Why THE BANNER SAGA is one of the finest works of fantasy of the last few years

The gods are dead. The sun has frozen in the sky. An ancient enemy, the dredge, have returned and invaded the lands of men. Both humans and their allies, the giant warriors known as varl, have to unite to fight them...but a greater threat is stirring. Something has happened to unbalance the world, and it is falling into darkness. From opposite ends of the continent, two great caravans, one of veteran varl soldiers and another of frightened refugees, seek a place of safety and solace to regroup. Factions within the human and varl camps threaten their alliance and their unity in the face of the threat. The fate of the world comes to rest on the shoulders of a tiny handful of people, and the banner they carry across the land.

Recently a truly remarkable epic fantasy trilogy was completed. The Banner Saga has arrived in three instalments, released in 2014, 2016 and 2018 respectively, each accompanied by tremendous critical acclaim but variable sales. Now the entire trilogy is complete, the series is getting reviewed and talked about as a whole and I suspect its profile and praise is going to keep growing in the coming years.

You may be asking "Who's the author?" but The Banner Saga isn't a book series. Instead it's a series of video games, available on the PC and all consoles (including the Switch). It is the work of Stoic Studios, a company formed by three veterans of BioWare who left the company after spending five years working on Star Wars: The Old Republic, and other BioWare titles before that. The company was founded because the team felt working in the confines of a big studio owned by a behemoth super-corporation was not good for creativity, and they knew the games they wanted to make could not be created in such an environment.

The Banner Saga is an epic fantasy saga that borrows elements from the old Viking sagas, Anglo-Saxon history, classical mythology, The Oregon Trail and Battlestar Galactica. With graphics resembling an old Don Bluth cartoon and a musical score to die for, there really isn't much else out there that looks like this game. It's also a rich epic fantasy story in its own right, one which if it was a novel and written well would be one of the most remarkable achievements in recent genre history.

The story is rooted in the two Menders, Juno and Eyvind. Menders are this world's sorcerers, or the closest things. They can manipulate the natural elements, but their greatest success is in pulling shattered and broken things back together again, making them a formidable presence on the battlefield (where they can repair shattered armour and rebuild fallen walls). Somehow Juno and Eyvind have done something to upset the natural order of things, and as the games unfold you gradually tease what it is they have done and how it can be fixed. But the main thrust of the saga is carried by the characters of Rook and Alettee. Rook is a woodsman, a skilled archer, diplomat and negotiator, and Alette is his (somewhat) naive and trusting daughter. When their village is destroyed by dredge, they have to form and lead a caravan of refugees halfway across the continent, along the way allying with other refugees, fighting off their dredge pursuers and learning who to trust and who to hold in suspicion. Key decisions can carry massive consequences: an innocent dialogue choice can kill major characters early in the story (who might otherwise survive all the way to the end of the third game). Choices made early on can determine whether the world survives, dies or falls somewhere between. This is very much a game of choice and real consequence (according to rumour, the trilogy was partially inspired by the writers seeing what happened to BioWare's video game Mass Effect 3, also a complex trilogy with lots of promised consequences which fizzled out at the end with three very similar endings, and not wanting to wimp out again).

It's a beautiful game with a wonderful atmosphere which also works very much as a real work of fantasy. Most fantasy video games use genre tropes but don't really engage with the genre very well (recent honourable exceptions include Tyranny, The Witcher 3 and Dishonored). The Banner Saga has that unsettling and uncanny way of fusing the familiar to the unfamiliar and strange, something which becomes more prevalent as the series continues and approaches its end.

It's also a story that doesn't get too rooted in exposition. A bit like the Malazan saga you are dumped into the story in media res and have to get on with things. Fortunately, the game isn't quite as obtuse and as things unfold you quickly pick up on the basics: the varl are ancient and long-lived, and are also going extinct, as one of the gods created them but forgot to give them any way of procreating (all the varl are male). With the gods all killed in a massive conflict, the varl are doomed to die out. This gives the entire race an air of tragic power as they refuse to go quietly into the night. The dredge are also faceless, remorseless killers in the first game, but some revelations later on make them a far more understandable and relatable species. Like Steven Erikson's novels, a key theme of the trilogy is compassion: behave too ruthlessly or mercilessly, and you may doom yourself, but make just choices and you may win the day. That's not to say that you should be too trusting and not even coldly ruthless when it is really required (the emergence of a powerful rival political faction in the second game creates a huge amount of tension, and their sometimes blatantly corrupt tactics need to be answered by swift action and occasional Littlefinger-esque behind-the-scenes intrigue). Finding the balance is key.

The gameplay is solid. The game is divided into two parts: in one you're guiding your caravan across the landscape, making decisions on when to stop for food, when to make camp and sorting out issues that arise within the caravan, settling disputes and working out how to ration supplies. When you meet enemies, the game moves to an XCOM-style turn-based combat system, where you have to choose which characters to take into battle. Characters gain levels, becoming tougher and more formidable in combat, but the mechanic to level them up is also shared by currency. This leads to tough decisions like whether to level up your fighters to better face a new enemy type that has appeared, or buy more food to make sure the caravan doesn't starve. Later in the trilogy this restriction eases so it becomes more possible to improve your fighters. One awkward touch is that it's possible to turn characters against you, so you may level up a formidable fighter only for them to turn traitor on you.

The worldbuilding is remarkable. A huge map can be studied at any time and it is absolutely covered in locations which can be clicked on for notes on the lore. The world is fantastic and I hope we see more of it in the future. It's also the setting for two other titles of note: The Gift of Hadrborg by James Fadeley is a prequel novel to the series which sets up some of the characters and events. It's been well-reviewed, but I haven't read it yet. Warbands is a tactical miniatures game which, alas, was not well-received on release, which is a shame because the world and game certainly have potential to be translated to a new format.

In summary, The Banner Saga is a remarkable piece of fantasy fiction, a great game trilogy and an example of the genre at its best. It is well worth a look.

The Banner Saga 3

The world is falling into chaos. A wall of darkness advances southwards, destroying or twisting all in its path. The surviving varl, humans and horseborn have fallen back on the human capital, Arberrang, to make their stand, pursued by their former enemies, the dredge (who in turn are fleeing the darkness). But even there they find the pressing need for unity to survive undermined by infighting and betrayal. Far to the north, the band of mercenaries known as the Ravens have passed into the darkness, protected by the menders Juno and Eyvind. Their mission is to find the source of the darkness and destroy it forever...but in the process they must expose their own culpability in all that has transpired.

The Banner Saga is a trilogy of video games inspired by the artwork of Don Bluth, Norse mythology (but not quite like you know it) and epic fantasy. The games blend a decision-making system, where you have to make decisions on who lives and who dies as you guide your caravan of forlorn heroes across hundreds of miles, with an XCOM-esque turn-based battle system, all against a truly epic backdrop. Funded on Kickstarter, the original Banner Saga was released in 2014 to critical acclaim. The Banner Saga 2 followed to even more acclaim in 2016 and now the third and concluding game in the trilogy has been released.

Finishing off a video game trilogy can be a difficult thing to do, satisfying narrative threads built up over many hours of gameplay. Some recent series-closing instalments have been bitterly disappointing, others extremely well-received. Fortunately, The Banner Saga 3 falls into the latter category.

The game is a little different to its forebears though. The previous two games focused on multiple caravans making their way across a war-torn but recognisable landscape. The third one splits its narrative more definitively in two. In one, you have to command the defence of Arberrang, first against the attacking dredge and then against the twisted creatures produced by the darkness as it advances relentlessly. This sequence sees you having to make hard decisions on who lives and who dies, how to handle both tactical issues and political intrigue. It's a delicate juggling act, where the wrong decision can leave major characters who've grown, evolved and levelled up over three games dead. The goal of this sequence is buying time for the Ravens to do their job.

In the second part of the story, the Ravens have to travel through a landscape completely rearranged from reality, a descent into a Hieronymus Bosch painting populated by twisted monsters. This part of the game is inventive and surprising, with major backstory revelations making clear what was a bit opaque in the previous two games and new enemies appearing to be fought and destroyed.

The gameplay systems are much as before. The impending finality of the game means it can be darker and more ruthless than the first two games, with more of a chance of a major character dying for good as a result of your decisions. But the game rarely feels unfair, and if things go really badly wrong there's usually a window to reload your last save if you really don't want to ironman your way through events.

Combat remains as enjoyable as ever, although by this point your characters are at such a high level and Renown (the game's equivalent of EXP, which slightly confusingly does triple-duty as currency and reputation) is so plentiful that they're in danger of being overlevelled. Even the hardiest enemies are now a manageable threat and most battles in the game are now a cakewalk, even at the hardest difficulty levels. This is a far cry from the first game in the series where each battle was a fiendish tactical challenge. There are a couple of difficulty spikes in the battles (particularly in the final engagement), but nothing too objectionable.

At the core of The Banner Saga, though, is its story and its characters. This story has taken our heroes and anti-heroes from bucolic villages through enchanted woods to windswept prairie and into the very heart of darkness. Through it all, the characters have evolved and changed in ways that couldn't be expected. Some people have disparagingly called The Banner Saga a visual novel, and while that's really not true (between your decisions on what happens to the caravan next and the satisfying battle system, there's plenty of choices to be made), it is certainly true that The Banner Saga trilogy is the most imaginative, impressive and compelling fantasy story to appear in any medium of the last several years. It's a great story and Stoic nail the ending, treading just the right path between realistic grimness and outright nihilism, with hope, optimism and humour allowed to shine through.

The Banner Saga 3 (****½) is a triumphant conclusion to an excellent series. It's well-written, excellently-characterised and makes the player feel a real part of the life-and-death decisions made at the end of the story. It is perhaps a little too easy (although the ticking clock mechanic in the second half of the game does restore some urgency to things) and at 8 hours the game certainly isn't the longest, but overall this is a spectacularly successful ending to an excellent series. It is available via Steam for PC now. It is also available as a digital download for X-Box One, Playstation 4 and Nintendo Switch.

BANNER SAGA 3 brought forwards to Summer 2018

Given that delays to eagerly-awaited games are the norm, it's good to see the reverse taking place for once.

Stoic's Banner Saga 3 was originally slated for a December 2018 release. However, a very successful Kickstarter campaign and a larger budget than they'd been expected allowed them to turbo-charge the game's development and it will now be dropping in the summer, possibly June or July.

The game is the concluding chapter to a trilogy that began with the excellent Banner Saga and continued with the also-excellent Banner Saga 2. I am expecting the final game of the three to be also excellent. The series depicts a world falling into annihilation at the hands of a darkness filling the skies and forcing a tidal way of unstoppable dredge to flee into the lands of the humans and their erstwhile giant Viking sometimes-allies, the varl. A mix of tactical, turn-based combat, caravan management which feels like a fantasy version of Battlestar Galactica meets The Oregon Trail and hard character choices with lasting consequences makes for an unusual, rich and atmospheric gaming experience. Hopefully this final game will see the series out in style.

BANNER SAGA 3 hits Kickstarter

Stoic Games have returned to Kickstarter to launch The Banner Saga 3, the concluding part of their Viking fantasy trilogy.

The Banner Saga was launched on Kickstarter in early 2012. It raised $723,000, substantially more than the initial funding target of $100,000. Extra money was put into the game, particularly for more sound, animation and music than originally planned, and, most responsibly, Stoic decided to fund the second game from this fund as well, so The Banner Saga 2 did not require a separate Kickstarter campaign and development was able to flow smoothly from one game to the next.

The Banner Saga was released in January 2014 to a strong critical reception. The Banner Saga 2 followed to an even stronger reception in April 2016. There is even a spin-off boardgame, The Banner Saga: Warbands.

The first two games in the trilogy were both excellent, the second particularly solving some of the problems in the first game. The trilogy so far has had an impressively reactive story, smart game design and memorable characters, along with excellent tactical combat and some fiendish survival decisions. I fully expect the third game to live up to this reputation. Based on Stoic's previous timescales, I expect The Banner Saga 3 to launch in 2018.

The Banner Saga 2

The world is falling into chaos. The gods are dead, the sun is frozen in the sky and a horde of dredge have erupted out of the northern wastes, destroying the lands of humans and varl before them. A great caravan has escaped out of the chaos, but its leaders have learned that the dredge themselves have been displaced by an even greater threat: a darkness that is spreading from beyond the north, consuming everything it touches. The last humans and varl converge of Arberrang, the greatest city in the land, to make a final stand and hope that the threat can be defeated.

Released in early 2014, The Banner Saga was a remarkable game. Using an art style reminiscent of mid-20th Century Disney animated films and excellent, turn-based combat married to Battlestar Galactica-style story of people on the run and having to deal with moral complexities along the way, it was an excellent, original game. It was, however, let down by repetitive, grindy combat and a questionable decision to combine experience points (for levelling characters) and money (for buying supplies and equipment) into the same mechanic, dramatically limiting your ability to progress through the game. It also had a punishingly hard ending, although this was fixed with some post-release patches.

The Banner Saga 2 picks up days after the end of the previous game. The grand caravan has destroyed the dredge Sundr, Bellower, but is still having to flee westwards. The game opens with your caravan escaping downriver by boat. You pick up some new characters along the way and their perspective, helped by a handy "Previously on The Banner Saga" intro, quickly gets everyone up to speed on the plot. The original game started in media res and you were some way into the game before things started making sense, but The Banner Saga 2 is a bit more welcoming in that it sets up the plot and actually resorts to helpful exposition on occasion.

Not long into the game a major event takes place (which is so epic that I refuse to spoil it) and the caravan has to divide into two forces. The new, second caravan is led by the varl mercenary Bolverk and his company, the Ravens, and consists of the more morally dubious and financially-motivated members of the caravan. It's fascinating to play as this group, because they are much more amoral and inclined to act pragmatically, whilst the other caravan (led by whoever survived the final battle in the first game) is more inclined to honourable behaviour. Alternating between the two groups is fascinating. Both have their own troubles to overcome, with the main caravan having to brave a magical forest and political infighting amongst the human clans, whilst the second has to travel through a terrifying underground landscape and confront the true scale of the darkness growing in the north. Both storylines unfold with pitiless inevitability. The story choices you have to make are often hard, and however you proceed there will be deaths and chaos.

Combat is much-improved from the first game. There are far more unit types on both sides than before, and the introduction of the centaur-like horseborn, several new human factions and new types of dredge (including a new Sundr) result in much more varied gameplay than before. There are also new battlefield obstacles that have to be negotiated and the ability to assign characters not in your main party to supporting roles. Combat was solid in the first game, but is absolutely superb in the second. You also get more renown for winning battles, which helps with the balancing the need to level up characters with keeping your followers fed.

As with the first game, it is graphically beautiful and the music is absolutely fantastic. But what this series has done so well is the atmosphere, the feeling of a land that is dying and slipping into oblivion and the last few survivors making a stand against the darkness no matter the cost. Few video games have managed to instill such a feeling of desperation into things (Mass Effect 3 and XCOM occasionally came close), and never so consistently. It's a gripping game that demands "just one more go".

The biggest problem with the game is length. These are low-budget but also low-cost games, so The Banner Saga coming in at around 9 hours in length felt just right. The Banner Saga 2 clocks in at just over 6 hours, which does feel a little too short. The pacing is tremendous and you certainly get your money's worth in terms of atmosphere and replayability, but the short length of the game did feel a little disappointing. But The Banner Saga 2 is the first game since Max Payne 2 (2003) to have such a short length but really sell it quite well. The story also ends on a cliffhanger, but considering this was a planned trilogy from the start, that's not a surprise.

The Banner Saga 2 (****½) is a short game but makes up for that with a gripping story, a fantastic world and tremendously entertaining, conflicted and haunted characters. This is a video game that can stand toe-to-toe with the best of fantasy literature for the world it has created. It is available on PC now and is coming to tablet and consoles later this year.

THE BANNER SAGA 2 released today and why you should play it

The gods are all dead, leaving remnants of their glory scattered all over the world. Three great races - humans, varls (giant Vikings) and horseborn (centaurs) - have survived the downfall of religion only to face a long, grinding war against the dredge, a plague of metal horrors that have emerged from the uttermost north. After years of fighting the dredge and skirmishing with one another and within their own ranks, humanity and varlkind have united...just as the dredge pour out of the north in a horde of unstoppable thousands and the sun halts in the sky. The great cities of the north are destroyed and warriors of men and varl alike have to fleet to survive, guiding thousands of refugees to safety with them. Two great caravans, one on the west coast and one on the east, assemble and attempt to flee to safety.

It's a rich, compelling backdrop for a fantasy narrative, but this isn't a novel. Released in January 2014 on PC, The Banner Saga is a video game that borrows from many that come before it but assembles numerous tropes into something new, fresh and interesting. The strategy side of the game comes in the form of a survival game where you have to make some very tough choices: push your caravan on to the limits of their endurance to reach the next town more quickly, but risk being exhausted if the dredge attack? Do you peacefully negotiate with the ruler of the next town who is skeptical of the news of the dredge invasion, taking up valuable time, or seize his town's supplies for the good of the caravan? Like The Oregon Trail or Battlestar Galactica, balancing survival, prudence, caution and the need for morale-boosting military victories can be tricky and, if you make the wrong choice, the results can be catastrophic.

There's also a more personal element to these decisions. Both caravans are led by generals and heroes, along with a mixture of ambassadors, archers and other personalities. These heroes can take part in direct combat with the dredge, which plays out on an XCOM-style turn-based battlefield. There are some differences to the formula: there is no cover, since fighting is mostly done hand-to-hand, and combat requires breaking through an enemy's armour before inflicting actual damage on them. Your heroes level up, but you have to be careful as you use "renown" to level your characters, buy better gear and buy more supplies for your caravan. Don't concentrate on your heroes enough and you risk falling behind the tougher dredge in combat. Focus on them too much and you may not be able to feed your refugees.

There's also a striking imbalance between the two caravans: the one heading along the coast to the west is mostly a military force, comprised mainly of varls whose skills on the battlefield are immense. The one in the east is comprised mainly of humans, who are great for hit and run, fast attacks and have ranged archers, but can't go toe-to-toe with the tougher dredge as easily. The game alternates between the two caravans until they come together to defend one central location.

It's a rich, compelling game backed up by some excellently-written characters, such as reluctant archer-turned-leader Rook, the sneering human prince Ludin whose arrogance hides a genuinely brave warrior, and Hakon, a skilled and mighty varl warleader whose gruff confidence belies his uncertainties at being a leader. On the darker side of things are heroes who say the right things and do well on the battlefield, but whose ambitions and true nature are much darker. Treachery is never too far away in The Banner Saga. But this is also a remarkably beautiful game, with a striking, rich art style and an utterly fantastic soundtrack.

The game is the creation of Stoic, a studio of ex-BioWare writers and anyone who's familiar with the Mass Effect or Dragon Age series should be aware of their ability to force the player into a position where they have to make tough decisions. However, the two Banner Saga games are these guys with the EA-branded training gloves of BioWare firmly removed. Choices this time around are harsher, the consequences grimmer if things go wrong and there are times when there is no optimal solution, only the one that will save the largest number of people. Don't expect too much in the way of exposition, either: you are thrust into the midst of a desperate struggle for survival and the explanations for why and how things are happening will only emerge in quieter moments between battles.

The Banner Saga wasn't a perfect game, with some apparently random difficulty spikes in battles and a final engagement that could be almost unwinnable, but later patches solved these problems and The Banner Saga 2 has addressed these problems with more enemy and ally types and the introduction of a whole new race, the horseborn, who can provide formidable support on the battlefield.

The Banner Saga and The Banner Saga 2 are both available on Steam now. The Banner Saga is also available on Apple and Android mobile devices, as well as X-Box One and PlayStation 4. The Banner Saga 2 should also be making its ways to those devices in the future.

THE BANNER SAGA 2 announced

Stoic Games have formally announced The Banner Saga 2, the logically-named sequel to The Banner Saga.

The original game was one of the most interesting released in 2014. It was visually striking and bleak in tone, depicting the flight to safety of two convoys of refugees from opposing sides of a Viking-esque fantasy continent. The game was notable for its near-total lack of exposition, dumping you into its world and letting you work out what's going on only gradually. There was also some fine turn-based combat and some brutally unexpected plot twists, not to mention a rather unforgiving difficulty curve and some rather bizarre game mechanics. Still, it was a very solid game, especially for a debut title from a new studio.

The game was always planned as the first in a series, so it is surprising that the sequel was not announced sooner. However, Stoic ran into legal problems earlier this year when King Software, the makers of Candy Crush Saga, sued Stoic on the grounds (of questionable sanity) that they owned the word 'saga'. Fortunately, logic (or a finely-tuned realisation that a PR backlash apocalypse was imminent) prevailed and King dropped their claim, allowing Stoic to proceed with the series.

The Banner Saga 2 will be released in 2015 on PC.

The Banner Saga

Monstrous creatures called dredges are invading the kingdoms ruled by both men and the giant varl. On opposite sides of the continent, two separate forces have to fight their way through the dredge hordes and guide both their armies and the civilians under their protection to safety...if they can find any.

The Banner Saga is the debut game from Stoic, a new development team made up of ex-members of BioWare. In contrast to BioWare's big, epic 3D RPGs, The Banner Saga is a 2D game which mixes tactical, pause-based combat with an epic story and making decisions which can dramatically alter who lives and who dies in that story.

Gameplay is undertaken in two modes. In one mode, your caravan is on the road and has to cope with limited supplies, dwindling morale and disputes within the convoy (a bit like The Oregon Trail). Morale can be boosted and characters upgraded by making camp, but this eats up valuable supplies. You can purchase more supplies at towns (and sometimes from passers-by) by using Renown, but this is also the resource used to level up your heroes. The game thus forces you to make harsh decisions: use Renown to increase your characters' combat skills at the expense of civilian lives in the caravan, or concentrate on getting as many people as possible to safety, but perhaps storing up trouble by not preparing your heroes for the tougher enemies who appear later on?

Once battle is joined, the view shifts to an isometric battlefield where you can order your heroes to move, engage in combat or use special abilities, a little bit like XCOM but with no cover mechanics. The number of abilities is gratifyingly large and varied, and even basic combat is made more tactical by the presence of armour mechanics where you have to break enemy armour before you can inflict significant wounds. The game also intriguingly combines hit points and strength: by damaging an enemy, you also make them weaker and prevent them from inflicting as much damage on you. Two fairly basic ideas, but they make a big difference on how combat operates. Particularly gratifying is the way it makes combat more unpredictable, with an apparently invincible enemy suddenly being neutralised by inflicting moderate amounts of damage to make his attacks less lethal.

The storyline is - eventually - fascinating, although it's perhaps presented a little too obtusely. The game starts in media res and the game makes few attempts to explain what's happening. Then, just as you start to get a handle on things, the story switches POV to a whole bunch of other people a thousand miles away, and then you have to adapt to them. The two caravans are rather different in tone, with the first one consisting mostly of varl who are being extremely tough in combat, whilst the second consists mostly of civilians and is more dependent on archers, missile attacks and avoiding damage.

The story, which takes on Malazan levels of confusion before becoming clearer, ends up being quite gripping. There are twists and turns, including a bloody betrayal that even George R.R. Martin might think is a bit much. Depending on your story choices, you may not encounter the same situations with events unfolding differently depending on what you do.

The biggest talking point about the game is the artwork, which is fantastic. It's deliberately meant to evoke Disney movies from the middle of the last century with clear, distinctive lines and colours. The minimalist musical score by Austin Wintory (the same guy who did Journey) is also extraordinary, with just the right about of brooding atmosphere. The game's limited budget means no voice-overs (aside from infrequent appearances by a narrator) but the writing is strong enough that this does not matter.

On the negative side of things, The Banner Saga could perhaps do with a bit more variety in combat. There's a very small number of enemy types and constantly fighting those few types soon gets repetitive. The game's save system is also poor, with it often being unclear if the game saved the last time you quit or three tough battles before that. Finally, the game's Renown system really doesn't make sense (how does Renown work simultaneously as reputation, currency and skill points?) and massively limits how you proceed through the game. Whilst it's good that the game is quite harsh in places and you can get into unwinnable situations, it's frustrating when such situations arise not from your own actions but from questionable design decisions.

The Banner Saga (****) is a beautiful, atmospheric and refreshingly different kind of game, a tactical, turn-based RPG by way of a strategy game, mixing genres and styles from everything from XCOM and Battlestar Galactica to roguelike games and steampunk. Some iffy design decisions eventually become frustrating, but this is still very much a game worth playing. It is available from Steam now.