WORDS Eoin Moore
The Banner Saga, a tactical RPG from Stoic — the three-man team formerly of Bioware — is significant in that it is one of the first entirely Kickstarter-funded videogames to see release. Lay that aside and it is still a unique and challenging game in its own right, fusing a Scandinavian aesthetic with merciless and occasionally brutally cruel gameplay.
The plot focuses on several characters in a Viking-inspired fantasy setting, beautifully designed by Arnie Jorgensen with a soundtrack composed by Austin Wintory, who previously scored Journey. It is the aftermath of a long and bitter war, a time of uneasy peace between humans and the giant, horned race known as the Varl. When apocalyptic omens coincide with an old threat re-emerging from the north, the game’s protagonists must decide to fortify against or flee from the coming darkness. There is a distinct emphasis on the foreseeable and unforeseeable consequences of the player’s actions. Significant events, including the deaths of major characters, can take place entirely as the result of seemingly unimportant decisions.
The gameplay is split between two distinct halves. Combat takes place in a turn-based fashion on a tiled grid. These heavily tactical sections emphasise the importance of movement, timing, and forward-thinking over stats or items. While the mechanics of combat are somewhat difficult to grasp initially, they slowly reveal a deep complexity and a potential for creativity, especially when the numerous complementary combinations of the game’s rich selection of characters come into play. The majority of the game, however, takes place in the travel screen. These parts, heavily indebted to games like Oregon Trail, focus not on combat but on the management of resources over long periods of time. The player must balance conserving food and maintaining morale in the various clans they lead, while making decisions which have an effect on the combat sections. Travelling across the game’s huge map and watching the days tick by draws attention to the story’s truly epic scope.
What these two halves have in common is their unrelentingly punishing nature. Losing a battle will leave your best characters injured, and occasionally dead, and also negatively influences the plot. Failing to manage food and numbers in the clan will lead to starvation and low morale, making the next combat sections even more difficult. On top of this, random plot events can have massive ramifications on the player’s resources while also forcing them to make difficult decisions. In spite of its fantasy setting, this game is by no means light-hearted, escapist entertainment. The theme of endurance in the face of hopelessness, devastation and war, is captured by the game’s grinding, uncompromising difficulty.
