The Banner Saga 2 Unfurling In April
Flagfriends
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.
Pip talked with two Stoic chaps last year about the second of the planned trilogy, about what carries over and what's changed. Life-and-death decisions from the first game will be reflected in Banner Saga 2, see, continuing personal adventures. And they've watched Let's Plays and read plenty of comments to pick up on what people disliked. As writer Drew McGee explained:
"One of the things we've seen a lot in comments is some of the combat felt a little slow, or not diverse enough so that was the number one thing we tackled. No-one seems to have a problem with the type of heroes you can play as, it's the type of enemies you're fighting so we went through and thought where can we spend our budget to diversify that enemy base – give them new abilities, buffs... My whole thing was to give them a culture and really extrapolate on that to bring the Dredge to life."
Artist Arnie Jorgensen also chipped in with chat on things like new combat victory conditions beyond simply killing everyone, such as taking down one specific enemy or surviving for a certain number of rounds. In short, go read that! It's a good thing.
The Banner Saga 2 will cost £14.99/$19.99 when it arrives for Windows and Mac on April 19th. While the first came to Linux, on 2 the devs say "At this time, due to the bandwidth on a such a small team, the Linux version is not being planned." Here's ye olde announcement trailer from last year:
