The Banner Saga 2 Preview

The folks at IGN had a chance to play a demo of The Banner Saga 2 and published their impressions of it just ahead of E3. Here’s a brief excerpt of the changes made to the encounter design in the game:

Combat variety was a bit sparce in the original, but The Banner Saga 2 has made clear efforts to remedy that, some of which are present right from the opening tutorial battle. There are new units on both sides of the battlefield, giving you a greater number of problems to solve, and a deeper toolbox to solve them with. Dredge Skullkers are mutated hounds that hunt in packs, turning invisible and surrounding characters only to strike in ferocious unison. The Dredge Direguard on the other hand is a support unit that can turn parts of the battlefield harmful to your army while buffing his allies. Take one out though, and the rest of the Dredge scatter. Do you deal with his buffed cohorts, or do you take him on directly to try to end things quickly? Decisions like this make combat more interesting and challenging.

Another variable is how your decisions during story events affect combat scenarios. Towards the end of my demo, i had to chose how my caravan would meet a sudden Dredge ambush, and each option resulted in a different starting situation for the fight. In fact, my choice got an important character killed, though their sacrifice wasn’t in vain; they had cut a swathe through the enemy forces, giving me a significantly easier time than I normally would have had. This is still one of my favorite things about The Banner Saga: not only do your decisions matter, but you never know how they will matter, or to what degree. It shuns the gamey convention of telling you exactly what will happen before it does, leaving you to go purely on instinct, and to suffer the tension of discovering what your actions have wrought.