The Banner Saga Interview

Followings the game’s nomination for the “Excellence in Visual Design” award at IGF, Gamasutra has taken the chance to interview Stoic’s Alex Thomas about The Banner Saga and the state of the indie development scene. Here’s a snippet:

Where did the concept for The Banner Saga come from?

A turn-based strategy game is something we’ve always wanted to work on, since growing up as kids. We had an interesting idea for a unique combat mechanic, and a good outline for a story.

Early on we realized we wanted something a little different from the usual medieval fantasy of knights, elves and dragons, and thought a viking setting would fit well within the context of the story. At the time, this sort of thing wasn’t all that common — it was before Skyrim and the History Channel Vikings show. Seems like the setting has become really popular. That said, the game we ended up with is so much better than the game we set out to make that we’re constantly amazed at what we were able to crank out with such a small team.

Speaking of what you set out to make, how does The Banner Saga released in 2014 differ from The Banner Saga you pitched on Kickstarter in 2012?

I’d have to say there’s almost nothing left of the original concept, especially in terms of scope and design, and I mean that in a good way.

The story has gone through at least five major revisions, while the combat and usability has had major changes over a dozen times. Travel gameplay has changed significantly. I guess the important thing is that design is an iterative process. If you sit down and write a design doc for the game and think you’re done, you’re going to have a crappy game. It’s a good start, then you implement the systems, play them, and change them over and over until they all work together harmoniously. In that regard, the most valuable thing Kickstarter allowed us to do was [work through] a ton of iterations, instead of having to settle on the first thing we thought of.

Specifically, I’d say we went from a game that would have had maybe 8-10 different characters, been 5-6 hours long and would have been more about your caravan in general to a game with 25+ characters, 12+ hours long and a hell of a lot of character development and branching decisions.