Expeditions: Viking - Preview @RPS

At RockPaperShotgun they describe Expeditions: Vikings as a choice heavy RPG that is looking very promising.

...
Expeditions is a remarkably responsive RPG, starting from the kind of character you choose to be and then rolling onward with it. It's a game about behaviour as much as it is about twatting people with swords, this ongoing choice to (try and) be a benign ruler, a savage one, simply a blunt one or an ever-changing mix of all of the above.

Characters can be recruited to your ‘hind', essentially a party but which also has a role to play in the management of your village, if you manage to impress them in conversation or in battle, or they can be lost forever - potentially even become a sworn enemy. Potentially even seizing your throne from you.

This is only a preview build of a full game not due until a few months into 2017, so I can't say for certain that its choice and consequences will be as knotty and far-reaching as it seems to imply, but certainly its first major chapter leans heavy on that stuff. It's more of a ruling sim with quests'n'combat thrown in than it is yer traditional hero's journey. Grant mercy to these guys, but piss off those other guys because you look weak as a result - that sort of thing. Also, inept wolf-hunting, honor duels and finding lost brothers. RPG norms but parsed through a slight history filter.

There's probably nothing new under the sun, sure, but it's put together with a certain density that makes this stuff feel convincing and foundational to who your beleaguered character is, rather than a series of transitory kerfuffle.

In order to embrace this role, you've got to shrug off a certain crudity in presentation, both on a graphical front and in terms of the rather functional dialogue. Any or all of this might improve along the march to release (and it needs a technical spit and polish too), but even so I reckon Expeditions is achieving what it set out to do.