The Banner Saga 3 Interview

The folks at GameWatcher have managed to interview John Watson, Stoic’s Technical Director. The interview talks about the final part of The Banner Saga, as well as Stoic’s plans for the future. An excerpt:

GameWatcher: In the past, there’s been sort of an Oregon Trail-style of management in the journey where you manage supplies and make decisions for the sake of a large group as the journey happens. How does that core mechanic adapt in these two new situations?

Watson: There really is no caravan like there was in the past. On one end, you’ve got Alette and Rook’s group surviving Arbarrang and the coming Darkness and the chaos that comes with it, inside and out. It’s on them to figure out how to come out alive against all odds and see Juno and Eyvind come through on their promise to stop the Darkness. Meanwhile, Juno, Iver, and Eyvind’s group is far smaller and concentrated then anything seen in the first two games. There are no refugees or supplies to manage on their end this time. It’s just a collection of heroes traveling through the Darkness. The only thing protecting them from the Darkness is Juno and her powers that are creating a dome of light to keep them safe, so protecting her as they travel is crucial as they race to the source of it all. It’s like a life boat mixed with a pressure cooker as they disagree about what they should do in this race against time. And then you’ve got the Darkness threatening all around them with creatures that have been twisted by its influence. It makes for a very tense situation on multiple angles despite being a smaller group.

GameWatcher: As we’ve arrived at the end of what was obviously a planned trilogy for a long time, is there anything to keep a player from jumping right in this late? Obviously there’s a lot of story you’ve told leading up to this point with some amazing twists and turns, but can someone with no experience in the Banner Saga pick up here and be guided to a level plane with experienced players?

Watson: Yeah, in a way. There’s going to be a tutorial. It’s not going to be integrated into the story as it was before, but rather it’ll be its own option on the main screen where new players can get acquainted with the combat and veterans find refreshers on most of the systems. As for the main campaign, we treat this trilogy of like seasons of a television series, even to the point where we do a sort of “previously on” recap to get everyone up to speed with what’s going on. A lot of stories in games, television, movies, and print drop you in the middle of what’s going on and guide you to where you need to be. Obviously, we encourage everyone to play through the full trilogy to grasp the depth and connection to the characters, choices, and stories that led here, but we also provide players that just want to jump in with the tools to choose important events from previous games and get started here in Banner Saga 3 if that’s what they want.

GameWatcher: In the past, we’ve seen quite a few strategic options on the battlefield such as the ability to destroy obstacles, flanking bonuses, landmine-like pitfalls, and more. Is there anything new that Banner Saga 3 brings to the battlefield for players to recraft their strategies?

Watson: There’s several important things we’re implementing to add more strategy to the battlefields. One of the main thing is more interactivity on the battlefield. We’ve had attackable obstacles that can be destroyed to clear paths, but this time we’re talking about objects with which you can interact. We have a lot of freedom to play with this one and change up the battlefield. You can kick over an urn to spill fire onto a few spaces or throw a switch to activate a pitfall that cuts off part of the battlefield. What’s more, enemies have just as much access to these things as the player, so it adds a new angle to consider from both an offensive and defensive point.

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GameWatcher: With the Banner Saga coming to a close, have you thought about what’s on the horizon for Stoic? Is this truly the end of this world or do you see yourselves returning and expanding upon it further in the future?

Watson: In terms of the Banner Saga world, it’s very rich, and I imagine we would love to return to it at some point even after Banner Saga 3 is done. There’s a lot of world building in this trilogy and we left a lot of the history and certain events offscreen. The world is rich enough that we can take on things that are happening parallel to this trilogy, before, or even after the events players know. That said, we’d probably let the series rest for a bit and let the audience get hungry for the next thing. The main thing we’ve considered for the future is something I mentioned earlier. We’re interested in doing something in a competitive, tactical combat capacity. We certainly haven’t sat down and drafted any ideas, but it’s most certainly something we’re all interested in and something we’d probably try to pursue given the opportunity. It would be a new IP, something that would allow us to avoid stagnance, try new things, and flex our creativity beyond what we’ve been doing. We also had a stretch goal for a motion comic for Banner Saga 3. We didn’t reach that one, but it’s still something we want to do. To be honest, we’d love to do something in the vein of animated shorts or episodes, but that’s another matter that would take a lot of consideration in cost, time, and who we would work with to make it happen.