The Banner Saga Interview

RPG Codex recently had the opportunity to grill Alex Thomas from the newly formed indie studio Stoic, and as you might have expected, the topic of conversation is their upcoming viking-themed strategy/RPG, The Banner Saga. Here’s a sampling from the freshly posted Q&A:

To what extent is The Banner Saga a strategy game and to what extent is it a role-playing game? Where do you see the line between the two genres?

AT: For the most part, I’ve always seen rpgs as always being a pretty equal mix of combat and role-playing. If you look back at games that we have nostalgia for like Baldur’s Gate, Fallout, Bard’s Tale; any of the classics, they had a pretty even ratio of adventuring to fighting. We wanted to get that same feel but have a more strategic combat system. Our travel system (the scenes from the video where a caravan moves across a landscape) is gameplay, and an extension of adventuring. During travel events will happen, sometimes leading to dialogue, and the decisions you make can come back and change things in the future, but can also bleed into what happens during combat. Picking up a band of warriors in your caravan can affect what happens in a fight. We’re shooting for a balanced amount of travel, events and combat.

In general, what makes a strategy game “deep” in your view, and where should RPG elements come into play?

AT: Alright, now we’re getting into some dangerous territory. I can already see getting some strong feedback on this one. Our biggest prerogative in making a game with strategic combat, is that it’s truly strategic. In some turn-based strategy it’s just stat comparison and grinding, and that becomes outright dull. In fact, it’s practically the opposite of strategy. Chess or Go, on the other hand, has no stats and is the pure essence of strategy. I’m not saying we’re going to be the next chess. What we are aiming for is a balance of these things. We have a system in place that I don’t think has been seen much. It requires finesse in placement, using the board and understanding the strength of weaknesses of all your pieces, but it also has an element of rpg with a few stats and abilities that need to be taken into account, and characters that upgrade over time. I can’t wait to start showing it in the near future.