The Banner Saga RPG

The Banner Saga is an epic role-playing game inspired by Viking legend. Hand-painted landscapes portray a world eerily suspended in perpetual twilight. Cities and towns begin to crumble into chaos. Heroes abandon their hearths and homes to traverse the snowy countryside, gaining allies along the way to help battle a strange, new threat.

Decisions have consequences; wise choices must be made when conversing with possible allies during intricately crafted dialogues. Turn-based strategy brings tactical challenge in hand-animated battle sequences. With visuals evocative of the golden age of animation, The Banner Saga brings skillfully crafted art, story and strategy to gamers waiting to re-experience classic adventures and tactics.

It’s hard to review fantasy games because, in all honesty, there are so few worth playing. The Great Beast, World of Warcraft, retains eight million subscribers, and like orcs from Mordor, its soulless mimics clamor to fill every crack and crevice left in the fantasy market. Countless virtual landscapes have been lost to this invasion of dull-eyed cartoon characters and giant yellow question marks. After a decade of struggle, some have even forgotten what fantasy games used to be. The dragonborn escaped long ago to Skyrim. The rest remain, hidden, waiting.

Sometimes, around the tiniest fires, on the darkest nights, there are whispers of Neverwinter Nights and Baulder’s Gate, Planescape: Torment and Gabriel Knight: The Beast Within. The Golden Age of fantasy games gives the refugees hope. More people hear the whispers and make their way to the tiny fires, finding more warmth in the stories than the flame.

Time passes and a new whisper spreads. Rumors of a kingdom called Numenera to the East, founded by a king of royal blood and advised by the great sage Rothfuss. But the people know that Numenera is far away. Terrifying shrieks of “Lok’tar!” continue to resonate from outside the wood, so they huddle closer to the fires and remain hidden. The cult of the Pillars of Eternity grows, but they, too, cannot offer salvation. Only tales of a promised land. The refugees have heard it all before.

One day a man enters the wood and catches sight of one of the refugees before he can hide. The stranger is enormous; he is the tallest, strongest man the refugee has ever seen. He has a great beard and horns jutting from his forehead.

“Sæll. Hvað heitirðu?” he says.

The refugee shakes his head and wonders how fast the giant can run. There comes a great sigh, then a whistle so loud that the birds and bush animals take flight. A second man appears from behind the giant, much smaller, closer to the size of the refugee, but his eyes are bright and of all things, he smiles.

“We’ve been searching for you for a long time,” says the man. “How many of you are there?”

The refugee shakes his head again. He does not know.

“Call me Rook,” says the man. “Lead us to the others.”

A ripple of murmurs and scattered shouts follows Rook as he walks into the camp and sets his bow on the stump of a tree. It is a sad camp, far sadder than Rook expected.

“Listen,” he says, and the refugees quiet. There is not one sound. It takes a moment for the people to notice the missing shrieks of “Lok’tar!” When the moment passes some break down crying while others flock to Rook, who leaps atop the stump.

“I know the promises that have been broken here,” he says, “how many developers have lied to you. But I am no Gríma Wormtongue, here to poison you with false hope. That Age has ended. The Banner Saga is not an MMO. It is not pay-to-play. You don’t need a subscription. It’s a single-player game with real characters and dialogue, in a world based on Norse mythology. It was funded on Kickstarter, free from corporate directives, by fantasy fans like you. Now you can join us or stay here, but tell me, when did you last see the sun?”

Rook lets the question linger as he steps down onto the mossy ground and turns to leave. “My caravan waits beyond the trees. We’ll help you make your way.”

When the refugees exit the wood, they see a thousand standards strewn about the ground, far off into the horizon. Aion, Rift, Guild Wars 2, Tera…their armies had, for a time, retreated. A giant red banner, as long as the line of refugees, flaps in the wind above their heads. After a few miles Rook passes out cloaks and a horn sounds twice, fast, off in the distance. Rook and the giant share a look but before they can go one of the refugees grabs Rook’s arm.

“What was that?” he asks, quivering under his cloak. “Are you being followed?”

“Bellower,” says the giant, his voice like gravel. He trudges on to the front of the caravan.

“Look to the sun,” says Rook. The man does and feels a chill deep down his spine. The sun is black, frozen at its zenith. “You’re in the Banner Saga now. All of you,” says Rook, meeting the eyes of the refugees gathering around him. He moves to leave, pauses, turns back.

“How many of you can fight?”

– – –

I hope you enjoyed that indulgence, or at least forgive me for it.

The Banner Saga is the best fantasy game I’ve played in a very long time. You play as a number of characters across a world abandoned by the gods. Chased from your home and running from the Dredge, an enemy beyond number flowing out of the North, you’ll live one day at a time, trying to protect your loved ones and often failing. There will be decisions you won’t want to make, options that simply aren’t fair, yet, weary hero that you are, the burden of failure is yours to bear. There is so much more to tell, and I want to spoil it all, but for your sake, dear reader, I won’t.

Fantasy fans paid for the development of The Banner Saga via Kickstarter and they got a game that focused on artwork over graphics, story over action, and character instead of archetype. However, old-school fans should know that there aren’t lists of stats to tinker with, or frequent item drops. Some of you will be turned off by that, but The Banner Saga has its own style of gameplay that’s just as compelling. You can easily test out the combat and character types by downloading the free multiplayer game, The Banner Saga: Factions, on Steam.

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