The Banner Saga Interview

There’s a new The Banner Saga-themed short interview with the developers at Stoic over at Gaming Bolt, with questions concerning the original concept, reception, and development of the title. Here’s a snippet:

Ravi Sinha: The Banner Saga shares more than a little in common with the likes of Dragon Age and Mass Effect with regards to the choices players make but you chose to overhaul the norms of RPGs in favour of having one’s choices follow them through till the end, even when they would face loss. How easy or difficult was it to implement this system and how did it go about influencing combat and story-telling?

Alex Thomas: Making all of your choices matter was probably the hardest thing I had to do as a designer and writer. We designed a game from the ground-up based on making choices, not the other way around. Each system had to have hooks that we could manipulate through the choices you make so that they have weight. We had to have a cast of characters large enough that you could lose allies without making the game unplayable.

We had to have compelling stories for upwards of 30 individuals, and they had to be unique and fun in combat, too. The number of things we juggled to make this game work was pretty overwhelming at times. What a lot of people don’t realize is that the more complex your story and the choices, the more simple the game itself needs to be. When you look at older games and wonder how they managed to have compelling gameplay that seems to elude modern games, it’s because they didn’t require 3D art, voice acting, complex animation or massive amounts of cinematics.

Spotted on RPGWatch.