen: Spreading the word about the game, but Versus Evil helped us with this as well. Building awareness is huge stumbling block for small independent teams. Since you’re so familiar with your game you just figure other people are aware that you’re working on it, but that’s not at all the case. You need people actively working to help market it. We know how to make games and it’s a full time job. They know how to let people know it’s out there and it’s a full time job.
John, Technical Director for Banner Saga, discusses the Playstation Vita port of Banner Saga, as well as the upcoming sequel.
Hello, followers of the Banner Saga!
Many of you have been asking for status updates on the Playstation Vita port of the Banner Saga. Now that we've completed porting and the certification process for Playstation 4, I thought I'd take a moment to bring my head above water and provide some information.
Our console and Vita porting has been more expensive and time consuming than we had originally expected...
Technical director John Watson explains why Stoic is sharing their Banner Saga engine with the devs of Skyshine's Bedlam:
Last year, indie studio Stoic Games burst onto the scene with the crowdfunded and beautifully animated strategy RPG title The Banner Saga – a game built on the developer's own tech.
In the time since, a similar title has emerged from developer Skyshine. Bedlam's themes, visual style and some of its turn-based mechanics may differ from The Banner Saga's, but the same technology is in fact ticking away behind the scenes.
We caught up with John Watson, technical director of Stoic Games (pictured), to find out why his studio decided to share its proprietary game engine, and whether he is open to more indies developing games based on The Banner Saga's technology.
Why decide to give other indies access to Stoic’s technology/engine? John Mueller of Skyshine has been a longtime friend of [Stoic art director] Arnie Jorgensen, both of them great artists with a comics background. Sometime after the launch of The Banner Saga, John Mueller approached us with a game idea for Bedlam, with game mechanics that were in many ways isomorphic with the game mechanics of the Banner Saga, and hence with the feature set of the engine.
Our engine was always made with the single purpose of making Banner Saga and its peculiar systems, so my default position on sharing the engine would be one of reticence, as any deviation from the supported feature set would require programming effort. However, the similarities between the two games made technology sharing imminently feasible. [...]
If I had to guess how Stoic used their Kickstarter budget for this game, I would wager that they spent most of their money on visual and sound design. The Banner Saga's score presents a surprisingly effective combination of moody chants and rousing battle marches, featuring plenty of drums, string instruments, and grizzled Icelandic singers. It complements the gameplay nicely, providing the proper backdrop for a lonely journey through a harsh northern landscape. The game's locations also offer unique sound work; when woodcutters are around, you will hear axes and labourer's chatter, while a settlement of cattle herders presents you with a symphony of gentle mooing sounds. Visually, the game shows off a distinct 2D art style with a rich colour palette, suffused with intricate details. Particularly noteworthy are the rotoscoped combat animations, which manage to express a tremendous amount of kinetic energy. With so many modern RPGs featuring limp melee animations, it is very nice to a see a game where the combatants actually contort their bodies and visibly take time to recover while swinging their heavy weapons around. The fact that the game's visual design is also fully coherent and without any obvious flaws should generally not be worthy of note, much less of praise; however, after seeing so many strange problems with recent games – I recall the mismatched NPC models in Wasteland 2 and the sloppy area lighting and perspective issues in the Shadowrun games – it is nice to see an indie RPG that simply looks consistently good. But is there any depth to the design? Is “great style” just shorthand for shallow narrative design and simple gameplay? Let us investigate. (...)
After close inspection, I can attest that Stoic's C&C system is quite cunningly implemented. Let us start with what would normally be the worst consequence of them all: you lose a battle against a horde of merciless enemies. Your heroes all fall unconscious on the battle field, and all hope is lost. What happens now? Reload to last save? That would be the bland, safe choice, allowing you to simply redo the battle until you get it right and can reap the rewards of victory. So, no, that is not what happens. Instead, a text window pops up and tells you how you got saved. Usually, some of your nameless supporting troops rushed to your aid and hurtled themselves onto the spears of your enemies, thus paying the ultimate price in the service of a smooth gameplay experience. Rarely, one of your less important companions made a heroic sacrifice, forever removing himself from your party roster in the process. Sometimes you wake up, battered and defeated, without really knowing what happened. Much e-blood has already been spilled over this mechanic; many of the game's harshest critics absolutely abhor the fact that it is (almost) impossible to get a game over screen from a party wipe. Other, more tolerant and progressive minds have come to appreciate the advantages of this implementation. (...)
Parting Remarks The Banner Saga is an immensely unique, and, by no coincidence, immensely good game that combines great artistic design and robust C&C mechanics with a highly entertaining and deceptively complex battle system. The Banner Saga has only a few outright flaws; the shoddy dialogues and the constant need to click-click-click through them line by line are a blemish on an otherwise engaging narrative. Moreover, the startling lack of enemy variety and the relatively dumb AI keep the battle system from realizing its potential for true tactical greatness. The game's system of choices and consequences also has far less of an impact on the story than Stoic's PR department has been trying to claim; nonetheless, it still offers an engaging and immersive range of decisions that will directly influence your battle performance and can occasionally result in major character deaths.
I suspect that The Banner Saga will always be the subject of great controversy; it has a kind of self-assured swagger, flaunting all of its little weirdnesses and weaknesses without making much of an effort to look like a typical tactical cRPG or a typical casual story game. The game features heaps upon heaps of idiosyncratic gameplay systems, like the strange combination of a broad C&C system with a fully pre-determined linear story, the fact that you will rarely if ever be able to see a "game over" screen, the "sit back and immerse yourself" approach to map travel, and a whole slew of novel and deeply unrealistic combat mechanics. You may choose to accept or reject these mechanics according to your personal preferences; all I can tell you is that all of these elements stand in the service of a fully coherent and extremely tightly designed gameplay experience that I deeply enjoyed playing through.
Stoic released a new patch for The Banner Saga on Steam that brings with it a new Linux & SteamOS version of the game. So if you're interested here are the details.
We’re releasing a rather large update for The Banner Saga and it includes the Linux + SteamOS versions of the game. We know it took a while, but we had to do things the right way rather than rush anything out. We're also happy to be having a 50% off sale for the weekend to accompany this update!
We’re happy were the Linux + SteamOS turned out. We've tested primarily on SteamOS Beta and Ubuntu 14.04 LTS. If you have any issues on your system, please contact us at help-linux@stoicstudio.com.
We are very pleased with the way the game feels when played with a gamepad. We tested with the primary 4 controllers: Xbox One, Xbox 360, Playstation DualShock 3, and Playstation DualShock 4. We also tested with a variety of generic gamepads. However, if you use an unrecognized controller, you still might be able to configure it when prompted by the game. If you do this successfully, please contact us at help-gamepad@stoicstudio.com so that we can incorporate your configuration into the game for everyone else.
The Steam Cloud saves will help ensure that your save games are more permanent and available for The Banner Saga 2. When you start the game for the first time, the game will automatically upload your old save games into the Steam Cloud.
Speaking at its annual Paradox Convention, vice president of acquisition Shams Jorjani revealed the core principles that "define the soul or character of a Paradox game", which include replayability, deep and demanding gameplay, allowing players to tell their own stories through their actions and offering modularity so the base game can be updated in future.
Jorjani pointed to its line of grand strategy games such as Crusader Kings 2 as examples that "perfectly embody" these elements, and said why games such as The Banner Saga, Xenonauts and Pid didn't make the cut.
"These games were essentially filtered out, in part, due to them not matching our pillars," he told attendees including Digital Spy.
"The Banner Saga is a wonderful game, I love it, it's one of the most gorgeous games I've ever seen, but it's not a Paradox game.
"It doesn't have the depth that we were looking for at the time. There's a lot of money to be made in a lot of games, but it's not always our money to make."
PC Gamer has an interesting new opinion piece on the process of journeying in the Banner Saga:
Movement in game worlds is fundamentally stupid, and I just can't let it go. I get stuck on trees, I spend ages incrementally humping my way up slopes the game doesn't want me to climb, I hop harmlessly down sheer cliff faces that should break bones. I scoff at "overencumbered!" warnings and sigh at stamina bars. These throwaway nods to realism cause momentary irritation when the effect should be something resembling a slow wearying of the soul....
Not so in the Banner Saga. Between fights and story events you watch your caravan of fighters and families march through exquisitely drawn arctic landscapes. In these journeying phases you step away from the individuals you roleplay in conversation and combat sections to play as the entire caravan, which functionally behaves like a long straggly body. It has wants and needs and can be wounded and killed. It can grow tired and unwieldy and slow. There's a morale icon at the top of the screen which gets sad when your people face death and dwindling supplies, but that's just a UI flourish that represents another bodily need. The collective weight of these needs grows as you travel between towns and godstones....
Any thoughts? Personally, I enjoyed the journeying in the Banner Saga, but it seemed like it didn't have any consquences for the rest of the game. However, I would definitely be happy with journeying playing a bigger role in future RPGs.
With all the larger sites picking other games as the game of the year winner a small news site called The Fresno Bee has picked The Banner Saga as Best Video Game of 2014.
In a year overrun by great role-playing games like “South Park: The Stick of Truth” and “Dragon Age Inquisition,” it’s only fitting that my favorite game of 2014 was the beautiful and striking “The Banner Saga.”
“The Banner Saga” is the first-born son of Stoic Studio, an independent game development company created by three former BioWare employees who had worked on “Star Wars: The Old Republic.”
The trio followed the increasingly common trend of abandoning steady work at a large studio to start their own company, and they raised nearly $750,000 in a crowd-funding campaign to get them on their way.
Read more here: http://www.fresnobee.com/2014/12/19/4293922_best-video-game-of-2014-is-the.html?sp=/99/1355/&rh=1#storylink=cpy
Reviewers generally agreed that The Banner Saga, released in January 2014 and developed by Stoic, did an amazing job of bringing a Viking inspired setting, incredible soundtrack and hand-created animation to life.
The Banner Saga is no easy journey because catastrophe is as much a part of the landscape as the unique and appealing scenery. Players will trek through rigorous environments and will encounter a variety of characters and it’s never easy to tell if they be friend or foe. It is up to the player to make the meaningful choices that will shape each narrative, but in the end, The Banner Saga is really all about the relationships and we wanted to know more about the how and the why surrounding its character development.
Stoic’s lead writer Drew McGee sat down with us and provided a glimpse into his perspective regarding some of the human liaisons that helped make The Banner Saga a storytelling success.
Among the announcements at the VGAs: The Banner Saga is getting a sequel next year, Kotaku very tersely reports.
Okay, scrounging the net for more details I found the preview video posted by IGN, which reveals a new, centaur-ish-looking race.
Elsewhere online I've seen speculation that the preview's dual narration may represent different narrators depending on a major plot choice in the first game.
While I mentioned this yesterday here is the official announcement from Stoic that The Banner Saga is now on various mobile platforms from the games kickstarter page.
Just a quick update to let you know that we have fulfilled our Kickstarter promise to bring you the game to mobile platforms! We are really excited to tell you that today we released The Banner Saga on the App Store for iPhone, iPad and iPad Touch. For all you Android users, don’t worry, we are actively working on that version and should have a release date for your within the next week or so. We tried everything we could to release them simultaneously but it just didn't work out the way we wanted it to.
We knew early on that this game would work really well on mobile devices and even though it’s the same game, the experience is somehow even better e.g. tilting the device allows you to get the parallax effect, you can now zoom in and out of travel sequences and even get up close to the action during battle. We hope to retrofit the PC/Mac versions with the upgrades we were able to achieve for the mobile launch.
Thanks to Touch Arcade I have news to share that The Banner Saga is now available on iOS for $9.99, or some other price depending on where you live.
As if the huge list of new releases from earlier wasn't enough, Stoic's tactical RPG The Banner Saga [$9.99] has also just arrived in the App Store. The Banner Saga launched on PC in January of this year to critical acclaim, and in June it was confirmed that the game would be heading to "tablets" sometime this summer. That meant that it was at the very least heading to iPad, but as it turns out The Banner Saga is a Universal app for iPhones, too.
Stoic is proud to announce they have won the Geekie Award from the awards show in the Indie Game Category in a new press release. Here is the information.
The Banner Saga Takes Geekie Award in Indie Game Category
Austin-based independent developer, Stoic, took home another award on Sunday night with its smash hit PC video game The Banner Saga winning the Geekie Award ® for the Indie Video Games category. The award ceremony took place on Sunday evening, August 17th in Hollywood, California and was broadcast live via Twitch livestream. Currently available on PC and Mac, The Banner Saga will be coming to iPad, Windows and Android based tablets and is scheduled to launch in September 2014.
“We are honored by the outpouring of love from fans for The Banner Saga and know that this award is due to their support”, said John Watson, Technical Director at Stoic. “This comes just as we are about to launch the game on tablet, and we are excited about the prospect of offering The Banner Saga to a new medium of gamers”.
The Banner Saga is an epic role-playing Viking saga with turn-based tactical combat where the player’s choice in travel, conversation and combat determines the outcome of their own personal story as well as the survival of an entire civilization. The game features stunning 2D animation and art, a unique tactical combat system and a cast of unforgettable characters that drive the story forward. The journey is enhanced by a beautiful and haunting original score by Grammy nominated, and two-time BAFTA winner, composer Austin Wintory conducting The Dallas Winds orchestra, as well as a powerhouse trio of acclaimed YouTube sensations: Peter Hollens, Malukah and Taylor Davis.
The Banner Saga is available now through Steam, Amazon, GreenMan Gaming, Humble Store, UPlay, GameFly, GameStop, GOG and Gamers Gate for PC and Mac. A digital Deluxe Edition is also available through select retailers which includes the game and complete soundtrack.
The Geekie Awards® is an award show by geeks for geeks™, aimed at putting the true geek culture in the spotlight as a collection of valid, respected, award- winning genres for storytelling and creation. In an industry filled with award shows for established celebrities, we honor talented, independent creators and give them the opportunity to receive recognition in front of a worldwide audience and leaders in their respective industries. We inspire creativity and hope and foster cross-market innovation. Our mission is to create a fun, action-packed, unforgettable broadcast event tailored to all of the things we geeks love: entertainment, gaming, products and art—delivered via the latest digital technologies.
Stoic Studios Programmer John Watson, and Artist Arnie Jorgensen did a new interview on RPGamer. They talked about The Banner Saga, and the upcoming sequel.
The first game ends with some closure, but it also left several plot threads open. What are the plans and time-tables for the future follow-up releases? Will the story pick up directly from where the first left off?
JW: The Banner Saga is the first part of a trilogy, and we are working hard every day to create the next part. The story arc of the entire saga is an epic tale that we are excited to tell in its entirety. When we started the project, we realized trying to make the entire story as one game was an unattainable goal for a small team like ours. Fortunately, the story line naturally divides into 3 books, so we decided to tackle each of the parts one at a time. The next part of the trilogy will pick up directly where the first left off, in the aftermath of the events of Boersgard. The player will encounter quite a variety of new characters and new classes in addition to many of the familiar faces of characters who survived the first part. Your actions in the first game will directly affect the situation in the second game, if your save files are preserved. Players should expect to learn more about the Dredge and their motivations, and the nature of the catastrophe which is threatening the world. Regarding a time table, it is too early to try to nail down a specific date. We should have our entire 'white box' version of the game done in late August, which means placeholder art for all scenes, placeholder dialog in all locations, and all of the major decision points implemented. This allows us to play through the entire game to get an idea of pacing. Austin Wintory will be in-house for several days next month for us to play through the whitebox as a group and brainstorm on tone and pacing.
AJ: The next game will pick up right where the first one left off. We're going to be saving all the decisions the player made in the first one and tracking them through the story for The Banner Saga 2. The player must finish the first game though to enable us to do this for them! If the player hasn't won the game, or never played The Banner Saga, then they will be handed the 'default' story that we set up for them to start with. That's currently the plan, stay tuned to see how it evolves. I may be just be a simple artist, but I know enough to avoid giving dates on future releases!
There is a candidate hotfix build on the 'beta' branch. We will QA it tomorrow but you guys can go ahead and take a look. In particular, I am interested in Russian feedback on the new font. To switch to the 'beta' branch select it from the dropdown in
Steam LIBRARY->The Banner Saga ->Properties->BETAS->"Select the beta..."->"beta - For public testing"
Release Notes 2.7.01:
NOTE: Allow silver arrow to work properly even if player is out of willpower
NOTE: Increase pan speed during battle. This creates a smoother experience, especially on lower end machines.
NOTE: Update Vinque font to include Russian text. No more Arial for Russian
NOTE: Fix decamping very close to the next travel location trigger
Test Notes:
NOTE: Allow silver arrow to work properly even if player is out of willpower
This affects the 'battle self popup' across the board for all units. Please test cases of legitimate willpower exhaustion as well as the silver arrow case which has a willpower cost of zero. Please test the '2' hotkey that activates the targeting mode for this ability.
NOTE: Increase pan speed during battle. This creates a smoother experience, especially on lower end machines.
Affects all battles across the board but should only have a cosmetic effect. The pan speeds for villages and travel scenes should remain unchanged
NOTE: Update Vinque font to include Russian text. No more Arial for Russian
Instead of switching Vinque to Arial in Russian, we now switch to an alternate Vinque (VinqueRU). VinqueRU looks slightly different than Vinque, mostly in the glyph spacing, but overall looks similar. The Languages menu should always display language buttons other than the Russian button (Русский) in plain Vinque. I had some issues with the non-Русский buttons getting messed up after a restart, which is now fixed, but please check how the VinqueRU is getting swapped out both at runtime and through a restart.
NOTE: Fix decamping very close to the next travel location trigger
This was a global issue that could affect anyone, albeit uncommonly. The way to make this happen was to camp while traveling, very close to reaching the next scene change trigger. For instance, when approaching Frostvellr. If the camp button is hit immediately before reaching the trigger, the caravan will start to slow down. The caravan hits the trigger and stops 1 pixel before the trigger immediately, and goes into camp. When camp is exited, the travel screen comes up for a brief moment and then Frostveller loads. At this point, the player would no longer be able to save. I have addressed this by changing the way DECAMP works -- DECAMP is waiting for you to load into the old travel scene. It never finishes loading into the old travel scene because it immediately kills the load and starts loading a new scene. I made DECAMP listen for those interrupted and exited scenes. This needs thorough testing because DECAMPing everywhere is affected (towns, camps, etc... Anywhere you hit the "Leave" button)
My first time playing the iPad version of The Banner Saga, the strategy-RPG from Austin-based developer Stoic, did not last especially long.
I picked up an iPad Air loaded with an early version of the port before chatting with Arnie Jorgensen and John Watson, two of the studio's co-founders, about how the game was received after landing on Steam in January. After knocking out a few rounds of battle, and maneuvering around the interface for a few minutes, I handed the tablet back to Jorgensen.
"Everybody does this when we hand them the mobile version," Jorgensen said. "We break out the tablet, and after a few seconds, everyone just goes, ‘Yep, it's the game!'"
Adapting the PC version of The Banner Saga to iPad, Android and Windows tablets hasn't been as difficult a process as you might think. The team is "not re-engineering it for tablets" at all, Jorgensen explained — The Banner Saga was designed to work on mobile devices from the start.
"All of our user interfaces were designed from the ground-up to be simple enough to use with a finger," Watson said. "You could play the entire game on PC with your left mouse button."
If you live in Europe, Australia, and New Zealand the new Collector's Edition of The Banner Saga is now available in a boxed edition. Here are the details.
The Banner Saga: The Collector's Edition Out Now in Europe, Australia and New Zealand
London, UK - 25th July, 2014 – Independent developer Stoic and games publisher Versus Evil, in partnership with Sold Out Sales & Marketing Limited, announced that indie mega hit The Banner Saga is available at retail stores in Europe, Australia and New Zealand today.
The Viking-themed tactical role playing game – which has received and been nominated for several awards and praise for its story, art design and gameplay mechanics – is now available in physical form for the first time ever. This special Collector's Edition offers fans a permanent collection of one of this year's best indie games and includes the core game along with the ‘Insane Viking Pack’ digital content and Official Soundtrack which is composed by the BAFTA award winning, Austin Wintory. The “Insane Viking Pack” is currently only available as part of The Banner Saga: The Collector’s Edition.
Boasting a style inspired by classic animation films of yesteryear, with stunning hand-drawn visuals capturing a merciless Nordic era, The Banner Saga is a single-player turn-based strategy game in which players take charge of a wandering army sent to fight the warlike Dredge.
Weaving a narrative which often demands tough choices that affect the player’s narrative permanently, it's a game of strategy and of decisions unlike any other, winning it huge acclaim upon release earlier this year.
"We are very happy that Versus Evil found a great partner in Sold Out to bring a physical version of our game to some of the key European, Australian and New Zealand markets" says Arnie Jorgensen, Stoic’s Art Director. "The fact that there is demand for a physical version of The Banner Saga is humbling. We can’t wait to get a hold of a boxed copy ourselves and hope that fans are equally excited to pick one up today."
The Banner Saga: The Collector's Edition is available on PC from today, in a number of territories including, UK (£19.99), Europe (€29.99) & Australia/New Zealand ($39.99).
In a real saga you crush your enemies skulls, not sweets.
The Banner Saga, a unique Viking-themed role-playing game with solid tactical combat mechanics, beautiful 2D graphics that look nothing like any other modern title, and a captivating heart-touching story, is now available 50% off DRM-Free on GOG.com, for Windows and Mac OS X. That's only $12.49 for the next 24 hours!
Sold Out Sales & Marketing Limited announce The Banner Saga will finally be getting a physical collector’s edition release. Here is the full press release.
The Banner Saga: The Collector’s Edition announced
Sold Out to bring celebrated indie hit to stores – with content currently unavailable anywhere else
London, UK - 17th July, 2014 - Sold Out Sales & Marketing Limited has today announced the mega indie hit The Banner Saga will be heading to stores on 25th July.
The Viking-themed tactical role playing game – which has won countless awards for its beautiful, atmospheric but brutal gameplay – will be available as a physical release for the first time ever.
This special Collector’s Edition will offer fans a permanent collection of one of this year’s best games and will include the core game along with the Official Soundtrack and the Insane Viking Pack – the latter, originally an exclusive preorder incentive, now unavailable to buy outside of this edition.
Boasting a style inspired by classic animation films of yesteryear, with stunning hand-drawn visuals capturing a merciless Nordic era, The Banner Saga is a single-player turn-based strategy game in which players take charge of a wandering army sent to fight the warlike Dredge.
Weaving a narrative which often demands tough choices which will affect the narrative permanently, it’s a game of strategy and of decisions unlike any other, winning it huge acclaim upon release earlier this year.
“There are some games which demand permanent display – and The Banner Saga is unquestionably one of those,” says James Cato – Sales Director, Sold Out. “This is the definitive version of the game – and the only way those who didn’t pre-order the digital version can experience the additional content. We’ve worked really closely with Stoic to create a pack which does their stunning game justice – we know it’ll go down well with fans new and old alike.”
The announcement of The Banner Saga: The Collector’s Edition is further demonstration of Sold Out’s commitment to bring the very best indie digital releases to retail. The firm – which recently announced a partnership with Team17 Digital Limited to bring its forthcoming digital titles to retail – continues to actively seek new publishing opportunities.
The Banner Saga: The Collector’s Edition will be available on PC on 25th July, priced £19.99.
Eurogamer looks back at the trademark battle over the name for The Banner Saga, and shares a few quotes from Stoic Studios to go along with the article.
Now all is said and done, are is Stoic glad King went after The Banner Saga?
"I would say definitely," Watson replies. "People know about that. Almost everywhere we go people ask us about that. That raised a lot of awareness of the game."
The upshot is The Banner Saga was a resounding success, earning Stoic enough money for the developers to erase their debt and, after two years of living off of savings, finally pay themselves a salary.
It's funded The Banner Saga chapter two, a tablet port of the first game and, potentially, more. The Banner Saga did well on Steam, and continues to do well. And for a three-person team, that's enough to make all the hard work and all the highs and lows, worthwhile. It would be an exaggeration to say King made Stoic millionaires, but it certainly helped.
If Watson and Jorgensen ever met their counterparts at King, perhaps bumping into them at some busy video game conference or fancy awards show, you'd forgive them an angry snort at a company that caused them such a headache.
Well maybe, instead, they'll walk up to them and shake their hands.
The Banner Saga will go mobile this summer and in addition will be available in multiple languages on PC and Mac too. The languages it will be available in are: French, German, Polish, Portuguese, Russian and Spanish, and fulfills the promise about multiple language support that was made during the Kickstarter.
Translated into 6 Languages: Deutsch, Français, Русский, Português (Brasil), Polski, and Español!
Added Save Profile Slots!
Balanced and Tuned the Bellower fight!
Localization:
You can set your desired language by right-clicking the game and changing Properties, or from within the game itself via the Options menu. If you change to a non-English language, Subtitles will automatically be enabled.
Save Slots:
There are now 5 Save Profiles that you can use. All of your existing save games will be automatically migrated into 'Profile 1' when you start the game.
Bellower Fight:
The difficulty curve has been tuned. Your party's injuries are now healed before the Bellower fight due to your long stay in Boersgard. Bellower and his minions are not as strong in Normal difficulty.
Changes:
Added and updated many Kickstarter Backer names
Deleted the tents on the left side of the forest camp for medium population
Changed Dredge Splinter Passive to no longer triggers Bellower's enrage attack
Made the Bellower fight easier by lowering his max str/arm for the second round in normal and easy mode. Also made henchmen lower tiers
Added confirmation box to delete progress and start new game
Added video disable command line option for people experiencing video crashes: '-video_disable'
Updated FMOD to 4.44.34
Added confirmation dialog to skip introductory Videos
Converted both intro videos to 720p 24fps FLV
Added sound effect occurs when clicking the Help button in the Heroes menus.
Added sfx when dragging and dropping character cards on Heroes & Assemble screens
Character portraits in Heroes Details now load as needed instead of all loading when Heroes opens
Zeno Content editing tool is now included with the game. See this link for information about how to Mod The Banner Saga: http://bit.ly/tbsmodding
Bug Fixes:
FIXED: Party Injuries do not heal as days pass in Boersgard
FIXED: Shooting Silver Arrow while at 1 Strength causes Game Over
FIXED: Level 5 characters do not show equipped items description while in battle
FIXED: Occasional issue in Chapter 3 that prevent save files from saving
FIXED: Items cannot be purchased from the Market when loading from some save games
FIXED: Issue with credits crawl slowing down near the end of the credits
FIXED: Character equipped with Eyeless Rift still sees chance to hit percentage
FIXED: Pressing Esc while information is up on Heroes screen will exit fullscreen
FIXED: Clicking an item in the marketplace after closing the Options menu creates a console error
FIXED: Item highlight in marketplace flicks on and off if cursor is directly below the item
FIXED: Continue button text is not centered in the button on the Heroes page
Reports indicate that Wintory recorded the music for The Banner Saga in Texas. Texas is a “right to work” state, which means that those in the state cannot be prevented from using non-union workers.
In Wintory’s own words, in a posting on NeoGAF, he says that:
"The violation I’m charged with is breaking the Bylaws, which cite that I can not “perform services (whether as composer, arranger, copyist, proofreader, instrumentalist, leader, contractor, cutter, editor or in any other capacity) for the purpose of producing, editing or dubbing recorded music except where expressly authorized and covered by a contract with the AFM or when expressly authorized by the AFM.”
Now what?
It remains to be seen whether video game companies will sign on with this new agreement.
According to the AFM’s website, they have just drafted a new video game agreement, that will now be voted on by union members. While reports indicate that Microsoft has joined up, it remains to be seen whether other video game companies will sign on with this new agreement.
Austin Wintory the music composer of The Banner Saga is facing a $50.000 fine from his own union, AFM, for composing the music in the game. In 2012 the AFM has created a Videogame Agreement which has to be signed by game developers in order for AFM members to be able to work with them. According to Wintory the agreements has not been rejected by game evelopers, making it officially imposisble for AFM members to work in the games industry. Watch the video or read the story below it for his take on it.
I, Austin Wintory, am facing a $50,000 fine from my own union for - The American Federation of Musicians - and have decided to speak up against my union's blockage of ALL new video game recordings
Several years ago Ray Hair, the President of the American Federation of Musicians put together a Videogame Agreement working committee to develop a new game agreement. The new Videogame Agreement was approved by the AFM's International Executive Board and went into effect December 2012. This new contract was done without allowing any composers, musicians or any of the 90,000 members of the union given an opportunity to vote on it.
"The new administration, was deeply committed to fixing the videogame mess," explained committee member and Recording Musicians Association (RMA) President Marc Sazer at the time. He also predicted, incorrectly, that "the new agreement should induce employers to sit down and negotiate with the AFM."
Nothing could be further from the reality of what happened.
The end result was an agreement that was universally rejected by every single video game developer and publisher, and has gone completely unused since the day it was created.
For almost two years now, under this contract, no union member has been allowed to work on a new video game soundtrack as a result.
"Unfortunately employers have not signed the current agreement," admits AFM Local 47 Vice President John Acosta who represent the recording musicians of Los Angeles, "and the limited work we were doing before has all but vanished into non-union land."
This contract created an untenable situation. Composers and musicians have continued to need to earn a living in this industry. Those musicians and composers therefore we've been forced to work without union sanction because the union has failed to signed any video game companies to work with them in almost two years.
After having successfully recorded the iOS game HORN with AFM musicians, I attempted to do the same with THE BANNER SAGA. The unusable contract forced me elsewhere, and I soon found the remarkable Dallas Wind Symphony. This collaboration happened as a direct result of the AFM's unusable contract, and I am now being punished for simply doing my job under those circumstances.
In an article telling entitled "Education and Discipline in the Videogame Industry," AFM President Ray Hair declares, "The time has come for education and discipline," "within our ranks" as well as within the Video Game industry.
"I don't think anybody give you anything because they like you," said AFM President Hair recently, "In the union business they give you things because they are afraid of what you are going to do to them."
Simply put, this current leadership does NOT represent me, and I believe does not represent the best interests of AFM musicians.
If you feel inclined to, please show your support by sharing this video and commenting on it below.
A heartfelt thanks to everyone who submitted a design for The Banner Saga’s “Creating the Banner” art contest. We were very impressed and humbled by the effort everyone made coming up with their designs to show support for the game and some of the results were fantastic.
Congratulations to the artists who’s designs were selected for the final community created banner. Over the next few days we will be highlighting the winning designs plus a few of the designs that didn’t make it onto the final community banner but that the team felt deserved honorable mentions.
Stoic has a few updates on The Banner Saga webpage. The first post talks about what the developer is working on right now, and apologizes for being silent for a while.
Sorry we’ve been really quiet these days! Let me give you a brief run down on what John, Alex and I have been up to since launching the Saga and what we’re doing right now.
Leading up to the launch of the Saga we were working about 16 to 18 hour days for weeks upon weeks. No exercise and fueling the body on a diet of pizza and beer for long periods of time can really take it out of you. Since then we’ve only intermittently been in the studio. All of us have given back some time to our families who were as exhausted as we were. My wife has been taking care of my two boys. Taking them school, to cub scouts, giving baths, reading books before bed, camping, mowing our yard, making all the dinners, basically keeping the house running and doing it solo for over a year. The same holds true for the other guys in similar capacities. John, Alex and I gave pretty much everything we had to The Banner Saga, but so did our families. We wouldn’t do anything different. We knew getting this game up and running would be an effort but it was truly a labor of love (as cheesy as that saying is). Alex and family took off on a cruise, then went out to chill in Colorado. John hit Seattle then relaxed in Paris and ate really good fondue. I went skiing in Colorado then did a road trip to Florida to visit family. All of us needed to take a step back and enjoy life again…for a time.
The second post shares good news about the legal problem with the games name. You may remember King claimed they owned the name a few months back.
Stoic is pleased to have come to an agreement with King regarding Stoic’s The Banner Saga trademark, which enables both parties to protect their respective trademarks now and in the future.
We’re happy to announce that we will be chatting with the hitbox team courtesy of Indie Game Mag on Monday Night (March 31st) starting at 6pm PST. Come join the channel and chat with us and the hitbox crew.
Gamingbolt interviewed Game Designer Alex Thomas to talk about creating the successful SRPG The Banner Saga. Here is a small sample of the interview.
Ravi Sinha: From out of nowhere, The Banner Saga went from a promising tactical RPG to being one of the most compelling games to watch this year. How does that make you feel? Alex Thomas: It’s pretty amazing, in all honesty. We went into it knowing we were making a niche title- when you break it down it’s a thoughtful strategy game combined with reading a full-sized novel. There’s a reason we never went for publisher funding. We ended up with more reviews on metacritic than Double Fine’s Kickstarter hit, which we found pretty incredible.
We got something like over 250 requests for review code. I think some of it had to do with a new IP from previous BioWare devs, some of it had to do with the unique look and original gameplay, some people were really curious about what the game was at all, and a lot of people wanted to know how one of the first big Kickstarter releases would pan out. I think a lot of people couldn’t wait to publicly call us a huge success or a huge failure, so I’m incredibly relieved the feedback has been overwhelmingly positive.
Ravi Sinha: When you left Bioware to kick-start The Banner Saga, how did you first conceive of it? What were your greatest motivators in opting for a mature, Viking-themed game?
Alex Thomas: Everybody likes to say this but we really set out to make the game we wanted to make. One of the review comments that sticks out most in my mind is that The Banner Saga is a “game made by artists who didn’t compromise on their vision”. For better or worse I think this is accurate.
We were fortunate enough that other people came along for the ride. We’ve gotten a lot of feedback on the game and we will be refining a lot of systems for the sequel, but we’re not concerned about the smaller subset of players who were just not into the gameplay. We’re not making a game for everybody, and on a personal level I wish there were more games for adults.
Ravi Sinha: From out of nowhere, The Banner Saga went from a promising tactical RPG to being one of the most compelling games to watch this year. How does that make you feel?
Alex Thomas: It’s pretty amazing, in all honesty. We went into it knowing we were making a niche title- when you break it down it’s a thoughtful strategy game combined with reading a full-sized novel. There’s a reason we never went for publisher funding. We ended up with more reviews on metacritic than Double Fine’s Kickstarter hit, which we found pretty incredible.
We got something like over 250 requests for review code. I think some of it had to do with a new IP from previous BioWare devs, some of it had to do with the unique look and original gameplay, some people were really curious about what the game was at all, and a lot of people wanted to know how one of the first big Kickstarter releases would pan out. I think a lot of people couldn’t wait to publicly call us a huge success or a huge failure, so I’m incredibly relieved the feedback has been overwhelmingly positive.
How do you feel about the current state of the indie scene?
In my opinion, the indie scene has never been better. And please, keep in mind this is all my personal opinion and hell, I could be way wrong.
The games industry really has an interesting relationship with publishers. And yes, a publisher can take things too far trying to maximize their short-term profits, burning out developers and players with creatively stifled sequels, etc. But in the bigger picture, publishers aren't really the problem. They're not "forcing" anything on the public -- quite to the contrary they spend all their time, money and effort trying to figure out exactly what the public wants. That's no easy task, but the unfortunate truth is that the more successful a publisher is the better they are at giving people what they want. It's the same with the film industry. Tired of seeing the same dumbed-down, repetitive drek? You have to stop buying it, and convince everyone else to stop too. It's the democratization of entertainment, and in most cases the majority wins.
In my opinion what's great about this point in time is that indie devs can make a damn good living for themselves with all the creative freedom in the world, and AAA publishers can look at those successes and make something like it with a multi-million dollar budget. I can't say whether Everquest Next is going to be a huge success but I'm really hoping that it turns out great. That game would have never happened without Minecraft.
Kickstarter is an extraordinary tool for making bigger and better original games. In my opinion the only thing that's going to hold back Kickstarter is the backers themselves, who moan and threaten to sue every project that doesn't do exactly what they expected, or projects that don't pan out.
That's going to happen, it's part of the risk. It happens to publishers all the time. The value, in my opinion, isn't in getting "that one game" you wanted, but elevating the entire games industry. You gotta have a long view of the whole process.
RPGamer reviewed The Banner Saga and gave the game a final score of 4/5.
Stoic Studios have set themselves up with a difficult act to follow. The Banner Saga is a rare game that forces its player to think and feel, often in delightful opposition. Its subsystems combine to support the narrative of desperate heroism, hard choices, and survival. Like the doomed giants who fight its battles, The Banner Saga is powerful, thoughtful, and worthwhile. Recapturing this winning combination is going to be risky. When a game is so precariously excellent, a wiggle either way in the sequel could spoil the formula that made the first so magical. Regardless of whether future installments stand or fall, The Banner Saga has done its duty. It may not always give gamers what they want, but it gives them what they need: challenging questions, tactical gameplay, and a strong, fully realized atmosphere.
The developers of The Banner Saga Stoic give their thanks to every backer, and buyer in a new post on Facebook. We also get news on the next chapter.
The three of us at Stoic want to give a heart-felt thank you to all the fans who have supported us by playing The Banner Saga. We've gotten so many messages about personal experiences with the game that we've been quite honestly blown away. We didn't set out to make a game for everybody, but the people who like it have been incredibly, overwhelmingly supportive, far beyond what we had expected.
Aside from the relief that comes with knowing that we'll be able to keep working at Stoic for a long time to come, what has been really rewarding is the individuals who write to us saying things like "No game has ever been more worthy of the title 'Saga'. A saga is something epic, something that will linger in the minds and memories of people for years to come. For that is what The Banner Saga is, a little slice of perfection that nobody else can spoil." I can't tell you how validating and important that has been to us. To each of you who have supported us to make this journey become a reality: thank you.
The feedback we've gotten from players and reviewers have really been taken to heart. We've already put out the first patch fixing issues reported by players about bugs and balance and after a short hiatus we'll be coming back to work on the next game in the trilogy. If there's one complaint we've heard over and over, it's that the story isn't done.
In short, we couldn't ask for more, thanks to you.
The Banner Saga, a unique Viking-themed role-playing game with solid tactical combat mechanics, beautiful 2D graphics that look nothing like any other modern title, and a captivating heart-touching story, is now available 10% off DRM-Free on GOG.com, for Windows and Mac OS X. That's only $22.49 for the first week.
The Koalition has a new podcast about the The Banner Saga trademark battle.
We're back with another Turn Based, The RPG Podcast and this time we had to bring back some old guests from The Koalition team. Not only do we have The Koalition Editor-in-chief Richard Bailey Jr. but we also brought back Mr. AKQ (a.k.a) Asad Quadri. Join us as we discuss some very intriguing RPG related discussions such as The Banner Saga suffering from King's trademark trolling. They are trying to block the creators of The Banner Saga from using the word Saga, as they believe this threatens their Candy Crush Saga property.
Like its stylized landscapes, The Banner Saga is capable of evoking a lot with a simple brushstroke, enough not to feel strangled by its short length and mechanically narrow focus. And while, unfortunately, the precision of the art isn't matched by a similar precision of design, it's still a commendable first effort, and a game well worth experiencing.
As I played The Banner Saga, I was swept away by its chilled tapestry of brass harmonies and meandering woodwind melodies. It was as if the musical score had been woven together of shimmering mithril, evoking both the bleakness of the frozen landscape and the stubbornness of the varl race. I was reminded of several composers, Finnish composer Jean Sibelius chief among them. The opening of Sibelius' fifth symphony captures a similar kind of comforting loneliness with its glowing French horn chords and frigid clarinets. Composers like Sibelius and Carl Nielsen have been often praised for capturing the essence of Scandinavia, but given his work on The Banner Saga's soundtrack, I could argue for composer Austin Wintory to be added to that short list.
Trevor plays The Banner Saga from Stoic Studio in our newest First Look. The Banner Saga is a turn-based strategy game with good storytelling and smidge of Oregon Trail mixed in.
In the end I am simply glad to say I was proven wrong about The Banner Saga. While it does have a few little issues like the simplistic RPG system, it is more than made up for by the excellent combat, intriguing story and utterly stunning graphics. It is clear that the crew at Stoic has poured a lot of love into this game and while it isn’t for everyone, those of you with a hankering for some turn based action could do a lot worse than picking up The Banner Saga. Now if you would excuse me folks I had best get back to eating this humble pie. It won’t eat itself you know.
As well as providing a great and unique tactical challenge alongside a story full of choices and surprise, the game is great looking to match - from the fantastically stylised cartoon cutscenes to the detailed graphics during the fights which take place on a large variety of maps. The limitations of an indie production do shine through in a few places, such as voice acting only being used for selected parts of the story and the notable lack of combat animation frames for the archer when firing diagonally. It’s a little jarring to see them aim 45 degrees away from the direction their arrow takes.
Ron: You asked for $100,000 and ended up raising $723,886 from 20,042 backers. It must have been overwhelming to see this much support. What was your initial reaction seeing such growing interest?
Stoic Studio: I think anyone making a game and especially a new IP, even companies who have done it before, are always worried that nobody will actually like the game, or want it. The best thing Kickstarter could do for us at the time is confirm that we were on the right track, and making something that people would care about. That alone got us through the two terrifying years of production where we worked non-stop on something that was incredibly complicated and only really came together near the end. The day our Kickstarter finished was one of the happiest days of my life, and then the fear starts to settle in... but it's a healthy fear. It makes you work hard and not give up.
Ron: Dreaming big: if the funding had surpassed $10,000,000, what else would we see in the game?
Stoic Studio: Ho boy, I'm not sure I'd really want $10m. At some point you start hitting the point of diminishing return, the game takes three times longer to produce, people's expectations start to fly out of control and the amount of quality you can cram into a game starts to become harder and harder... but I know what you're saying. In the spirit of the question, I would have loved to get voiceovers into the game, and we could have had more polish on animations: more animated cutscenes, more combat animations, more enemy varieties, etc. A little more polish associated with big budget games. As it is though, I really couldn't ask for much more
The Banner Saga is a slow game that requires some patience while it chugs along and shows you its wondrous sights. If it had not gained as much traction and appeared out of nowhere as the first game of some unknown small studio instead, it might easily have gone under among bigger, louder games. But that’s thankfully not the case, and Kickstarter-powered production values and good design decisions help turn this into a rare treat.
If The Banner Saga is an example of what supremely talented people can accomplish with a relatively shoestring budget thanks to crowd funding, traditional game publishers should be concerned. This is a game built with a lot of passion, and it shows in every meticulous detail. From the art, to the world-building, to the branching storyline; everything smacks of a big budget affair. Stoic is a developer to watch, and assuming King will get the hell out-of-the-way, there are great things to come from these guys.
Overall, The Banner Saga is a top-notch tactical RPG that any fan of the genre would be ill-served to pass by. An excellent story is accented by wonderful writing. The game looks comparable to some of Disney’s most beloved works, allowing Stoic to flex its visual design muscles, and an engrossing soundtrack from Austin Wintory further drives an excellent experience. Combat and character progression are thoughtful and satisfying, as are the Oregon Trail-like caravan sections of the game. Though it’s still early in the year, I feel confident in saying The Banner Saga by may well be one of 2014′s top tactical experiences. The decision to pass it by should not be taken lightly
The Banner Saga offers a good look into the world Stoic has created for this three-part adventure. It’s a depressing, but beautiful tale of survival against all odds, one that creates a developed plot and theme without degrading the characters or world to appear mature. The Banner Saga also doesn’t outstay its welcome, with a short campaign and some interesting decisions that help combat some of the problems with its battle system. The Banner Saga’s first chapter opens a window to the potential this series has, but now Stoic need to work on solving the issues for the sequel so that this series can become a truly great strategy RPG.
My second playthrough is complete. I didn't do great -- I still feel pretty awful about some of the things I've had to do, the sacrifices I've had to make. People died, but the world is ending, and the sun has vanished. The Banner Saga offers you the chance to survive; it just doesn't make it easy. But I'm ready to do it all again. I hope I can do better. I know I won't.
The Banner Saga is a great strategy RPG that has been released at a time when there are very few options available to challenge it. The game may be too pricey for some gamers, but anyone willing to drop the money to download the new release will not be disappointed. The game features a great storyline, challenging combat, interesting ideas and some of the best hand-drawn art that has been seen in the history of the industry. The Banner Saga's storyline may bum you out, but you definitely won't regret purchasing this new release.
Video Games Uncovered has a new article calling The Banner Saga a Bioware plot in a different skin.
During playing the opening hours of Stoic’s The Banner Saga during our preview, I fell in love. The art direction looks almost effortlessly beautiful and the world had my immediate attention. It shied away from fantasy cliché, with no frozen dwarves, elves or goblins in sight. That was what I thought anyway, until the plot eventually reaches a point where it becomes a Bioware game. This may sound like a negative, and to a certain degree it is in this context, but give me a moment to explain before you think I hate the Canadian developer.
The Banner Saga has flaws, but that does not stop it from being a worthwhile epic that gets so much right that its issues with railroading and combat variety are minor obstacles in the path of this dark, compelling giant of an RPG.
The Banner Saga is a visually stunning RPG immersing players in a Viking inspired world of giants and men, alliances and betrayals, budding romances and devastating loss, and a lurking enemy determined to destroy the land.
All you have to do to take part is to send in a Viking inspired design based on your personal experience with the game. The designs can be anything you like within the guidelines described in the Official Contest Rules, e.g. portrait of one particular character, a crest you’ve designed or a battle or travel scene depicting something that stuck with you from a trailer etc.
The key guidelines to take into consideration when creating your masterpieces are:
Your art needs to be an original Viking themed design
No smaller than 360dpi
Minimum size of 18” x 18” square or 18” x 36” rectangle (either portrait or landscape)
Art needs to be submitted as a jpeg by March 13, 2014 at 11:59PT
The top 10-15 best designs submitted by March 13. 2014 at 11:59 PT will be selected by the Stoic team and joined together to create one massive banner measuring 4ft x 12ft. The selected designers will not only get their art included in this banner but they’ll also get a miniature cloth replica of it, to hang proudly on their wall.
We've been quite busy on first week of launch, and our first patch should be going live tomorrow morning! Lot's of your feedback went in to making changes/updates on this patch and we hope it makes your experience better!
Here are the release notes:
• Added options for subtitles. Click the button with the Close Captioning 'CC' logo on the Options page. • Added missing Kickstarter backer names to credits • Backer Crests that missed the initial deadline have been incorporated into the game. • Challenge Achievement can now be gained, despite Iver losing a battle to Bellower • Fix issue where ranked up units are unable to use their rank 2 & 3 abilites after loading from a save game • Fix issue where bad save game files prevented the start menu from displaying. • Numpad keys are now supported for Conversation option (1,2,3,...) and continue (SPACE, ENTER) hotkeys. • Numpad keys are now supported for combat hotkeys (1,2,3,4) • Fixed achievement names of Eagle Eye and Siege Archer • Dredge Slag Slinger Backoff can now trigger at most once per turn. This addresses problems when Rook's Mark Prey ability is used on a Dredge Slag Slinger when multiple allies can hit it. • Slingers that get hit while running away will now resume running away after their damage reaction animation completes • Silver Arrow in Bellower fight now longer requires Willpower to use • Travel HUD no longer permanently disappears after Einartoft due to certain choices • More supplies and renown increased throughout Chapter 6 • Nid no longer gains the incorrect number of points to spend on rank up • Ekkill no longer appears incorrectly in certain events if he is left behind • Iver is no longer required in the party after Einartoft when making certain choices. • Fixed an error where Fasolt would stay with the party after Einartoft in certain branches.
The games press and sections of the games community has got hot under the collar (again) over trademark law. This time around, it’s about news that King.com, maker of Candy Crush Saga and other games, is seeking to trademark ‘Candy’. Cue lots of (to put it charitably) loose talk about ‘monopolies’ and even ‘patent trolling’ - much as there was regarding Games Workshop (with “Space Marine”) and Bethesda (with “The Elder Scrolls”) previously. I’m going to try and talk some sense about this topic.
Today we reported about Candy Crush developer King.com setting its sights on the titles of the games of smaller studios after trademarking the word “Candy,” but that’s not all, as found by NeoGaf user Xater.
King also filed an opposition document against indie developer Stoic’s recently released and increasingly popular tactical RPG The Banner Saga, citing its own trademarks including the word “saga” as a base for oppposition due to potential confusion.
Earlier today we reported about a trademark opposition claim filed by Candy Crush Saga’s developer King.com against The Banner Saga’s indie dev Stoic about the use of the word “saga” in the title of the game.
Stoic just gave a rather “stoic” (not to mention tongue-in-cheek) reply to the claim on Twitter:
"Dictionary defines Saga: A medieval Icelandic or Norse prose narrative of achievements and events in the history of a personage, family, etc."
"Support us and all future indie SAGAs, by playing #TheBannerSaga http://ow.ly/sOzgD "
Separated from all else by a great storm that ripped the land asunder, Alec and Adam huddle on a fragile, knife-shaped peninsula to watch the world freeze and die. They dream of old gods, they think of roads not taken, they mourn for the lost. And they have a right old natter about Stoic’s recently released, uncommonly beautiful, Viking-inspired roleplaying/strategy/giants’n'conversation game The Banner Saga.
And for last iDigital Times has a review calling the game the first GOTY contender.
The good news is that there is already a lot of love for this game, which was the brainchild of some former BioWare employees and funded (in part) on Kickstarter. The team at Stoic has laid a monumental foundation so let's hope they continue to build and build and build some more.
Well it's time for another massive review roundup for The Banner Saga. As usual below is just the link, and score awarded from each review in no particular order.
As an audio-visual experience, The Banner Saga is hard to beat. Tough choices and an elegant combat system help make the game fun and engaging right up to the end. With a few tweaks to the resource management system and some real soul-searching on enemy variety, Stoic could have a really terrific game on their hands. They’re not there yet, but they’re on the right track.
It's a mature game, as thought provoking as it is beautiful, and definitely worth a look if you enjoy either RPGs or turn-based strategy (and utterly essential if you like both). It's not quite a masterpiece, but with a few light revisions and a little more variety, it could well be next time. We can't wait to see what's still to come from this engrossing, beautifully told saga.
In conclusion, The Banner Saga is a beautiful and immersive world that is begging to be explored. It is one of those games that need to be played and if you haven’t done so already, you need to get this game. Even if you aren’t a fan of RPGs or SRPGS, it is still a highly recommended title. The world will grab you and you are going to want to see the game through to the end. It is a rare opportunity to have a game do this so when it does manage to come around, you have to seize the opportunity.
And for last I have a new interview from Gamereactor also.
Following the game's release earlier this week, we caught up with one third of the Stoic team, Alex Thomas, and found out more about the creation of the game, the ideas and influences that shaped it, and what the studio is planning in the future.
Well it's time for the scond round of reviews for The Banner Saga, but first I have a video review from IndieRPGs.
Full disclosure: I backed The Banner Saga on Kickstarter back in 2012. I was excited about it then, and I remain excited about it now. It was with some glee that I downloaded the game and played through the first chapter last night; you can witness that, along with my commentary (and attempts at voice-acting a bunch of giants).
Here are the regular reviews in no particular order.
by Couchpotato, Wednesday - January 15, 2014 04:03
The Banner Saga was just released and I managed to find a variety of reviews. Below is just the link, and score awarded from each review in no particular order.
Stoic announces that The Banner Saga in now available for purchase.
YOUR JOURNEY BEGINS: THE BANNER SAGA LAUNCHES TODAY ON PC AND MAC
AUSTIN, TX - January, 14th 2014 – Stoic, an independent game development company and Versus Evil, an independent game publisher, will today officially release the highly anticipated RPG strategy game, The Banner Saga on PC and Mac at 19.00 GMT / 20.00 CET. The game, a huge funding success on Kickstarter, was recently announced as an IGF (Independent Games Festival) finalist for Excellence in Visual Arts, with honorable mentions for Excellence in Audio and Design. To mark the occasion, a launch trailer has also been released on the official YouTube channel https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FbIH0vS9AG4.
The Banner Saga is a single player driven Viking saga, where a player’s choice in travel, conversation and combat determines the outcome of their own personal story as well as the survival of an entire civilization. The game also features stunning 2D animation and art, a unique tactical combat system, and a cast of unforgettable characters that drive this epic journey forward. Players will also enjoy a beautiful and haunting original score by Grammy nominated, and two-time BAFTA winner, composer Austin Wintory conducting The Dallas Winds orchestra, as well as a powerhouse trio of acclaimed YouTube sensations: Peter Hollens, Malukah and Taylor Davis.
The Banner Saga is available now for €22.99/£18.99 through Steam, UPlay, GameFly, GameStop and Gamers Gate for PC and Mac. A digital Deluxe Edition is also available through select retailers for €27.99/£22.99 and includes the game and complete soundtrack.
We are working on the tactical RPG The Banner Saga which launches on the 14th. This project was a Kickstarter funded game and with your help we have it finished. We have with us today Austin Wintory, our composer, who has created another awe inspiring soundtrack.
GameGrin has posted a late preview before the release of The Banner Saga.
If, like me, you miss the golden age of 16- to 64-bit RPGs, or are just looking for something a little bit different that is aiming to test your people management and decision-making skills, aims to chip away at you emotionally, and looks incredible while it does all that, then The Banner Saga should more than satisfy. Keep your eyes open for a full review very soon. The Banner Saga releases on January 14th on Steam.
Everything I played during the short snippet I saw was brutal. The combat is unforgiving and challenging, marching from A to B is a crawl, and the characters are worn-down husks. It’s a hard land, filled with hard decisions. While it thankfully gives you the time to mull over your choices, that doesn’t make them any easier. If this is a taster to only the first chapter in a planned trilogy, I have high hopes for Stoic’s Nordic adventure when it comes out January 14th. The sun may be stuck in the sky, but things don’t seem to be getting any brighter.
Stoic Studio's turn-based strategy game, The Banner Saga, is set to release next week on January 14th, but the game that you'll be playing then is much different than the one that was pitched back when it was just a mere Kickstarter project.
"I'd have to say there's almost nothing left of the original concept, especially in terms of scope and design, and I mean that in a good way," said Stoic's Alex Thomas in a "Ask Me Anything" on Reddit today. Touching on a few of the changes that took place of "at least" five major revisions, Alex noted "the combat and usability has had major changes over a dozen times. Travel gameplay has changed significantly."
"I guess the important thing is that design is a pretty iterative process," Thomas went on to say. "If you sit down and write a design doc for the game and think you're done, you're going to have a crappy game. It's a good start, then you implement the systems, play them, and change them over and over until they all work together harmoniously. In that regard the most valuable thing Kickstarter allowed us to do was a ton of iterations, instead of having to settle on the first thing we thought of."
I like this game, and chances are you will too. There’s a downtrodden atmosphere sagging behind the colourful visuals and Austin Wintory’s majestic musical score. Skogr does feel like a stage for the last days of man and Varl alike, a time for old rivalries to lie dormant while the population turns its focus to halting the Dredge. The characters know that the world is going to hell and with it comes an air of pessimism and fear, but with each victory comes a glimmer of hope. You’ll fight hard to earn it, and you’ll feel brilliant when the scales tip in your favour.
A great story is wrapped up inside a game that cleverly combines narrative, political intrigue and bloody turn-based combat in a way I’ve never experienced before. There’s no doubt that Stoic Studios are onto something monumental with The Banner Saga, and I cannot wait to see the final product upon release.
Cartoon-like graphics are my favourite. Everything has been beautifully designed to resemble a true look of Vikings. Rough face shapes, snow covered land, even buildings in villages and game’s map can be related to that wild age. It was like I time-travelled through centuries. Characters reminded me of Asterix and Obelix, except in-game ones were shaped with more details in mind. To accompany good graphics, sound effects fit in perfectly. Sword slashing and everything else is there, but not over exaggerated.
The game is done in a best way that Viking-themed RPG could have been done. Every battle is done in a different way and requires a good strategy tinkering before hitting the Ready button. The tutorial explains everything you need to know, though theory and practice are two different things. I am a big fan of Norse Myths and legends so this was just the perfect game, especially because it is an RPG one.
GameInformer interviews Stoic Game’s co-founder Alex Thomas.
What inspired the development of this game?
Thomas: I think every developer out there has a stable of games in their hip pocket they want to make one day, it's probably why they got into game development. For me, this was always the old turn-based strategy games that started with X-COM and went on to Final Fantasy Tactics, Shining Force and others in the turn-based genre. It also happened that this was something we were able to do with a small team. The three founders of Stoic; myself, John Watson and Arnie Jorgensen, all worked together at BioWare and knew that if we were ever going to do something on our own this was probably the only time we'd get that chance.
Where did you guys come up with the original idea for the world.
Thomas: I left BioWare a little earlier than the other guys and started working on the story and the main design systems. The advantage here was that having complete control over both of these things let us really make them work together. As the story developed we were able to build gameplay around that, and vice versa, so that there was some real synergy between the story that was unfolding and what you'd be doing as a player. I think this is a huge advantage over having a pre-defined genre like “first-person shooter” for example, and then having to attach some kind of narrative to that. A good example of this is that the turn-based genre lets us have a large cast of characters and in response to this we're able to make them come and go, get killed off or make their own decisions in a way that feels like how things would really play out.
What made you turn to Kickstarter for support?
Thomas: We were actually right in the middle of doing our announcement trailer when some friends from a local indie studio told us they had gotten some donations from a modest Kickstarter they ran and they convinced us to make a pitch so we could get a couple extra animations and sound support. We were halfway through building a pitch at the exact time that Double Fine launched their campaign and blew the doors off the crowdfunding model. Suddenly people were expecting our game to be a much bigger deal than we had imagined. When we launched our page we met our goal within the first day and it kept going up from there. We were shocked.
Polygon has posted a new preview of The Banner Saga that goes into detail how the game deals with death in combat, and storytelling.
Each hero in your stable has a number of defining attributes affecting their movement, special ability and so on, but most of the proceedings in combat hinge upon just two stats: Strength and Armor. The first not only determines how hard a hero can hit their opponent; it serves as their health, too. As it depletes when the hero takes hits, their own ability to deal damage is diminished. The latter protects them from big hits — if your Armor rating is higher than an attacking enemy's Strength, their blow will do a pathetic amount of damage.
When attacking, you're given the choice to target either of these stats; do you try to weaken the enemy and bring them closer to death by hitting their Strength, or set up attacks from your teammates by lowering their Armor? If you leave either stat unchecked, you'll be in hot water, facing off against an army of heavy hitters or impenetrable walls. It takes the judicious targeting of both — along with each hero's limited set of special abilities — to win the day.
It's a deceptively simple system; one you might smugly consider a breeze, until your first misstep. Getting wrapped up in the arithmetic of your enemies' attributes will sometimes draw your attention away from those of your own, leaving a vulnerable archer or magic user undefended. Heroes that fall in battle will require a few days rest before they can fight at full strength — and those who fall too many times will die permanently.
by Couchpotato, Wednesday - December 25, 2013 02:44
Black Panel has posted a new preview of The Banner Saga. The person writing the preview seems to not like the game. Can't say I agree with him. What about you?
My anticipation for The Banner Saga has dropped a little since playing this preview build. I came in hoping for the next turn based time suck, but I’m leaving feeling more than a little underwhelmed. The combat is great and the graphics are stunning, but the remainder of the game leaves me wanting more substance. If the developers can address these issues, I will be more than happy to revise my thoughts and dive into this world. As it stands, however, The Banner Saga has a long way to go to reach its potential.
So much has changed in two years, then, and Stoic is on the cusp of cementing the life-changing direction that Kickstarter afforded. But one thing didn't change when the Kickstarter bucks rolled in, and it's one thing that makes me confident about Stoic's future: there are still only three people working there. They didn't bulk up, they sensibly contracted help, and now they are back down to three. And that means small overheads.
Thomas calculated what he'd need The Banner Saga to sell in order for the dream to stay alive and "it was really a very small number that we need to, you know, maintain living conditions". "And it's looking pretty promising for considerably more than that," he adds.
"I'm hoping people come away really blown away by a much more involving game than they are expecting," he finishes up. "We designed something that a three-person team could make feel like a big studio produced, this large engaging RPG. I'm hoping people come away invested in the world that we made, wanting to see it through with their characters and find out what happens."
Noobfeed is the latest site to post a preview for The Banner Saga. I can't wait to play the game myself what about the rest of you?
In no small part due to its wondrous vibe, The Banner Saga breathes a sense of valiant duty upon carrying the burden of leadership in icy times. Meticulously drawn illustrations accompanied by a driving score set the mood for an intricate combat system with just a handful of elements offsetting each other into a much more complex and challenging design. Each decision, each conversation and every event matters if one is to survive the odds stacked against them. It is the victors who write history.
by Couchpotato, Wednesday - December 18, 2013 21:13
Pre-orders for The The Banner Sagaare now available on Steam, and Stoic announces a new bonus for new buyers. Here are the details.
Pre-order Incentive Announced for The Banner Saga
The 'Insane Viking Pack' Revealed
AUSTIN, TX - Dec. 17, 2013 - Stoic, an independent game development company and Versus Evil, an independent publisher, both based out of Austin, today jointly announced pre-order details for the upcoming RPG strategy game, The Banner Saga. The pre-order exclusive offer, aptly named the ‘Insane Viking Pack’, arms fans with an exclusive character, ability item and three exclusive tracks from the game’s original score, created by Grammy nominated composer, Austin Wintory. Pre-order customers will also be able to take advantage of the special pre-order discounted price.
Kickstarter backers will also get the ‘Insane Viking Pack’ automatically with their copy of the game.
The exclusive pre-order character is a Viking named Tryggvi. With a reputation as a trouble maker, Tryggvi holds his own in combat as a skilled spearman and is sure to prove useful in any hero line up. Tryggvi comes with his own exclusive necklace, made with a pearl and matching full and half-moon symbols, which grants a 10% chance to do 2x damage in combat. Kickstarter backers will get the Insane Viking Pack automatically with their copy of the game.
The Banner Saga is available for pre-order through Steam, GOG.com, GameFly, GameStop and Gamers Gate. It will release on January 14, 2014 for PC and Mac.
Without knowing what to expect going into this game I’m impressed with what Stoic have so far. It’s so different from other party/army management games where there is usually a way to keep everyone happy. I’m sure this will lead to an explosion of guides and walkthroughs, even then though I don’t think there is any correct path.
There are still some things I would love to see more of such as more animation and voice acting. However I have to remember this is a small Indie Developer who raised money on Kickstarter to make this happen.
I personally can’t wait for the release of the full version of The Banner Saga in 2014. If you are looking for a game that will have you There is no room for softness in a world where the sun never sets, the wind chills to the bone and the Dredge’s glowing eyes follow your every step.
I look forward to the songs the bards will sing of ye.
Stoic has done a magnificent job pulling together a unified art style across three different mediums. The hand-drawn figures in close-up dialogue, majestic 2D landscapes and the isometric tactical battles are all quite splendid. The Banner Saga’s setting and writing give credit to the intelligence of the audience, it’s quests show up in a pre-designated order but appear to be diverse in their outcomes, and the turn-based battles are, in these early stages at least, a welcome challenge. 2014 is looking extremely promising for RPG titles on the PC, and Stoic’s title is a firm reason for some of that optimism.
The Banner Saga‘s first chapter is due out next month. It’s certainly much anticipated, coming from a team of ex-Biowares, and following a phenomenally successful Kickstarter. A tactical RPG, turn-based combat combined with a unique way of delivering its narrative, it’s going to be interesting to see how it suits people’s tastes. It certainly divided John and Adam, as they played through the first three or four hours of the game.
Even with it not being the final version The Banner Saga already has its grip on me, so that I found myself eagerly looking forward to playing it when I wasn’t doing so. I was excited about it before but now that I’ve played a few hours I’m itching to get my hands on it properly. If Stoic can iron out the last few little faults, implement the choice/consequence system satisfactorily and carry on building the tension right through to a great ending The Banner Saga might turn out to be one of those annoying January games that you have to keep in mind all through the year so you can say how great it is in December. Make sure to check back for our review next month to see how it fares, but now you’ll have to excuse me, I’ve got a huge banner to sew.
The Banner Saga is described by Stoic as a “mature game for adults” and this really does seem to be the case. No hero is apparently safe from a sudden bloody death and the story is one of war against an apparently unstoppable enemy. From what I’ve seen, there is a huge amount of potential for a unique and powerful story to be told and I am looking forward to seeing what happens. You can get yourself wrapped up in this rich tapestry on 14th January when Chapter One is released.
With exception to the likes of Fire Emblem and XCOM, turn-based strategy gaming is hardly in vogue. What made you guys decide to create a turn-based game instead of using a real-time combat system?
These are the games we like. We wanted to do something that was fun for us but also fun for those people like us who harken back to a time when games like this were the norm. Turn-Based strategy might not be the biggest thing out there right now but that does not mean it’s still not fun! We wanted a more tactical game and turn-based strategy certainly fits the bill.
What inspirations (in terms of video games) did the team at Stoic draw from in developing The Banner Saga?
Games like Final Fantasy Tactics, Fire Emblem, and Dragons Lair gave us a lot of inspiration. That being said, we knew what kind of game we wanted and the ultimate goal was making a fun game.
We took the things we liked and added in our own flair that has a great mixture of RPG elements that actually affect the story and combat.
Most turn-based strategy games offer only a linear path to advancing the story. The Banner Saga appears to differ from its counterparts by offering "player choice that drives your narrative." Could you expand upon how this plays out in the game proper?
Think of it more as an RPG where your choices affect the story, the travel, and the combat. We wanted to give players options and let them tackle the game as they wanted so it really is up the player to forge their own path. It’s often fun to just watch people make choices and then later on see them play out. It is exciting to see people handle the same situation differently while still building their own path through the story.
We have released a brand new tutorial that covers the basics someone new to the game needs to consider when preparing for battle and the tactics they need to think about while in the heat of combat. It includes a useful overview of the hero stats a player should keep an eye on as well as a focus on how 'willpower' can also be used strategically to boost various actions in combat to take out an enemy. Watch it to find out more.
Stoic Studio has released a new trailer for The Banner Saga. The trailer shows a tutorial on how the games travel system works, and how it impacts your play experience.
Check out the new "Rough Guide to Travel" tutorial trailer which summarizes the key attributes you'll need to take into consideration when deciding the travel strategy during your journey in the game. The trailer explains how managing morale, supplies and population can greatly affect your personal experience, as well as each other. Watch it to find out more.
It has been a long time coming, but all for a good reason. Today we've finished putting together an announcement trailer for The Banner Saga. What are we announcing? A release date!
I'd love to give you an update on everything going on at this point. We finally feel comfortable with giving a release date for one very big reason: we are essentially content complete. This means the game is playable from front to back, the combats are in place, the characters are all hooked up and every conversation throughout the game is ready to go. In essence: we're almost done with the game. This is a huge milestone because we've been working nearly every waking hour since Factions released to get to this point.
We've partnered with a new marketing and distribution team called Versus Evil who have taken a lot of work off our plate and help us put together new promotions so that we didn't take away from production time. They've done an amazing job on the new website (http://stoicstudio.com/) and will be helping to make sure we get seen by as many people as possible at launch.
What's left to do? We'll be spending an appropriate amount of time on playtesting, polish and balance. We've been getting help from a QA house to help us find and write bugs because the game has become both long and complex at this point. What we originally envisioned as a 6 hour game is probably closer to 15+ hours on the first playthrough, and all the branching variables and additional systems are time-consuming to test. We'll also be playing through the game a lot to get combat balance in as good a state as we can. Lastly, you may have heard this before, but polish is the difference between a good game and a great game in our minds. Personal touches, transitions and making sure that everything is finely polished is really important to us. For example, we've added procedural snow, random events in travel, items in combat, an interactive world map, every godstone in the game and tons of new characters and classes.
This playthrough represents a small fraction of the full game (it didn't even include travel!). Hopefully it gave you a good idea of the kind of decisions and gameplay you'll see at major locations along the way and just how varied your story can be.
Next time: we'll be back to more in-depth content updates as usual. Hope you've enjoyed the demo and see you next time!
If you’ve ever seen animated classics like Wizards or Fire and Ice, Ralph Bakshi managed to use rotoscoping technology back in the 1980s to make some incredibly realistic looking cartoons. Stoic apparently used a similar rotoscoping technique to make some of the most fluid looking 2D animation that I’ve ever seen in a game before. When the main character Rook swung his ax you could really tell that the blade had weight and would really hurt if it connected with anything not protected by a thick layer of armor. I can’t fathom how time consuming it must have been to motion capture and rotoscope the game’s units, but the end result was absolutely stunning to see in person.
While my time with the Banner Saga was short, and there were no devs on hand to chat with, I ended up leaving the booth feeling incredibly excited for the title which is set to release some time in 2013. If you’d like to check out the multiplayer Banner Saga: Factions, it’s currently available on Steam for ….free!
Ready to see the result of your decisions? Thanks for your patience! We're still working on getting the website back on its feet, but we're going to keep the demo going. After this I expect there will be one more video.
A quick report: we're making ridiculous progress on the game. All the major cities in the game are done. We've got items up and working (many of which are submissions from backers), and we're starting to get final music in as well. Austin will be doing a music update in the near future. At this point the majority of what we're doing is adding the remaining content. Then it's on to polish.
In The Banner Saga, players will enjoy a mature story that heavily emphasizes decisions and choice. As a result, players’ choices may result in losses and Stoic Studio wants players to accept their decisions and losses as part of the story. In the demo, players meet Alette and her father, who must deal with the sudden reemergence of an ancient evil. Through their journey, they have to make decisions about tracking down supplies, which means to gain the supplies they have to fight these evil creatures or avoid the fight and supplies and possibly not have enough supplies for the rest of their journey. As with their BioWare lineage, The Banner Saga puts a heavy emphasis on choice through dialogue, which in the demo resulted in hard decisions that put members of the caravan in direct danger. This did lead to death occasionally. It is all part of the experience of this Viking caravan, sometimes people die, but you have to continue on because there is nothing else to do, but persevere.
This is one of the best times to be a tactical/strategy RPG fan with so many recent great titles in the genre (Fire Emblem: Awakenings, Skulls of the Shogun and XCOM: Enemy Unknown and the upcoming Enemy Within and Klei’s Incognita, and Brad Muir’s Massive Chalice next year). The Banner Saga looks to continue the trend of exciting, challenging and engrossing strategy games. If anything, it is going to offer an aesthetically pleasing tactical experience.
by Couchpotato, Saturday - September 07, 2013 00:41
In this new post-funding update Stoic posts the third video of the games demo from Pax Prime. The video is short but gives a recap of what to except when you play.
Throughout my demo session the quiet drumming in the background and the accompanying music lent a sense of urgency to the action, as Rook and Alette are on an important journey, gathering not just supplies but help on their quest. When I had to go, I didn't want to take the headphones off because it was just that pretty, even on its own.
The game's style, based upon classic hand-drawn animation and Viking design, is stylized yet realistic. Scenes are communicated not through voice acting or cutscenes, but through rich expressions. A narrowing of eyes here, a widening there, a gaze off to the side while encountering a difficult decision. These elements work to convey the characters' emotions and complement the dialogue on screen.
The Banner Saga’s single-player really did impress me, though. It’s still very obviously rough-around-the-edges (and it’s still missing a few of said edges, to boot), but there’s heaps of promise. I felt like an incompetent, indecisive leader every trudging step of the way, and it was magnificent. The Banner Saga’s world is a harsh, frigid place, and its cast of characters are far from simple lockstep lackeys. If you want their respect, you’ll have to earn it. Sometimes that means making tough calls – ugly decisions that’ll twist and writhe around inside your guts for days to come. But that’s leadership for you. It’s not about being loved. You get results, and you worry about popularity contests later.
by Couchpotato, Thursday - September 05, 2013 01:22
Stoic has released the second part of their video demo in this new post-funding update.
We've gotten many, many people who would prefer to get lots of updates, so majority rule, here. To those of you who do not want to see new emails from us every day or two, I've been told you can filter that through Kickstarter.
Stoic has released a new lets play video of The Banner Saga in this new post-funding update.
Hello backers! After a brief delay the first part of the PAX playthrough is ready to go! Keep in mind, this is all in-game and we're still in beta so some effects, polish and optimizations are still in development. That said, we're getting damn close!
At the end of the video we'll need to make a choice. What would you do? Vote in the comments and we'll continue on next time with the most popular decision, a day or two from now. As always, watching in HD is highly recommended...
A couple people asked that we not flood their inbox with a dozen updates over the next week. We'll be hosting the whole playthrough on the Stoic forums. You don't even need an account to watch. Feel free to comment on the first part here, and check in on the Let's Play thread to see what happens next.
It has been a nutso month! We've been crunching (no surprise there), to get a playable build for PAX, which starts on Friday. We released some press kits in preparation and Kotaku already posted a news story on it, with new screenshots! Crazy!
We wanted to share the PAX demo with all of our backers, so what we'll be doing is giving you a playthrough of the game and showing off the same thing that PAX attendants will be playing.
The bit I'm most excited about is that as we've always said, the game has a lot of choices to make. Real ones! So what I'm going to do is stop at major decisions and let everyone vote on what to do next. Even at the very beginning of the game you'll be making decisions that impact the entire story. I'll also be doing commentary as I play, showing off the new classes, abilities and enemies and giving more insight into gameplay.
Spoiler warning: this will be a playthrough of the first 30-50 minutes of the game (depending on what choices you make). It's worth noting that even if you participate your own playthrough may turn out very different.
Stoic has released another post-funding update for The Banner Saga informing us of a live music show on twitch tv.
As we mentioned in the previous update, we have a gift for all our backers. From the desk of Austin Wintory:
For all those interested, I am happy to share that we will be streaming part of our big, long-in-progress recording session for THE BANNER SAGA! The recording process for this game has already been very elaborate, and next week takes a huge leap forward when I go to Dallas, Texas to collaborate with a truly magnificent ensemble: the Dallas Wind Symphony! This Grammy-nominated ensemble, led by the incredible conductor Jerry Junkin with whom I'll be tag teaming, will be the subject of a forthcoming in-depth Kickstarter music update. But in the meantime, here are the details for the stream:
In theory if you can't attend live you can see the archive. We're working very hard to make sure this is a high-quality stream, both visually and aurally. The recordings will be going until 5pm, so you will be tuning in to the last half hour of a full day's worth. At that point I will send the musicians home, and come to the camera for a live chat. Joining me will be our dear friends from Stoic Studio, Alex Thomas, Arnie Jorgensen and John Watson, along with the DWS' conductor Jerry Junkin. We'll have about 20 or so minutes to chat. Remember that during the first half you will be watching a recording session, not a concert, so it might be interesting to see just how different those two can be from each other!
Stoic has released another post-funding update that details the animation process, and even shares a few videos.
Animation process
Hello backers! As previously mentioned, today's update will be a closer look into the animation process. We'll save the usual Q&A section for the our next content update and jump right to the good stuff!
What does Gold Standard mean for the progress of the full game? With everything in our game functioning correctly with final art, we are now working almost entirely on content. Here's a rough outline of how development goes:
Pre-production (art style, broad design ideas, type of game) Proof of Concept (mock up of what the game would look and play like, basic rules) Vertical slice (placeholder work on key systems that are playable, to test for fun) Alpha (most of the game is playable in a rough state, some features still missing) Gold Standard (a section of the game is taken to completion with final work, all systems are done) Beta (the entire game is laid out, needs polish and playtesting) Launch! (the game is done! Or is it?)
Developers can do this in a lot of different ways, which is why the terms above can get confusing. Is something alpha or beta? What does that even mean? Indies especially will just go along doing whatever feels right at the time, but the above is our basic trajectory. Next we'll be creating content for the remainder of the game. This is generally where production starts to move really fast, no longer burdened with having parts of the game that "can't be completed" yet.
A CONVERSATION ABOUT KICKSTARTER
Lots of stuff has been going on in the Kickstarter community lately. I'm sure many of you have noticed Double Fine's announcement about splitting up their game into two parts. They've gotten some serious heat for this. Backers of Shadowrun have heard similar things about the content in that game, with the DLC being released much later.
First of all, I want to be clear that we do not intend to do something like this for The Banner Saga. When it releases it will be a complete product. We don't have plans for DLC at this time, and we will continue to support the multiplayer component. We also intend to continue on the sequels (chapter 2 and 3) just as planned.
I would also like to talk about my personal opinion on this, and I'd love to be open and talk like a normal person instead of a PR person in damage control mode. Can we do this? Without freaking out? You can disagree with me of course, just be nice about it.
This is hard. Like, way WAY hard. When we pitched the game we were hoping for enough money to get extra animations, maybe increase the length of the game. We thought we'd get, like, 2000 backers, not 20,000. A fine problem to have, right? Haha! Except that it's actually a huge problem. The hardest problem I've ever dealt with in my life. Now I know.
We thought now we could do everything we ever wanted for the game, and got too ambitious. We thought we could make the game in six months, and I'm still not sure what we were thinking. That was stupid. I wish I could take that back, all we needed to do was put a different date there and nobody would be complaining. Whoops. We ARE still doing everything we want, and it's taking a long time. I don't feel bad about that. That was the POINT, right? To dream as big as we could?
Story is always hard to talk about when you’re developing a game. Frankly, we don’t want you to know what the story is, but it sounds disingenuous when you just say “We’re working on it really hard! Honestly!”.
Worst of all, there are no screenshots about story. I apologize for this. But there are more screenshots afterward, so keep reading!
We’re going to approach story from a broad level and I’ll make sure there are no spoilers.
So, let’s discuss iteration a bit. As we’ve mentioned previously, we’ve been using Inkle Writer to help us draft the narrative. It’s an excellent tool, and they’ve recently released Sorcery! for iOS, which I wholeheartedly recommend checking out. In a previous update I showed screenshots of the some of the branching options in our first pass. Since then we’ve written a second and third pass, and a serious merging of these passes into what is now, I believe, the final version of the story. The story is pretty much locked down at this point.
Why all this rewrite? There are a few reasons, some simple to understand and some complex. The simple reason is that writing usually involves editing. You have professional editors who go through a story, make notes, help the author move around and modify pieces of the story until it feels and reads well. In a lot of ways an editor is like a writing consultant or co-writer. They make a good story into a great story.
Games don’t have editors. In fact, games often don’t even have writers, they have designers or managers who moonlight as writers, because it’s a game, right? Story isn’t really that important as long as you firmly apply pressure to the compulsion loop part of the brain. At least, that’s how games often feel to me right now. Disclaimer: this is getting progressively better. I don’t mean to look down on writing in games - in fact, it is this potential for greatness that drives us.
But even development studios lauded for their writing prowess usually don’t get to do due diligence. Budgets and time constraints on something as complex as a video game mean that you get one chance to get it right. People with lead and director positions are expected to sit down and nail it on the first pitch, or just accept whatever mess they’ve made and run with it. Usually this means it could have been better. We don’t have a published author writing for us at Stoic, nor a professional editor. But we do have a story-driven game, being written by someone who writes a lot and who wants to see the game industry flourish as a storytelling medium (it’s THIS close), and a guy who acts like an editor even though he spends 10 hours a day being one of the best artists I’ve ever seen.
There are other difficulties. If you took a dozen of the world’s most accomplished authors and had them each work on a video game, I suspect they’d mostly be terrible. In movies, writers become specialized enough to understand how film works, and how to make a screenplay. An author writes in the way that best suits the written format - you can’t just take a book and translate it directly to the screen, you need someone who understands the intricacies of timing, pacing, visual narrative and brevity. They have to turn words into pictures that feel how the words did, and that’s not easy. The film industry has been getting pretty good at this.
In their review of The Banner Saga: Factions, Thunderbolt does not give it a higher score than 6.
Each match in Factions earns Renown, which is used to upgrade your classes into the aforementioned variants as well as allowing for the purchase of alternate character skins and other perks such as extending your barracks. Stoic are continuously tweaking the amount of Renown needed for upgrades, but even still, earning enough to upgrade each member of your party will take a long time. That’s where the marketplace of Factions comes in. Renown can be purchased in blocks, or boosts can be used to increase the amount of Renown earned from playing. While many will turn their nose up at the idea of paying for in game currency and quickly begin preaching about “pay to win”, the key is that there is nothing available to those who pay that can’t be earned by actually putting in the hours and playing the game. It could even be argued that paying for Renown from the beginning would be detrimental to the experience, as anyone doing so would lack the experience built up over many matches to effectively use the forces at their disposal.
Being free-to-play, the highly debated and emotionally fueled topic of microtransactions must be addressed. Renown can be purchased, as well as a few upgraded units and fancy coloured skins. Do these provide a significant advantage? The answer is a resounding no. All it really does is skip the learning process and throw you in at the deep end for a good old ass whooping. Imagine turning up to a master’s Chess tournament having only ever previously played your mate. On the other hand the cosmetic stuff feels about right, so tipping the developers for their trouble won’t sting too much.
I like Factions, I like it a lot, but I can’t deny its niche appeal. The comparison to chess is a common theme throughout, so if that’s not your thing you probably won’t enjoy Factions in its current form. If you’re after ranked matches this is for you, but expect a wait and be prepared for defeat, lots and lots of defeat. Such a robust combat system bodes well for the still-in-development single-player campaign, which will perhaps make a better introduction to the mindset in a less punishing environment. Although, in a stroke of genius, Stoic hinted at recording data from Factions to craft their AI, so don’t expect a pushover there either.
The mechanic of the game that makes Factions both unique and challenging is how the strength of the characters is tied to how much health they have as well. For example, one that does 12 damage also has 12 health when unarmored. Of course, armor gives protection and reduces damage received. If the armor is greater than the character’s strength level, the damage received is 1. Normal damage can be directed to either armor or strength, while special attacks can damage both. This leads to some players whittling away armor, while others would lower enemy units’ strength early on to eliminate threats later on.
Unlike many games with matchmaking systems, the game does not ask you to confirm you are ready when it finds a match for you. Due to the long queue times, this can often mean matches start pre-emptively or even when a player is AFK. I’ve played against a number of dummy opponents who clearly got fed up of waiting before leaving, granting me an incredibly dull victory.
Factions is a game worth checking out, but likely not one worth investing money in. No-one will blame you for not making it past the dull initial grind, but at least pop it on sometime and bask in the game’s excellent opening cutscene. The single player releases to come will likely be excellent, building on the good framework set down by Factions. Hopefully the game will get a larger userbase after people react positively to the later releases.
This a term used to describe the entire game from front to back laid out with placeholder assets. Sometimes it’s called a gray box because in 3D games designers will rough out the shape of the world or levels with simple gray boxes so that they can playtest it before doing time-consuming and expensive final art.
What this means is that we have been implementing every travel scene, every conversation and every combat into the engine and tying the whole thing together via scripting so that we can actually play the entire game. White boxing takes the game from being a series of design docs and makes them exist in the game in rough form. Travel will have placeholder art, combat will have placeholder enemies and conversation will have placeholder dialogue that we can easily iterate on.
What a white box is invaluable for is 1) making sure the systems are functioning correctly, 2) other work can be developed based on this (for example, sound and music), 3) making sure the transitions between systems work well, and 4) Iteration! This last bit is probably the most critical part because it’s only once you have everything playable that you can start to refine it until it shines. Imagine making a game as drawing an enormous mural. A painter doesn’t start in the corner of the picture and complete the image one inch at a time. He roughs in the entire image in pencil, makes changes to the composition, blocks in the colors, adds shading and lighting, then starts to do the detail work. Making a game is a similar process of iteration.
In our case we scoped out the game in rough documentation. We re-scoped when we got 7x the funding. We created gold standards (final look and feel) for travel, conversation and combat. We then started to build the framework for each of these systems. You can see travel functionality when you pan the camera in Strand and the story is already playable through Inkle Writer. We had the great fortune of being able to use Inkle Writer as our conversation toolset, and this has saved us literally months. Inkle Writer will allow us to output functional code that easily plugs into our engine to control variables and conditionals. We took combat past the point of being functional into full polish. As this was our highest risk system it made sense to front-load the work on combat. Playtesting and feedback made sure that it’s as good as we can make it, and we’ve iterated the hell out of it.
The Banner Saga - Stoic's Repsonse on the Factions Feedback
by Myrthos, Tuesday - March 05, 2013 12:49
Stoic's Alex Thomas is responding to the negative feedback they received on launching Factions in a blog on Gamasutra and in the process provides an inside look on how things went after the very successful Kicstarter campaign. One of the things he mentions is that the multiplayer part was already in their Kickstarter campaign, so they are actually delivering what they've promised. The other thing is about the delay with respect to the original estimate, which was matching a $100K game. They received more than 7 times that and implementing all the stretch goals coming with that number simply takes time.
When we put together our campaign pitch we wanted people to be excited about getting playable content. The video states "we'll be rolling out a free multiplayer version of the game this summer on PC and Mac". The description on the campaign page included "Play online: Though the single-player campaign is our focus, The Banner Saga provides a deep multiplayer game; build a unique party of characters and battle friends and enemies in multiplayer combat." The game would be available on Steam. We plastered it on our website nearly a week before the Kickstarter campaign went live.
Some backers were incensed that production was taking longer than our original estimate, back when we hoped to make $100,000. Some were furious that the combat would be free, or that non-backers would get to play it. Some insisted that we had wasted their money by making multiplayer content, despite the assets, code and interface all being produced for the single player game. Many were fuming that the game must be "pay to win", despite the fact that you only get matched against opponents with equal teams, regardless of how you earned them. Within the game itself, the term "pay to lose" had started to appear, since paying money would only serve to get you matched against players with vastly more play time under their belts.
We also had a lot of backers supporting us, asking the detractors one particular question: "Where have you guys been this whole time?" What we soon learned is that many of our backers never read any of the updates. They had never read the original campaign. According to Kickstarter metrics that went up after our campaign ended, only 30% of backers even watched our campaign video, and they felt very betrayed about all of this, to which we personally felt a resounding "What?".
Forbes has checked outThe Banner Saga: Factions and had amongst others the following to say:
At launch there appears to be a fairly limited number of classes and upgrades to work with, but the potential to add entire legions of units/races/factions to the title seems significant. While the units right now are restricted to various viking variants, there may be all kinds of monsters and mayhem on the way when the “full game” comes out later down the line. It’s a flexible frame to work with, and the tactical gameplay is highly accessible and yet quite involved when reviewing turn-to-turn actions.
That brings us to one of the more interesting points of TheBanner Saga: Factions. To say that any sort of tactical turn-based game is fast would be a bit out of place, but rounds play out quite quickly in comparison to the sometimes cumbersome and lengthy turns found in other genre offerings. Games fly by, the in-game currency of renown begins to flow, and casual commanders become grizzled generals over the course of a few real matches.
Some impressions of The Banner Saga: Factions are available at RTSGuru.
Upon starting the game, the first thing most will notice is that it really is beautifully animated. It makes me personally look forward more to The Banner Saga if this style and animation accurately reflects what we’ll see later. The map upon which you battle is the Great Hall, and there are multiple things to catch the eye inside. Your warriors aren’t static either, and they will move with taunts and rituals. Setting up battles can take some time to get started, with moving your units into place and coming close enough to engage, but this is typical for a game of this type. Those expecting fast-paced action will want to try something else. But for those that can appreciate the deliberate tactical gameplay here, The Banner Saga: Factions has something to offer.
The Banner Saga: Factions is fun to play and tries to strike that balance between accessible to most players and still fun and challenging for the tactical specialists out there.
Will I miss out on anything in the single player game if I don't play Factions? No (except having fun). Now, that said, we've put a lot of thought and effort into Factions. It's not just a mindless one-off from The Banner Saga. Factions takes place in the same world, in a city that is part of the single player game and when events happen in single player they'll affect the world in Factions. As we create new system for the Saga we'll be testing them through Factions, so things like playing against the computer will appear in Factions as we work out the code, and the story will all tie together.
Starting this Monday The Banner Saga: Factionshas gone live for backers and will be available for everybody starting next week Monday.
A time of reckoning is upon us. All of us at Stoic are proud to announce, after burning the midnight oil for many moons, that beta has ended for The Banner Saga: Factions and soft launch is today!
What does that mean? In industry terms, soft launch is a short period in which a game is finished and complete, but released to a limited public.
Also, it is a thank you to our generous and wonderful backers to get a head start on the release build of the game. Your progress is being saved this week and carries over for the official launch.
There are some special perks available this week only, and every backer has a special green jade stone shown on your combat emblem that is exclusive to backers and early access players that are yours forever.
From Feb 18th - Feb 24th Factions will be available exclusively to backers. The current characters, stats and rankings have been wiped for the last time and the game is essentially now LIVE, along with a fully functional tutorial. Later in the week we’ll be holding the first tournament exclusively for backers.
Factions will be released to the public on Feb 25th. If you’ve been waiting for beta to end before trying the game, this is your week.
With Factions’ launch, we’ve effectively worked out the thick and thin of combat and we’re soon on to travel and conversation outlined in the previous update, and thus, the single player campaign. Consider this the first major milestone on the road to success!
From all of us here at Stoic, Skal!
WANT TO GET IN FACTIONS BUT HAVEN'T YET?
If you haven't been added to Factions yet but would like to get involved, you're always welcome. Please head to our forums and create an account using the same email address as your kickstarter account. That's all you need to do, and we'll send out keys and instructions on how to get the client on a regular basis (they won't arrive instantly!)
ALSO NOTE:
Crests will be uploaded in the single player game (we may add it in Factions earlier than that, but not immediately).
Now that we’re well into 2013 and our estimated date was November last year, many people have been asking when the game will ship. This is a topic that comes up a lot in interviews in relation not just to us but most Kickstarters and honestly, most games in general.
To cut to the chase, we’re currently looking at mid-year for release of the Saga. We’ve said this in a few places but it’s worth repeating - when you scope the game for a certain amount of money and you make 7x that much, there’s no way around it, the game takes longer to make. We’re doing our best to mitigate that, we’re not taking anything like 7x as long. Hopefully with the progress we show in regular updates you’ll agree that we’re using the funding well and making the best decisions for the game.
The rest of the update is a detailed overview of progress and features across a number of areas, so this is a must-read if you're interested in the game.
Update #29 for The Banner Saga is about the sound and audio in the game as made by Kpow Audio.
When creating ambiences for games (this applies equally to film), I am striving to make them blend into the background, and not mask any important in game sounds. For most ambiences, these are the most important qualities that I am attempting to resolve.
In order to achieve this, I need to firstly focus on the repetition and timing between audio occurrences in the sounds. This means spacing sounds, and adding and removing sound occurrences in my audio sequence. I then work on the frequencies in the sounds, using equalization to mold them into the right sound. Finally, I work on their sound propagation, and the sound of the space in which they are to inhabit. These are the steps necessary to mould sound into something suitable for the space. Just adding reverb is not enough - the sound needs to be purpose built for the space’s reverberation and delay treatment.
Sprinkling Sounds The first task I need to do to ensure the ambience retreats into the background is to select the correct sounds. The more particular you are about the sounds you choose, the better results you will get. Don’t settle for an slightly inappropriate sound if you know its going to be a lot of work to massage the audio to make it sound right for the space. Often I will find nice long stereo files that contain approximately the right sounds, but they always need some work to be made to fit the particular space I am attempting to create. Usually they will need to be edited, removing anything that pops out and distracts you from the space and time of the location. I say time because often with an ambience the frequency of occurrence of particular sounds is something that needs to be considered. If there is too much happening, the space feels cluttered and busy. Even if you are depicting a busy location such as an outdoor market, or a busy mall, too frequent a bunch of sounds together and you have a mess. This kind of cacophony can be used as an effect, but in games you don’t have control of the player’s orchestration of the world you are creating. Therefore care must be taken to design the sounds in a pleasing, but apparently random manner. These same sensibilities are used when designing a more molecular, procedural ambience - tuning time between ambient audio events is what makes these spaces feel ‘right’. It is something that I learned after doing this for a long while, less is more often than not, more. Keep most things subtle, and let the occasional sound pop out only if it sounds perfect to do so.
Removing anything that pops out is a balancing act. A space is determined by how the sound and its propagation ‘sits’ in the space. We manipulate this with delays and reverberation. If nothing pops out at all, the reverb doesn’t have the material with which to bloom, and therefore describe the space. So I am not trying to get rid of every descriptive sound, I am trying to ensure every sound is right. It sounds the right distance away for the space I am trying to describe, it sounds at the right level (usually low, but not always), it occurs infrequently or frequently enough to be believable.
When creating ambiences for games, I am striving to make them blend into the background, and not mask any important in game sounds. For most ambiences, these are the most important qualities that I am attempting to resolve.
In order to achieve this, I need to firstly focus on the repetition and timing between audio occurrences in the sounds. This means spacing sounds, and adding and removing sound occurrences in my audio sequence. I then work on the frequencies in the sounds, using equalization to mold them into the right sound. Finally, I work on their sound propagation, and the sound of the space in which they are to inhabit. These are the steps necessary to mould sound into something suitable for the space. Just adding reverb is not enough - the sound needs to be purpose built for the space’s reverberation and delay treatment.
The Banner Saga - Update #28, Yuletide Progress Report
by Dhruin, Friday - December 21, 2012 22:45
Stoic has posted a video update on The Banner Saga: Factions with lots of in-game footage showing new features such as improved tutorial, battleground obstacles and the "horn". Of course, for those only interested in the SP game, the combat system will carry over:
Stoic's Alex Thomas has been interviewed by the Russian site Gamestar.ru on The Banner Saga, with questions about the Kickstarter campaign, the game and vikings.
You know, I've tried counting all of the authentic (more or less) works about vikings and fingers on my two hands were just enough to do it. Do you think the reason that this theme is unpopular is that gamers just don't seem to be interested in it? Do you intend to popularize the Nordic culture with the help of The Banner Saga? By the way, did other works of the same theme such as «When the Ravens Fly» or «In the Shadow of the Raven» inspire you in any way?
Honestly, we're not sure why there aren't more viking-themed games. Maybe publishers won't fund a viking game because the ones in the past weren't a huge success, so they're unwilling to take a chance on it. I feel like every person we've talked to and who backed our Kickstarter is a huge fan of the game being viking-themed, so it seems to me that there definitely an excitement for it. In media, I haven't seen «Ravens Fly» or «Shadow» myself, but some of the few popular things we have include a comic series called Northlanders and a movie called «Valhalla Rising», which is definitely something you should go into watching as an art film but one I highly recommend.
Stoic Studio's Alex Thomas was interviewed by IndiegameHQ on The Banner Saga and their Kickstarter success.
Indie Game HQ: Were you surprised by the massive interest in the Kickstarter?
Alex: Undoubtedly. We approached Kickstarter as a way to help fund some of the production costs that we just didn’t have time to do – mostly animation and QA, and came away from it with more funding than we ever could have imagined. The concept of the game and the idea of going it alone really seemed to resonate with people.
Indie Game HQ: What are your plans for the extra money raised?
Alex: Any time you start making a game there’s a flood of great ideas and you have to scale that back to what you can afford both in terms of time and money (often these are interchangeable). The most valuable thing the Kickstarter funding let us do was bring back the best ideas that we had to drop before. We’ve added a ton of content including dozens of unique characters, we’ve been able to dramatically expand the amount of story content and re-playability in the game, and we’ve improved the quality of everything throughout. Before we were going to be doing our own foley and writing our own music and we’ve been able to get really professional studios to pitch in with us including Austin Wintory, the composer for Journey. These are all things we never could have gotten anything close to before.
The feeling of doom certainly extended to my experience with the combat. It’s harsh, and the gorgeous animations and sounds only emphasize this harshness further. In most RPGs, when you see a dead unit you equate it with the experience points you gained. In The Banner Saga you feel the cost of every unit weighing on you. The scariest, most eye-opening part of Saving Private Ryan is when the door on the landing craft comes down and the German machine guns immediately begin ripping through the American soldiers. That moment serves the movie so well because it’s completely unexpected. Heroes aren’t supposed to die en masse in the first five minutes of a movie. This de-heroization of the soldiers by means of terrible, sudden, and impersonal violence makes you feel the loss of their potential stories. Some soldiers weren’t lucky enough to make it to the beach on which their fellows died.
If you mised the Kickstarter campaign you can still join for $15. You apparently get a steam key for Factions, you can play now, and for the complete game, which will take some time before you can play it.
Stoic has sent out a backers-only update for The Banner Saga, announcing all backers should now have access to the Factions beta as well as some other development comments:
Good evening, ladies and gentlemen! We're happy to announce that all backers have now received beta keys and should be able to get in the game and try out the combat.
In addition, we've just released a new build with a lot of new things. We've added the fifth playable class, the Backbiter. He's an upgraded axeman using the Shield Wall passive and his active ability is Run Through, which allows you to pass through enemy units, doing armor damage, before stabbing them in the back. It really opens up movement on the board and is a ton of fun, give it a try! We've also fixed the crashing/divergence problem that plagued the last build so you shouldn't have trouble finishing your matches now.
If you haven't been added to beta yet but would like to get involved, you're always welcome. Please head to our forums and create an account using the same email address as your kickstarter account. That's all you need to do, and we'll send out keys and instructions on how to get the client on a regular basis.
The latest backers-only update from Stoic announces the beta for The Banner Saga: Factions is close (backers will have received an email on accessing the beta). This is for the multiplayer tactics version but, as per the update, "Factions will help us balance and refine the single player experience".
Stoic, the developers of The Banner Saga are releasing The Banner Saga: Factions this winter. Factions is the multiplayer combat part of The Banner Saga, which allows you to play online and check out the combat system for yourself.
Here is an overview of the features:
Match up against other players in multiplayer comba
Challenge your opponent in fierce battles where only the skilled shall prevail
Get matched up against other players based on the relative power of your team to help keep fights fair and fun
Play Factions entirely for free; no "energy" system or other gating mechanisms to keep you from playing without purchasing something
Competitive and addictive turn-based combat
A unique combat system designed from the ground up with the goal of creating deep strategy: build a team out of hundreds of possible combinations and take into account their abilities, willpower bonuses, positioning, initiative and many other factors
Upgrade your characters to improve their stats and promote them to access their unique ability
Form your party based on creating a strategy that takes advantage of their unique stats and abilities
Navigate through the City of Strand
Go to the Proving Grounds to assemble your team and upgrade your characters
Visit the Mead House to access new characters
Go to the Weaver's Hut to create your custom banner
Browse the Trophy Tower, where you can see your achievements
When you're ready to fight, head to the Great Hall at the top of the hill
And more...
The Banner Saga: Factions will be available for both PC and Mac. You will also be able to download via the official website (this one) or through the Steam store
As a game free to everyone, you'll never have problems finding people to play against
Constantly being updated with new content as it gets built!
RPS: So does choice in Banner Saga largely revolve around how quickly you decide to move from place-to-place? Or are there more road-mapped, BioWare-style choices as well?
Alex Thomas: That’s definitely a large part of it. Another is just how much you support your caravan. You’re going to get these random events based on everybody’s different stats. There are three things you’re trying to balance as you’re moving along: endurance, morale, and supplies. People are going to constantly be triggering these events based on what level those stats are at. I guess the key word that we’re going for is that everybody has their own motivation, their own agency. They’re going to leave. They’re going to join up with you. They’re going to do what they want to do to handle the situation.
Arnie Jorgensen: That’s a good point. In a single-player story, everyone thinks you control the characters. But here, you don’t. You’re the guy running the caravan. But everyone’s got their own agenda. You’re just trying to get everyone along to the end of the story.
RPS: What sorts of characters and items will we see trickle in from the single-player story? Also, how will that affect the balance? What happens to free players when owners of The Banner Saga proper start charging in with crazy story classes?
Arnie Jorgensen: Everything in our game revolves around this big story-based idea that we’ve got. The whole game started with this story. Factions takes place on the map, in the story-based world. These aren’t two different worlds. As things happen in this world, things happening in your story, they’re going to happen to Strand and the other areas on that map. Not to go into it too much, but Strand is going to be an evolving city as you play. Easily updatable and changeable.
Alex Thomas: That was a big theme I think we glossed over a bit. When Chapter One comes out, what happens in Chapter One is going to have a direct relation to what happens in Factions. As you unlock characters in Chapter One, you’ll unlock them in Factions as well. We want free players to see [story classes in action]. We’re calling our magic-users Menders. They get hooked up in a match where they’re fighting against Menders casting these spells, and they’re like, “Holy crap, how do I get that?” You get the single-player game and you play through it, and now you know who these characters are and you can use them.
Arnie Jorgensen: Since Factions is a free-to-play game, we are hoping to pull people along into the single-player story-based game. If you only want to play Factions, you don’t have to pay anything. It’s a free game. But eventually, when you’re playing against the story-based people, you’re going to be fighting against guys who have Centaurs and Menders and crazy crap like that. You’re going to go, “Okay, I think it’s time.”
Stoic has kicked up a lengthy update on The Banner Saga, explaining the beta is coming soon and all Kickstarter backers will get access, as well as answering some questions and discussing Factions:
Beta is looming and you’re invited - Alpha is officially coming to a close and for Beta we’re going to need plenty of testers, so we’re officially opening the Beta to all of our backers. If you donated at any level you’re in! We’ve got 20k people on the list and we won’t be able to just dump everybody in at once, so we’ll send out staggered invites and keep an eye on the servers, working to get everybody on board. We’re not sure if we’ll take it public or not. [...]
What exactly is Factions? In Factions you’ll match up against other players in 1v1 matches and try to be the last one standing. After each match you’ll gain Renown, which is our currency you can use to buy new units, upgrade your characters and create your banners. You’ll form your party based on creating a strategy that takes advantage of their unique stats and abilities, similar to building a deck in Magic: The Gathering. You’ll see all these characters again in the single player game.
As you win matches, you move up the ranks. We’ll always match you with opponents based on the relative power of your team to try and keep fights are fair and fun. And, we’ll try to work out any problems that come up along the way. That’s what beta is for! [...]
What if I’m only interested in the single player game?
It’s ok, we know competitive multiplayer isn’t for everyone. Give it a try, because we think it’s really fun! You won’t miss anything in the Saga if you never touch Factions. As we create content for the single player game we’ll be rolling it into Factions. We plan to support Factions for as long as people are playing it. While the single player game has been our primary focus, Factions helps us develop that while keeping players involved.
They estimate the full game for "first half of 2013", by the way. Head over to read the full update and watch the video.
The Banner Saga - Impressions @ Rock, Paper, Shotgun
by Myrthos, Sunday - September 30, 2012 23:16
Rock, Paper, Shotgun share their experience with The Banner Saga in and impressions article.
That said, I did have a few quibbles – mainly stemming from a clearly work-in-progress interface. Ordering anyone to do anything took multiple clicks and further “are you sure?” confirmation clicks – but when time is ticking down, every second counts. At one point, I actually lost a unit because my final click was one milisecond too late. That was exceedingly frustrating. On top of that, selecting special skills felt similarly clunky, forcing me to click on the space around a character instead of the character itself, then choose a skill, then pick a target and finally, mercifully hit something – when, in fact, simply targeting someone and picking whether I wanted to use a normal or special attack would’ve made a lot more sense. But Stoic showed me images of the new interface ideas it’s currently tweaking, and they seem much, much, much, much better.
I must admit to initially being worried that Banner Saga – with its silky smooth Disney-style visuals making raucously passionate love to my eyeballs – was just a pretty face. Playing it, though, pretty much obliterated that fear. If Stoic can maintain this standard of quality, it could have something really special on its hands – a mixture of ocean-like tactical depth and frantic mid-match pacing that feels impressively different. I’ve got high hopes, anyway, and November’s right around the corner. Winter is coming. But, you know, hopefully in a good way.
Not to be confused with the single-player narrative promoted in the Kickstarter video, Banner Saga Factions is the multiplayer component of that game stripped out and repurposed as a free-to-play multiplayer game. While easing me into the battle grid at its office, Stoic was throwing Chess and Magic the Gathering comparisons willy-nilly. During their Kickstarter phase, I ridiculed them for having the tenacity -- as if a first-person shooter developer could compare its game to basketball because you aim and toss a projectile. But, the shoe sure does fit ...
Okay, let’s keep this simple because it’s not going to stay that way for long. You form a team of six members, chosen from 16 classes, and try to survive against your opponent’s six combatants. That’s the game at its core. But, gosh, if it doesn’t feel that simple when you have your hand on the clicker. Players of strategy role-playing games will be familiar with the move restriction, player initiation that dictates the turn of each party member, and post-match leveling ability. However, facing (à la Final Fantasy Tactics) doesn’t factor into combat. You better compose your team wisely because they will become your greatest asset, whether you level them through renown points earned from defeating enemy troops or purchased for money online. Stoic will not lock players out of content through the pay model. Instead, paying will only get you to where you were going to anyway more quickly.
I was under the impression Stoic Studio had decided to bypass the combat-only free-to-play Banner Saga Factions but apparently it will be released in November. From Destructoid:
While Banner Saga Chapter 1 (a full game, not an episode) will arrive early 2013, Stoic is taking the combat and assets from it and making a free-to-play multiplayer game called Banner Saga Factions, which will arrive on PC and Mac in early November. iPad and Ouya releases will follow.
"Basically we are developing the single-player game, and we realized we are doing all this work on the combat and it's really fun to play!" Art Director Arnie Jorgensen said. "Why not just release the combat as we develop the full game?"
A site called LivePixel has an interview with Stoic Studio on The Banner Saga, Kickstarter and the creation of the studio:
Justin Lowe: So back to some more Banner Saga questions. Can you give us an idea of how the game is structured from a combat sense?
Arnie Jorgensen: It is important to point out that it is not just a tactics game. It is between tactics and chess.
Alex Thomas: Right, when you look at turn based strategy games, they often say it is a tactical game, more of a thinking man’s game. A lot of turn-based strategy is really just grinding and then overpowering. Many of the abilities you get in these kinds of games are just “Fireball 1” or “Fireball 2”, and it does more damage, versus every other ability that does different ranges of damage. Then you look at something like chess, and it is the pure essence of tactics. Each piece has a unique thing, there are no numbers, and the teams are equal. You win because you are better. We wanted to go somewhere more in between those two things. We wanted to add more tactical nature to the combat by having characters that advance over time and improve, and you feel like you have some ownership with them.
At the same time, they fill a roll, and what you are trying to do is make your team the best that you can. When you get beat by somebody, it is not because of a random chance or they had a higher-level character with a better fireball. It is because they were better than you were at the strategy. We have made a game where position and character synergy is the most important thing: abilities that work with each other to give you the best effect against someone who has their own set of tactics.
I'm glad to say that we're starting to cross this threshold and we're seeing everything come together quickly on our first release. Since the last update we've accomplished:
Final art for every major combat UI
Final art for every major gameplay UI including upgrading, matchmaking and team-building as well as the option menus, combat resolution screen and many miscellaneous functions.
Final UI functionality for combat
Gold standard combat environment
Final, animating character portraits
Final base combat particles
Implemented the majority of the playable character animations
All tooltips for every ability and action in combat
The locomotion system that allows us to adjust the speed of an animation versus how fast they move across the screen to avoid the "sliding" effect common in 2D games
We've also made progress toward multiplayer functionality
With these latest changes we'll be able to send our contractors a working client so they can begin implementing sound effects, music and creating quality assurance test plans. Within days we'll be able to start playtesting the combat with outside testers.
We know we want the game to look and sound like an animated movie and along with that we also want the game to be rooted in reality to some degree. I begin every concept by gathering reference to get ideas that I throw into the pot of sketches and roughs. In this phase I begin by blocking in the correct scale of the environment. This particular scene takes place in the building at the top of the hill in the City of Strand that we showed last week. Now, viking great halls were rarely this large, but we need enough room to back the camera out far enough for players to actually see enough of the game board so I used some creative license and on top of that we might as well make it look as cool as we can. After getting the basic size of the area down I start sketching in ideas from the story that Alex has laid down for the particular combat space. Here we have a feast going on with the governor of the City of Strand at the main table. I play with color and lighting and materials until I feel that my brain is a good place to understand what it is we’re after. How many guests are at the feast? Were vikings sloppy eaters? Should there be a polar bear chained to the wall? Questions like these are nailed down in this stage.
So far every project I’ve watched has suffered from the same mid-campaign slump. The novelty of your project has worn off and your most enthusiastic backers have already signed up, but it isn’t close enough to the finish to attract the procrastinators and the people who like to feel like they made a difference at the end (like me). It seems to me that regardless of whether you’re asking for ten thousand or half a million, you’ll stall out about half-way through your campaign.
Again, this is where Kickstarter as your full-time job comes in. When this occurred during out campaign we had raised a lot more than we expected and felt confident that we’d be able to produce the full trilogy we had originally planned, so we offered the full game to anyone who had pledged at $50 or more and saw an immediate and massive boost in pledges which largely helped to keep us moving during the slow middle. We also took this opportunity to do a lot of written interviews and podcasts that got new eyes on the project.
There's a new update for The Banner Saga, explaining Stoic has made excellent progress and a combat demo is getting close, having just transitioned to Beta:
As a lot of the mundane but time-consuming aspects of running a business settle down (changing banks and setting up quickbooks... ugh), we've now entered a very critical period of development. As we've mentioned before, we're working exclusively on the combat system for the full game now, and we'll be releasing this combat as a free standalone called Factions, in the near future. A free demo with both single player and multiplayer content, if you will. We're just now transitioning from alpha to beta on this combat release, which means going from playable to polished and balanced. This is a pretty critical part of the process and we're all buckling down for an intense couple of months.
We start every character (Re: class) with a sketch phase where we try out different looks and styles. What's this classes job in combat? Are they heavily armored or are they a damage dealer?Since we've set the Banner Saga in a low fantasy setting it's important to us to make a viking look like a viking, not some random fantasy barbarian with huge shoulder pads and spikes and...whatever. Keeping every class looking like they could exist in a real world is the major motivating factor behind each design. Here's the final sketch of the Axeman, which eventually became the Backbiter, one of the upgraded, or promoted versions of the base Axeman.
The final part of The Banner Saga'sWhat is Told lore story has been released. Looking at our news posts, we've missed a couple of these, but they'll all linked from this last piece if you want to read them all:
A scream stuck in Hafr’s throat at the sight of the towering giant before him, and then a long, silent moment passed between the newly liberated captive and his former captor. Bersi’s unflinching glare was the most dreadful thing Hafr could imagine, and it was unrelenting.
Finally, mercifully, the varl stepped back and quietly sat on the rock he must have been propped up against before Hafr has emerged from the trees. Hafr’s bag slumped beside him and he resumed reading one of the books, just as Hafr had always seen him before.
There's a new Technical Blog for The Banner Saga available, for those interested in the programming side of things. A quick quote, because it won't mean much to most of us:
The past two weeks have been characterized by four main activities:
As predicted in the last update, Jeff Uriarte has gotten started on the team and is working hard on the tools for building out our scenes and landscapes in-game. We have been working out the technical details of making the scenes as seamless as possible whether it is depicting the traveling caravan, a battle, or a town. We have figured out a good way to make these all part of the same rendering system, and are now working toward that.
Victor is making good progress on the FMOD integration. We have FMOD up and running in the game on our Windows build. The initial prototype was done using Visual Studio (with which we are both very familiar). To support our multi-platform approach Victor hoisted the code into Eclipse CDE and configured everything to build properly there. We are using CDE in Eclipse Indigo (the newest) rather than in Flash Builder, because Flash Builder is still on Eclipse Helios (an older version).
Stoic Studio has posted another lore snippet for The Banner Saga with the second part of What is Told:
When Hafr finally did sleep it was poor and fitful, a combination of discomfort and disturbed dreams, so that when the sun arose the next morning he was more exhausted than before he had fallen asleep.
Again, Bersi sat across from him quietly, leafing through one of Hafr’s books. Hafr groggily recognized the cover as “Antiquity of Man”, a dry chronicle of history he had been made to memorize several times over.
“This is some dire stuff, Goat,” moaned Bersi. “Is this what they have you do all day? I’d rather stab myself in the sack.”
“I’ve read worse,” choked Hafr, betraying no minor discomfort.
“Have you?” contemplated Bersi. “You know this is all I’ve had to distract myself with for half a day?” It was true; through the leaves above his head Hafr could see that the sun was already high in the sky. Despite his discomfort he had been in and out of consciousness for half a day. “Must be thirsty?” grinned Bersi, suddenly mischievous.
Hafr nodded, uncertain where this would go. Bersi instead cracked the book to a page he had previously dog-eared.
Stoic points to a couple of Banner Saga updates, with Technical Blog #0 talking about their first programmer hire Victor Ude and his current work integrating sound.
In What is Told, the first of a series of lore updates is provided:
A lot of things were on Hafr’s mind.
Foremost was the ache that had found its way into his feet, unaccustomed as they were to shuffling across hard rock in thin leather shoes. The intricately carved walking stick in his hand had become more of an anchor than an aid. Aside from that, there was the complex pattern he had been failing to memorize for a week, the cumbersome bundle of books and scrolls boring into his shoulders and the irksome memory of a disappointing conclusion to an awkward conversation he had left on the lips of a girl. It chafed, looping over and over in his head with nothing but backcountry paths to distract him from it, and no recourse to be taken. At least, not until he was done with this, another pointless errand.
Alex Thomas from Stoic chats with Wired in a lengthy 6-page interview about The Banner Saga. Here's Alex's reponse to a question about Choose Your Own Adventure books:
Thomas: From the start of the design we intended to make each of our three main systems (combat, travel and conversation) influence the others in exactly the way you’re talking about here. To summarize briefly; the story involves you and your people trying to escape what seems to be the literal end of the world which is sweeping slowly across the land. The travel scenes from the video are actual game-play which are akin to a cross between King of Dragon Pass and Oregon Trail. You’re not responsible just for a single character or a party, but for an entire society of people, and that opens up a lot of options people haven’t played with much in role-playing games.
As you travel events will happen — your clansmen get in disputes, supplies run low and a wide variety of other unexpected issues come up that you have to deal with. Making decisions during travel can affect the difficulty or frequency of combat, and in turn barely surviving a fight doesn’t return you to full health afterward. You know you’ll be in trouble if you get in another fight soon, but making camp to rest will chew up time. Time is a key element to the game, and events can change based on when you encounter them. Through these smaller events you’re forming the story of your caravan, and through primarily dialogue you unravel the mystery of what’s happening to the world and what you can do to change things. One of our key goals has been to let bad things happen and to allow the player to deal with mistakes and keep them. Being a smaller, indie project has given us the ability to mess with the world in a way that bigger developers may shy away from. If your home town goes up in flames, you haven’t lost the game. It just keeps going. What is important to you, as the player, should be to do the best you can for you, your friends and your people.
Here's a quick overview: We've got a news and off-topic section where we'll be keeping you up-to-date with any good interviews or previews that come up. There's the special Backer-only subforum just for you, and the general discussion Longhouse, where we've already started a discussion about guild crests. The beginner's circle is where we'll be answering all the basic stuff- what's the game about, who are we, etc.
We'll be answering the boards as much as possible, but we've also gotten some help from a few guys who will be doing some moderating for us- Sean (from The Old Republic), Scott and Stelly, so if you see them answering questions it's because we asked them to :)
Stoic has provided a progress report for The Banner Saga, though we're only a week after funding. There's a video that shows some footage of a party after their successful funding and a few glimpses of animations. New wallpapers are on offer and official forums open on Monday. Lastly, they look at some Kickstarter projects they are backing, including Grim Dawn and Legends of Eisenwald.
Needless to say (but we'll say it anyway), not only did we meet our goal in two days, you've gotten us to 700%. OVER $700,000. This is all beyond our wildest dreams and we've said it before, but we'll work our hardest to make something you can be proud of supporting. [...]
Were you expecting a progress report? Somehow we've still managed to make a little progress this week!
We've finished our first pass of animation shoots and Powerhouse has officially started animating characters. The first character is our base human viking fighter called the Axeman and his upgraded versions. Keep in mind these are going to become the real animated characters in the game, not just concept work. Check out the design image above!
Austin Wintory has already recorded the first pass on the main theme for the game and man is he ever excited about it! From there he'll keep building the full score until we can record the whole thing live with a full orchestra.
We'll be sorting through the applications now that the campaign is over and getting back to you all as soon as possible.
As mentioned, we're in the process of getting a forum up and running on our main website.
We've written up a bit about the history, races and setting of the world which will probably be our first major content post on the website. Can't wait to talk about it more!
So this is it. We're standing on the shore, packing up the longships, sharpening the swords and getting ready to push off. But instead of three of us rowing furiously we've got a viking army behind us. We're honored to have you along for the ride.
Stoic Studio has kicked up a new update for The Banner Saga on Kickstarter - at the time, they had six hours to run and were nearing the $700k mark. As I write, there are two hours to go and that level has been comfortably passed, which adds player-owned cities in MP. From this last-hours-FAQ:
Won't porting to consoles dumb down the game, compromise the UI or take more time away from working on the game? We started the game with the intention of porting to as many places as possible, which we say in the video and on the front page. Something that we could have messaged better is that we won't be porting anything until after chapter 1 is complete sometime at the end of the year. We're not doing simultaneous development, so we won't have anything to port until we have a finished first release. We do apologize about not making this more clear.
As for dumbing down the game or making the UI worse, we don't think that's true. The game as we pitched it is going to be the same on PC, Mac, Linux, iPad and consoles, the same as we originally envisioned it (at this point, better). The UI will be developed to work on our first release - PC and Mac - and then have to be converted for other platforms in the porting process. [..]
Why did you structure your goals music, then porting and content, then cities? I had to support something I didn't want to get something I did. We set out the goals based on what would affect the most people. Music is something everyone will hear, ports and content are something a lot people requested, and the cities are for multiplayer. We needed to frontload the things we couldn't ship without, and cities are something we could add in later as funding becomes available. Our stretch goals were just that - extra - so rest assured nothing about them has changed the game we're already working on.
The Banner Saga is counting down to the end of their Kickstarter campaign, with 50 hours to go as I write ($597k). From Update #9, discussing what they can do as additional milestones are reached:
The Orchestra (at $600k) Austin Wintory is currently working on the soundtrack and hiring on musicians but due to the cost of a full orchestra is still working with a combination of digital and live music. If we hit this goal we'll be able to have a full, honest-to-goodness orchestral score, each instrument played by a real musician in a high-quality recording studio used by film legends like John Williams.
Then what are the promotional music prizes for? Prizes like the score and the signature have helped us get this far and also double as a way to guarantee that your personal donation goes directly into funding the music for the game.
The Most Content on the Most Platforms (at $650k) Like the port to iPad and Linux, if we hit this goal we'll be able to make the game available on Xbox Live Arcade and Playstation Network. The funding will allow us to have additonal developers port the game, leaving us to focus on content development.
The additional content is just as important. This will give us the ability to add a much wider range of special events that can occur as you travel and really expand the scope of the finale to make it the biggest, most rewarding conclusion we can.
The Player-Owned Cities (at $700k) If we meet this goal we'll be able to add one of the coolest features we thought was way beyond the scope of our game. In multiplayer, players will control their own city, raising it from a modest village to a bustling city with visual customization and their guild crest flying on the walls. Over time, players can construct buildings that will allow them to recruit new units, trade for powerful items and ultimately fight for territory.
Hello, esteemed backers! Within the last few days, two very important things have happened to encourage this update: 1) We added a bunch of new prizes to our already many and varied prizes! and 2) We’ve gotten a lot of requests to clarify said prizes, and have been pointed to other kickstarter campaigns who have already done a similar update.
So, we’ve broken out each individual tier to tell you exactly what you get and address some of the common questions we get about them. We should mention this up front: regardless of whether you’ve changed your pledge or not, you will receive whichever prize you have selected when the campaign ends on April 20th.
Stoic Studio has a new Kickstarter update as they head into the last week of their fundraising campaign for The Banner Saga. There's a new video focused on composer Austin Wintory (Flow, Journey) - they are aiming for a full-blown orchestral score and have added new music-related reward categories, with the proceeds of those pledges going directly to the music:
This is it, fans of strategy, story, art... and music: our last week on Kickstarter. Your constant support throughout the campaign has been an experience none of us will ever forget, and we have you to thank. We've decided to pull out all the stops in this last week to make this the best version of the game we possibly can. Austin himself wanted to talk with all our supporters about his role as composer on The Banner Saga. Take a look.
As The Banner Saga passes $400k in their Kickstarter efforts, Stoic has posted a huge update with some star-studded talent coming onboard. Austin Wintory will will provide music (Journey), Kpow Audio (L.A. Noire) will provide sound, Powerhouse Animation (Epic Mickey) will do some work, iPad and Linux clients are confirmed and more:
We've done the concept work for each of the major characters in our first release, some of which you can see in the above piece of concept art. This is the sort of production piece you'll see in the collector's edition art book. We'll be talking more about the history of these races soon!
Now that design is done we'll be spending the majority of next week filming character animations and getting them ready to be animated into the game.
We continue to refine our many interface elements and adjust numbers in combat for our working prototype.
Now that we've gotten the green light on working with all these incredible artists we're setting up the framework to integrate their work (no small endeavor) and let them work at their full potential!
Stoic has kicked up a new update for The Banner Saga as their Kickstarter passes $350k. In essence, they're getting on with the production:
Hello supporters and backers! It's hard to believe it's only been two weeks since we launched the project and beside the weekly progress reports we've just cracked an unbelievable milestone at 350%! We'll be sending these updates out regularly to make sure you know what we're up to.
Without any further ado, here's the progress report for 2.12.12:
Our top priority is to build on the work we've completed for the prototype. Basically this means hooking up everything that requires extra functionality; the combat interface, progression through each part of the game including character upgrades, building a party, hiring new units, the multiplayer narrative, the combat board itself and so on. It's a lot of foundation work you never really thinking about when you're playing a game.
We've started working on our final designs for characters in combat and their variations, color schemes and upgrades. This work includes sketches and designs that will all end up in the art book! We'll probably pop up an image or two next week to let you see what we've been up to.
We've spent a good portion of our time this week upping the resolution of our existing art to work on the Apple Retina displays for the new iPad, which is a much better step to take sooner than later. I suppose this is a pretty strong indication that we intend to port the game to iOS as soon as we can fit it into a schedule! That said, we won't let this take priority over finishing the game we set out to make on PC and Mac.
We're currently up to our necks in offers to help with the music and have some great leads! We're making a concentrated effort to sort through all the amazing submissions this week and find our best fit for the project. Just like sound, we would have had to scale back the scope of what we could do with our limited manpower. We now have to option to get a dedicated music house to do more than we could have achieved alone at the highest possible quality.
We've begun an honest-to-goodness production schedule with an animation studio who will help us complete all the frame-by-frame animations for combat and a handful of cutscenes that had previously been left on the cutting room floor.
We've also gotten some good leads on great professional help for quality assurance. Boring, you say? It's the most exciting thing we can think of!
That wraps things up for the work in progress this week. We are, once again, floored by the donations that continue to roll in, and will be getting back to the grindstone to make it all happen.
A couple of updates on The Banner Saga as their Kickstarter goes past 150%:
I can't tell you how good that feels. We'll do everything we can to give back the love.
Because we've significantly exceeded our goal already, we wanted to give you a heads up on how we're already planning to use the funds and other plans for the future.
Just today we've already gotten back from talking with a local Austin 2D animation studio about getting additional and incredibly professional animations in the game, as well as higher quality cinematics that may remind you of Myth: The Fallen Lords, which will really help to make the game feel like a big, living world in a way we couldn't have before.
We're already in talks with a major sound studio who have worked on several games that we really respect. On our shoestring budget we were going to be snapping branches out back with a hand-held recorder but now we have the option to put incredible, professional sound into the game.
We'll be ramping up our programming support very soon to make sure we get back all the little features we thought we'd have to skip, as well as making the game as stable as possible and making our multiplayer release as robust as possible. Not to mention staying on schedule!
We've gotten a lot of questions about what we'll be doing with additional funding. It's extremely important to us to deliver on our promises and we're dedicated to using the funds to improve the game while balancing our deadlines.
Every additional dollar we get is going into upping the quality and making the game better. Kickstarter has opened a lot of doors to other passionate professionals who want to help us make something special, and your funding has given us the option of working with them.
What were the most important lessons you learned while at Bioware, and how do they still apply?
AT: BioWare in particular was interesting because the scope of The Old Republic was so huge it was like nothing else we've ever worked on. The number of moving parts and moving targets involved in making something like that so complex that you can't help but absorb some really invaluable experience on both the best way to do some things and how not to do others. We learned how to do a lot of very specific things, like writing branching dialogue, and we know a lot about things you wouldn't necessarily think about, like scheduling and managing scope. Overall though, the most important (and hardest to describe) part of producing a game is an almost intangible appreciation for how every part of development has to come together to create a bigger picture. Pacing, mood and flow are all incredibly difficult things to nail and it takes a lot of error to finally get it right.
A qoute on the inspiration for The Banner Saga
What are the inspirations behind The Banner Saga's art style and story?
AT: One of our major goals for The Banner Saga was the opportunity to do a mature game for adults in the vein of Game of Thrones or The Black Company. The disclaimer here is that we're not making a story based on either of these, just that we love the tone and that's the feeling we want to have in our story. When we say it's a mature story we want the player to understand it's about cultural intrigue and the relationships between the characters, not sex, swearing and violence. It's also not about high fantasy and dragons and magic weapons, and it's not about black and white, good versus evil. It really is a story written for thoughtful adults, and we hope players will find that refreshing.
And here's a lengthy quote about the choice and consequences found in the game:
The game's description says the player will be able to "make decisions with real consequences." What kind of choices and consequences are you aiming for? Will they go deeper than Bioware's typical consequences that may affect the way the story is presented, but do not have any significant effect on the gameplay or the game world, and in what ways? Could you share some examples with us?
AT: Absolutely, I'd love to talk about this and oddly enough this is the first interview where it has explicitly come up. One thing we know as developers from BioWare is how expensive it can be to create real choices in dialogue and in the story. Just one branch can double the content you create and only half the audience will see it, so it becomes extremely expensive.
When we designed The Banner Saga we created it based on this idea of changing the direction of the story. The lynch pin to our plan is that the world is coming into ruin and certain things are going to happen whether you're there to witness it or not. Whether you can change the course of the story depends on our core gameplay. How many people do you save in the caravan? How many fighters are with you when a city is besieged? That may affect whether the combat is just tricky or outright impossible, but the game doesn't end just because you lost or saved a town. You keep going. How do you respond when one of your main characters wants to leave the party? That may change not just your combat team but whether a whole group of people is willing to follow you or not, which later affects what happens at a critical point in the story. By making decisions for not just one character, not just one small party or even one town but an entire society we're really opening up the number of ways the story can change. An ultimately that's what it comes down to- what happens to the people around you, not faceless strangers in a generic kingdom.
Stoic Studio has joined the Kickstarter brigade for The Banner Saga, which you'll recall from a week or two back. Stoic are asking for a modest $100k, and with $10k under the belt in a few hours, that looks safe. The rewards start from $5, with only $10 getting you a digital copy of the game, due in November.
Some features, to refresh your memory:
Our first priority has always been to make a role-playing game that feels and looks fresh, and plays like the classic tactical strategy games of our childhood. It's not about defeating the villain and saving the day. It's not about grinding to get past the next fight. The Banner Saga throws you into the end of the world and asks "how do you deal with this"?
Not another generic fantasy: Drawing heavily from Norse culture while creating its own identity and mythology, The Banner Saga takes a low-fantasy approach to viking themes. Giants: yes. Horned helmets: no.
Strategic combat: Recruit a large roster of unique characters throughout the story, each with different abilities that interact in combat in a deeply tactical way and personalities of their own. The Banner Saga harkens back to classic turn-based gameplay with a strong emphasis on tactics over brute force and endless grinding.
Travel across gorgeous landscapes: The choices you make as events arise have a huge affect on how the story plays out- who survives, who dies, and what's worth saving. Add people to your caravan as you travel, or lose them when tough decisions arise. You're not just fighting to save nameless strangers, you're fighting for your neighbors, your family and your way of life. We want you to care what happens to them.
An emphasis on story: 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; not sex, violence and swearing.
Play online: Though the single-player campaign is our focus, The Banner Saga provides a deep multiplayer game; build a unique party of characters and battle friends and enemies in multiplayer combat. Upgrade your party over time and devise new strategies.
Risk in gameplay: A lot of modern games play it safe- you know you'll defeat the evil and save the day. In The Banner Saga you can't take anything for granted. We want it to feel like a good tv mini-series; the world doesn't revolve around you, it's about how you deal with change.
