If you’ve been waiting Ever Since The World Began, you Can’t Hold Back, you’re suffering Desperate Dreams, your Eye of the Tiger scans the horizon for signs of Broken Promises, then good news: The Search Is Over, and Here Comes Desire. Today The Banner Saga 2 [official site] receives its promised Survivor mode in a free update.
Survivor mode is a permadeath challenge with rounds of gruelling combat to survi- wait. Survival mode. They’ve added a survival mode. Pffff.
RPS Feature A strong second act
Despite its flaws, The Banner Saga [official site] is one of the most memorable indie releases of 2014, and now the second act is here to push the story to even more desperate frontiers. But does The Banner Saga 2 improve upon its predecessor’s lackluster strategy combat while still expanding on its promising story? Here’s wot I think. (Note: there are spoilers for the first Banner Saga’s ending).
I’ve spent so long frolicking in the intangible tangerine skies of VR-land lately that it’s genuinely bewildering to look at a traditional game again. It’s so… flat. So… image-y. And also so sharp and fluid and won’t make my eyeballs pulsate and flail as if dancing helplessly to some unseen disco beat from hell. Confusing matters worse is that gorgeous strategy/roleplaying/survival opus The Banner Saga – and its upcoming sequel Banner Saga 2 [official site] – continues to look like a game that is simultaneously from the past and the future.
The Banner Saga, as I remember, is a tactical RPG about a really nice flag and the rapscallions who want to steal it from you so they can really admire its fine needlework. That’s… hang on, no, Wot Adam Thought reminds me it’s a jolly pretty tactical RPG about a leading a caravan and army across a cruel Viking-y fantasy world – which becomes too repetitive. Still, it is a lovely flag, so let’s see what developers Stoic can do with a sequel. We’ve not long to wait now, as they’ve announced that The Banner Saga 2 [official site] will launch on Tuesday, April 19th.
RPS Feature Tweaking the trilogy
I arrived a few minutes early for a Banner Saga 2 [official site] interview with Stoic’s artist Arnie Jorgensen and writer Drew McGee at E3 so I set my bags down and walked over to a vacant demo computer. The game is the second of Stoic’s planned trilogy and I’ve only played half of the first Banner Saga so I was a little cautious – what if there were spoilers?
Curiosity won out and OH GOD THERE WERE SPOILERS!
With that in mind, if you’ve not played or finished the first game and wish to avoid spoilers just bookmark this for later:
Ah, the video game industry’s eternal quest to corrupt the hearts and minds of our youth continues. Not content with turning them all into warlike barbarians, anthropomorphous cubes of meat or cats, now that hateful, wretched ‘interactive entertainment’ is teaching them the ins and outs of running a medieval thieves guild! When will the madness end?
Killers And Thieves [official site] is the (evil) work of Alex Thomas, creative director of indie all-star The Banner Saga [official site]. He’s working independently under the banner of Candle And Key as the rest of Stoic move onto the sequel, though they’re acting as publisher. It’s about sending teams of criminals out on missions in a sprawling medieval city, breaking in and getting away with as much loot as possible.
The Banner Saga arrived at the great RPS mead hall to a somewhat mixed reception. We appreciated the manner in which the beleaguered band of luminaries presented themselves but couldn’t help but yawn long before they’d finished telling us of the events that had brought them to our table. Whatever its flaws may be, The Banner Saga told an unusually bleak and believable tale of a world in its twilight years, and I’ll gladly cast aside my reservations to see the continuation of that tale. The video below doesn’t give a great deal away, but it confirms that the next chapter of the saga is incoming.
