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.