Tres el juego (Game blog the third, 'The Banner Saga')

On this fine week I played 'The Banner Saga.' I actually started playing this about two months ago and picked it up again for this blog. I really enjoyed this game. The art is super nice, the music fits well, the story and setting are enjoyable and immersive, and the gameplay is really cool.

The story follows two main characters down different paths that eventually meet (not that I played that far) and you make decisions and fight battles along the way. The combat takes on a table-top like strategy gameplay, while the rest of the game consists of cutscenes, dialogue boxes, and as I mentioned before, beautiful artwork.

There are a lot of 'choice situations' throughout this game. If you don't know what a choice situation is, it's basically a point in the game where a player must make a decision with two or more outcomes. They also tend to have some motivation, or rather the player has a reason to care about the choice, but they may or may not realise that they are actually making a choice.

In The Banner Saga the player usually realises that they are making a choice and that their decision may have consequences. The game gives you enough information to speculate about what the outcome of your choice may be but not enough to know exactly what's going to happen. Because of this there is a certain weight to your choices and a hope that you made the right, or optimal choice.

One example is when an member of your caravan gets heavily drunk and starts making a scene which the rest of your caravan members do not appreciate. You have the choice of punishing him with varying levels of seriousness or just letting him off the hook. You are given enough information in this decision to know that if you let him off the hook then other members may become angry and leave, but punishing him too harshly may make your followers fear you.
Other choices, like whether to let your daughter join a fight with you or not, make the player feel like the story could be significantly changed by making a wring move. I think this is a brilliant effect because it keeps the player engaged and feeling as though they are driving the story even when the battles aren't taking place.

I think that the choices in this game are really important to the story and the experience. I think it is important that the player realises they are making a choice, because that give weight to their decision, and because of the limited information, there is a sense of anticipation over the outcome which keeps the player invested.

In all the gameplay is very well planned and lends itself perfectly to the style of story being told by the game.

Hamsizzle out.