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9 months ago
Feature: Gonna take my norse to the old town road
An idea I’m happy to see the back of, is the notion that “graphics” is a one-way sliding scale towards photorealistic perfection. While I’m certainly fond of games that exhibit hyperbudget beauty along the lines of Metro: Exodus or Shadow of the Tomb Raider, I’m equally - probably more - excited by those who eschew realism in order to utterly master a particular aesthetic. Often,…
1 year ago
Feature: Make flags, not war
Overthinking Games: The Banner Saga’s banner represents unity rather than division
Banners, then and now, are often a curious amalgamation of plain communication and naked aggression. They’re well-known as heraldic devices, displaying a coat of arms to identify one side to the other on the battlefield, usually just before they were about to attack each other. However, they’re also just a means of communicating who or what a place or thing belongs to. If you’re shipwrecked,…
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My 2018 in games had me dealing with failure in multiple ways. Designed to move further and further away from the fantasy of the all-powerful player ever looking for an appropriate challenge, these games teach to forgive and accept – forgiving someone a past hurt, accepting the lack of a perfect solution to a problem. From the satisfyingly familiar to a type of game I…
Stoic finished telling their Viking-y fantasy tale earlier this year with The Banner Saga 3, and now only violence remains. Yesterday they launched the turn-based tactical RPG's Eternal Arena DLC, letting players fight on and on in customisable sandbox battles. All the game's heroes, villains, and maps are yours to toy with, and it has a weekly challenge with leaderboards too. Eternal Arena is probably…
Feature: Death becomes us
From the outset, everything in The Banner Saga seems designed to encourage you to be careful. As you lead your caravan towards safety, you try to keep people alive by rationing food, managing the number of your followers and weighing the dangers of the unknown. Anyone who has ever given a soldier in XCOM a custom name knows that it takes very little to get…
2 years ago
Feature: Norse of a different colour
The allure of Viking fantasies, and the games that cherry-pick them
The Vikings have long ago invaded the coasts of pop culture on their dragon-headed longships and carved out their own Danelaw in the realm of video games. In recent years, they’ve grown even bolder, taking over most genres from RTS to RPG, classic point and click adventure to action, with an utter disregard towards distinctions between AAA and indie. They’ve settled in Hellblade and Frostrune,…
Feature: I'm going to need a Saga holiday after this
After waiting two long years for the final instalment of Stoic's fantastical strategy trilogy, The Banner Saga 3 begins in the best possible way. It picks up where the second The Banner Saga 2 left off, and one of the first things you get to do is punch your scheming arch nemesis - who probably made your last moments of that second game a right…
It's nearly time to sharpen your axe and wade once more into the beautifully illustrated frostbitten apocalypse that is The Banner Saga. Stoic's strategy-RPG series was always planned as a trilogy, and the third and final chapter is excitingly close, now due out on July 26th, two days later than first expected. Within, a new trailer that could be considered spoiler-laden for those who haven't played…
Feature: The end of the trilogy
The bearded warrior looks exhausted. Part of a band of mercenaries, he blinks slowly at us. Even while the player chooses their next words, the crease-eyed humans and horned Varls of The Banner Saga 3 stand there, blinking slowly. Their hair fluttering, eyes searching you for intent. These are quiet moments of incidental detail. Twitching moustaches, billowing capes, tensing fists. They are looping animations, designed…
Stoic's Viking-y RPG trilogy will conclude with The Banner Saga 3 on July 24th, publishers Versus Evil have announced. The strategy RPG trek has seen tough battles and difficult decisions so far, but the worst is surely yet to come. Our boy Brendy recently talked to Stoic and will have more to tell you about the game later today. For now, coo, look, a release…
We've not peeked at The Banner Saga 3 since Stoic's Norse fantasy strategy RPG soared through Kickstarter in 2017, but now here's a new trailer and oh! word that the game will launch earlier than expected. The Kickstarter tentatively said December 2018, and I'd even speculated that adding stretch goals features might push it back further, but publishers Versus Evil have now announced it'll launch…
3 years ago
The crowdfunding campaign for The Banner Saga 3 [official site] has wrapped up and -- surprise! -- seems enough folks do want to see the Norse fantasy turn-based strategy game through to the end. As well as hitting its goal, the Kickstarter campaign hit several stretch goals. The second game improved on the first a lot, so fingers crossed that this trend will continue and…
The tale of the little flag that could will continue in The Banner Saga 3 [official site], if a Kickstarter goes well. Yup, developers Stoic have turned back to crowdfunding to conclude their strategy RPG series. We waved the safety flag for the first Banner Saga, digging its look and style but not so much the combat, then waved the chequered flag for its follow-up,…
