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GameStar.ru recently posted a new interview with Stoic's Alex Thomas about the company's upcoming strategy role playing adventure game, The Banner Saga. The interview includes information about the game's Viking theme, Kickstarter funding, and some more details about gameplay elements.

The story is going to advance via gameplay elements such as taking over or losing cities, victories and defeats in battles, your army's structure, etc. How is it going to look like in the end? Gameplay events could start repeating themselves after all. And you even stated that this approach to storytelling is more convenient than classic story branching. Isn't that a bit too complicated? From the developers' perspective, that is. Or you'll end up simply sending players on numerous missions and that'll be the end of?

The core gameplay of the single player game has less focus on managing large armies and taking over cities. Instead, you'll have a huge caravan of peasants traveling with you, and your combat teams will be relatively small. One of the more exciting aspects of the game to me is that you'll hop between different groups of people experiencing different parts of the same event, on the same timeline. The timeline is the important feature, in that the decisions you make don't change the whole world around you, but change how you experience the world. Things happen whether you are there or not, and you might be able to influence them. This lets us create a single storyline without over-complicating the story, but still gives players the sense of involvement. Multiple playthroughs should produce very different results.

GameStar.ru: The Banner Saga Interview

The Banner Saga (add to watch list)

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