The Banner Saga Post-funding Update #32

A new post-funding Kickstarter update has been released for The Banner Saga, and this time it’s a Q&A with Stoic’s Alex Thomas. Here’s a snip:

The release date on the project said November, now it’s February and you’re just releasing some multiplayer thing I didn’t even want. What gives?

This is the biggest issue we want to address.

When we set a launch date of November, we didn’t know if we’d match our funding or not. If I’m completely honest it was probably too optimistic, even if we had only gotten the minimum funding. We should have known better, and I apologize for that mistake.

Just as importantly, we made 7x the funding we expected. We made the game exponentially bigger. Imagine a tv show that gets picked up for 7 more seasons, or a book that gets made into a 7-part series or a 20-minute indie film being given the funding to turn it into a 2 hour feature film. All of these things take a long time. And hopefully, every one of these examples means a much better end result.

…

Will I miss out on anything in the single player game if I don’t play Factions?

No (except having fun).

Now, that said, we’ve put a lot of thought and effort into Factions. It’s not just a mindless one-off from The Banner Saga. Factions takes place in the same world, in a city that is part of the single player game and when events happen in single player they’ll affect the world in Factions. As we create new system for the Saga we’ll be testing them through Factions, so things like playing against the computer will appear in Factions as we work out the code, and the story will all tie together.