The Banner Saga, and the importance of choice and consequence: A review

Can you believe I had a whole trilogy of video games in my collection that I never finished? Heck, I only beat the first Banner Saga game the other day, despite owning a copy of the entire trilogy for over three years. How did this happen, you ask? It's all because I made a rather amateurish mistake. I was a fool. An absolute moron. I fell for the classic blunders. I accidentally deleted my save data in the first game right before the final boss, forcing me to play through the whole game again. And this game isn't short! The first game alone is about 10-15 hours long. And this is on top of being a very story-focused game with branching storylines based on the choices you make. And in my frustration at my own incompetence, I cheated and followed a walkthrough on the most "optimal" choices. And you know what? I actually kind of hate the fact I did that. Not only did I spoil myself on some very big story moments, but with the benefit of hindsight, trying to make the "best" choices defeats the purpose of choices in branching narratives. And because of that frustration, the moment I got back to where I was, I shut off the walkthrough I was following and played the rest of the game blind. And I actually enjoyed it more when I did that. Let this be a lesson. Don't look up what the best and worst choices in games are, trust in yourself and roll with what life gives you. There's no save-scumming in real life. We have to live with our decisions, and hope that we made the best deal out of a bad hand.

 

But since I have you here, let's review Banner Saga. The first game in the trilogy, to be more specific. Developed by Stoic Games (an independent company that I believe is made up mostly of former BioWare employees) and published by Versus Evil (yes, that's the name of the company), the trilogy is a story-driven strategy role playing game heavily inspired by Norse Mythology. The gameplay across all three games stays relatively the same. You routinely switch between fighting monsters and bandits in combat encounters, making choices in Choose-your-own-Adventure style Visual Novel sections, and deal with randomized events while traveling the roads. What's interesting about these games is that similar to BioWare's Mass Effect trilogy, if you get the trilogy all on the same system, and if one game detects save data from the previous games, then the story will update to reflect your choices. Yes, decisions made in Banner Saga 1 can potentially have direct consequences all the way up to Banner Saga 3.

Our story begins with a narration telling us that the Gods are dead. Just straight up dead. It's Ragnarok time, baby. What killed the Gods? No idea. Anyway, the Gods are all seemingly dead, and with their absence, some weird stuff is starting to plague the lands. Namely the sun has stopped moving. Or I guess the Earth stopped rotating, but shh, the characters in the setting don't know how space works. Because they're all Vikings. Anyway, the only reason why society hasn't been melted alive by the sun yet is for the simple reason that they are also trapped in an eternal winter. So the coldness of the winter balances out the heat from the sun. At least that's how I interpreted the situation. Anyway, humanity managed to largely ignore the weirdness of a Godless world and carry on with their lives. They even manage to forge an uneasy alliance with a race of horned giants called the Varl. But when an ancient race of stone warriors called the Dredge start waking up and rampaging, it's up to a certified Viking Dad named Rook to lead his family and people to safety. Oh, and a Varl soldier named Hakon meddles around in human-Varl relation politics while desperately trying to keep his people from going extinct. It's a bleak, yet fascinating concept for a world. One where acting like a traditional hero may not work out every time. Oh, you're trying to stop a riot? They'll ignore you, because why should the rioters listen to a stranger who's only been in town for a day? You might even need to do some morally questionable stuff just to survive, like mugging a farmer and stealing his crops just so your caravan can have enough food to last the rest of the journey. 

The campaign switches between Rook's perspective and Hakon's perspective every other chapter. The former is fairly light on combat, but puts a much stronger focus on resource management. And while managing your resources is still important in Hakon's chapters, they focus much more on combat. Which makes sense for the characters. Rook is a single father trying to keep his clan out of trouble, only resorting to violence when left with no other option. Hakon meanwhile is a general and warrior. He's been smashing dredge, bandits, and enemy soldiers for centuries (Varl have life spans so long they themselves don't know how old they can get before dying). And by process of elimination he eventually becomes Warrior-King of the Varl (since all the actual Varl royals are dead), so he now has even more responsibility to deal with. And part of that responsibility is beating up the bad guys.

Something you'll be doing a lot of in both campaigns is traveling. The travel sections (which to be honest, make up most of the runtime) are apparently inspired by Oregon Trail. The caravan travels to their destination automatically, only stopping if you give the order to set up camp and rest or if you get interrupted by a random event. Like I said earlier you have a few resources to manage. And bear with me, the resource stuff is probably the most complicated thing in the game. The caravan's population is divided into three categories. Clansmen, Fighters, and Varl. Clansmen are regular civilians. Farmers, merchants, musicians, that kind of thing. Fighters consist of soldiers and mercenaries. And Varl are, well, a race of horned giants. Clansmen do not partake in combat directly, but some events will allow you to train them into becoming Fighters. Fighters will fight in certain events (known as Army Events) but cannot be controlled directly. And Varl work the same way as Fighters, but have a higher chance of actually winning battles when left to their own devices. It's kind of hard to overpower a 12-foot giant armed with bison horns and super strength. Varl are rarer than Fighters, however, and there are very few chances to recruit Varl for your caravan. So if you get the option, you'd be a fool to turn away Varl recruits. 

Note that the caravan getting completely wiped out apparently does NOT result in a game over or end the campaign prematurely. It does effect morale though. Morale is a resource that gives named party members such as Rook and Hakon a boost to their Willpower (which can be spent to either cover more ground when moving or to enhance the power of an attack) at the beginning of a combat encounter. Positive morale increases the Willpower boost, negative morale decreases it. Also, do you really want to be known as the clan leader who let his subjects starve to death until only his closest comrades remained? So even though you *could* ignore the caravan stuff completely, there at least is the morale mechanic to incentivize you to keep everyone alive. How do you keep them alive? With Supplies. Supplies represent everything a Viking clan needs for survival in a post-Ragnarok world. Food, clothing, medicine, and of course, mead. The larger the population of the caravan, the more quickly you'll burn through supplies each day. How do you get more Supplies? Some random events reward you with Supplies based on your choices, but the simplest solution is to just buy Supplies from a market (every named city or village will have a market available). Which brings us to the final major resource, Renown. Renown is earned either by acting heroically in events (such as choosing to save a baby from a burning tent yourself instead of having someone else do it for you) or by killing enemies. But here's the catch. Renown is used not only to buy supplies, but also to upgrade your characters. So you have to strike a balance between keeping your party members up to date, and making sure your caravan has enough Supplies to last until you reach the next town. And sometimes you can go a really long time without a town to restock on supplies. Renown is quite possibly the most important resource in the game, and you should obtain it whenever possible.

In regards to the story, I adored it. The only characters I disliked where the ones that were intentionally written to be despicable, such as Onef, the shady masked guardsman who will gladly double cross you the moment you stop being useful for his schemes. I loved Rook and his interactions with his daughter Alette. I loved the jolly attitude of Gunnulf, the Varl sell sword that joins Hakon's crew at the beginning of the game. I loved Egil for being a total dork who was surprisingly competent on the battlefield. But I think my favorite character would be Iver, the stoic Varl war hero who hoped to leave his violent past behind him. I especially liked Trggvi, the eccentric half-insane spearman that gives surprisingly good advice, even if most of what he says doesn't make sense at first. Like how he says (paraphrase) "Never trust a man in a helmet. If he hides his face he's hiding something else." And sure enough, the one thing all the characters that are destined to betray you have in common, is that they all hide their faces behind masks and helmets. Thanks, Trggvi. Your advice saved the caravan from Onef's swindles. Fun fact about Trggvi, he actually wasn't in the game originally. He was a bonus character given to people who donated to the Kickstarter campaign of the first game back when launched back in 2015. However, the Banner Saga Trilogy collection makes all the Kickstarter-exclusive content, such as Trggvi, available in retrospect. Just a neat little bit of trivia.

Although I did have the final major story choice spoiled for me, this was the one time where having knowledge of what was coming both better and worse. I would have preferred not knowing the impact of the choice. But at the same time, knowing the consequences somehow made the decision easier. Not from a mechanics perspective. Because the impact is roughly equal for both options. But rather, the decision was made from a role-play perspective. Wait... Roleplay in a roleplay game? It's more likely than you think. The remainder of this paragraph is a really big spoiler (along with most of the paragraph after this one), so feel free to skip this part. First a little context. Rook's caravan has been hounded by the Bellower, leader of the Dredge, and has both Rook's group and Hakon's group cornered in the coastal city of Boersgard. The Bellower is stated to be immortal, and cannot be killed by normal weaponry. Juno, a powerful and mysterious sorceress informs Rook that the Bellower has one weakness; A Silver Arrow. The Silver Arrow by itself will not kill the Bellower, but it will remove its immortality, allowing normal weapons to harm it. Rook and Alette are both talented archers, but you only have one shot. Who should be given the task of shooting the Bellower? The Bellower will always return any attack dealt its way with twice the pain, and with that ability in mind, whoever fires that arrow is doomed to perish afterwards. 

(We're still talking spoilers here) The consequence of this decision is whoever you DON'T choose to carry the Silver Arrow will become the protagonist of Banner Saga 2. And to the testament of the writing, the choice is heartbreaking no matter what. If you choose Alette to fire that arrow, it would be Rook finally letting Alette be independent and learning to not be such an overprotective parent, only for Alette to get killed right after making the shot. If you choose Rook to deliver that arrow, Alette has to watch her father make one last sacrifice for the good of everyone before dying a hero's death. I sat at that screen for a good while, contemplating on what to do. I've been told that Rook's campaign in Banner Saga 2 is a delightfully tragic tale of revenge and grief, of a man torn apart by losing everyone he ever cared for. Alette's campaign still carries the tone of grief, but focuses more on Alette living up to her father's legacy and becoming a heroic leader in her own right. Both of these campaigns sounded like the best kinds of emotional rollercoasters, and are ambiguous enough to where there really isn't a right or wrong choice. But considering Rook has been doing everything in his power to protect his family and his friends, I felt that Rook would rather die than put any of his loved ones in harm's way. Especially when faced with the equivalent of a demon king. Also, in the wise words of King Théoden from Lord of the Rings, "No parent should have to bury their child." So I had Rook fire that arrow in my playthrough. The Bellower was weakened, sure, but it still managed to crush Rook's ribs before the rest of the party could put it down for good. We won, but it was a bittersweet victory. The epic Viking funeral for Rook's body was just the cherry on top of the tearjerker sundae. And to be honest, I actually prefer this ending to the "Alette dies, Rook lives" ending. I don't know, it just makes more sense to me, both thematically, and in terms of representing the kind of sacrifices that a (good) parent will do for their child. 

Okay, spoilers over. Overall, the story was great. Great characters, great scenes. And great stress for when things inevitably go wrong. That's kind of the main takeaway from Banner Saga. The world is broken, and things will go wrong. So it's up to you to make the best out of a bad situation. Again, I don't think its possible to do a No-Death run of the game, at least not without breaking something in  the game's design. Even if you make it all the way to Boersgard, with every possible named recruit and a maxed out caravan, that spoiler-filled ending choice will result in a casualty. Even if you follow a walkthrough you'll experience hardship and sorrow, but you got to move on. The world doesn't stop to let one man grieve. And you know what? That is a harsh, but much needed lesson. Not just for video games, but life in general. Banner Saga got me hooked. I'm too emotionally invested in the struggle of Rook's motley crew as they try to outrun the apocalypse. And I can't wait to see how their story continues in the second and third games. And I can finally play Banner Saga 2 without feeling guilty about seeing the story out of chronological order!

The combat is (thankfully) the simplest part of the game. You select your party members and deploy them in six-person teams. Combat is turn based, with you navigating your group on a chessboard-like grid. You and the enemy alternate turns. This means you move someone, the enemy gets to move one unit afterwards. The alternating turn order is abandoned when you enter Pillage Mode, which activates when there is only one enemy left. When Pillage Mode triggers, the alternating turn order is ignored and you can move everyone on your team consecutively. This basically lets you dogpile the last enemy and clean up the battle swiftly. Each party member is assigned a class. The classes vary for humans and Varl.  For example, humans can become archers and attack from a distance, but Varl cannot. Varl can become Strongarms and push friend and foe alike all over the grid, but humans cannot. Varl are giants, and to represent their large size, a single Varl takes up 4 tiles on the grid, while humans only take up one tile. This means that while Varl are stronger in melee than humans (for obvious reasons) they don't do very well with chokepoints. Feel free to mix and match humans and Varl and try out all kinds of strategies. 

The most unusual thing about the game is how it handles health and damage. Namely, your health stat and your damage dealing stat are one and the same. If you have 10 hit points, you can deal 10 damage in a single attack. But in return, you can only survive an attack if it deals less than 10 damage. You can improve your character's survivability with Armor (duh). Armor will absorb attacks meant for your actual health gauge, but it can be broken if you concentrate on it exclusively. The more damage your armor takes, the more damage your real health will take in future turns. Additionally, you cannot deal damage to an enemy at all if their armor is higher than your health. Example, if you have 10 hit points but attack an enemy with 11 armor, nothing happens because their armor is just strong enough to negate all the damage. And every time you attack an opponent, you can choose whether you want to attack their health directly for focus on breaking armor. So basically, break their armor first, then finish them off.  I really like the combat, and I found myself making choices, not just in Banner Saga 1 but throughout the whole trilogy that would cause a combat encounter partly because I just liked the combat that much. That, and winning battles is the quickest way to earn Renown, which is basically the lifeblood of the campaign. 

One thing that I find odd is that party members do not die if their health hits zero. They get an "Injured" status condition that forces them to start with a reduced health gauge for all successive battles, until you rest in camp long enough for that character's wounds to heal. On the one hand, its nice knowing that you can afford to be more aggressive in Banner Saga than in similar games like X-COM or Fire Emblem, because party members in these kind of games are usually gone forever if their health hits zero. On the other, the knowledge that the only thing that can get party members killed are the story choices winds up making you even more paranoid about whether or not you've made the right decision. For example, while keeping spoilers to a minimum, there are no less than four different choices that can potentially kill off Egil, and one of those choices doesn't take effect until two chapters after you made it. Admittedly, Egil being so easy to accidentally kill off was part of the reason why I used a walkthrough in the first place, since in my first playthrough, Egil had his skull smashed in five minutes after I recruited him. And really, the only reason I would even suggest looking up a walkthrough is just to keep Egil alive. Like, all the other choices that can kill off characters are fairly obvious. Gunnulf struggling to pull up a wagon full of treasure that's slowly sliding off a cliff by himself? It's obvious if you don't help him or tell him to stop that he'll pulled down with the wagon and fall to his doom. Prince Ludin is thinking about charging into the Dredge invasion by himself? He'll get swarmed and overrun if you let him go. But most of the choices that can kill off Egil don't even hint that he's remotely related. For a early-game spoiler free example, Rook choosing how he wants to save Alette from a Dredge sneaking up behind her somehow determines if Egil sacrifices himself or not to save Alette for you.

In regards to the presentation, this game is beautiful. The artwork is hand drawn, and when the landscapes aren't being ravaged by the Dredge menace, they are simply gorgeous. The character designs are also distinct, instantly recognizable, and just visually pleasing. The animations in combat are weighted and lively. Like when Gunnulf attacks an enemy, you can feel all the power and force he is putting behind his greatsword just by how he lifts it up slowly before slamming it down on his foes. Or how Rook slams his hatchet into the ground to free up his hands so he can use his longbow. Or how when Trggvi takes damage, it knocks his spear away, and he spends a moment scrambling on the ground to pick it up again. The animation is reminiscent of 70's-90's Disney animation, and that is the highest praise you could grant something being done in traditional style.

The sound and music is also top notch. From the way weapons made a loud clang as they tear through armor, to the sound of the bowstrings getting pulled back before letting loose, the sound effects are top notch. The music was composed by Austin Wintory (of thatgamecompany's Journey fame) and it is dang near perfect. It fits the theme of surviving a Nordic apocalypse to a Tee. With triumphant horns signaling your victories, and somber trills of wood chimes highlighting the tragedy in this world. Add in occasional vocal tracks that can sound anywhere from a heroic ballad to a heartbroken lament. Also voice acting! It's... barely in the game at all. Part of me wishes there was more voice acting, but I understand that Stoic Games is a smaller team, and voice acting is deceptively expensive. As such, almost all the dialogue is present in silent text, usually with some kind of background music so that the game isn't completely quiet. So be prepared for a lot of reading. That said, the little bits of voiced dialogue (mostly Rook and Hakon narrating their experiences) are a welcome surprise. I also like how all the voiced dialogue (however little there is of it) gives the characters distinct accents that I believe are supposed to be a recreation of actual real life Nordic accents. And any fantasy setting where they give the characters distinct accents instead of something that sounds vaguely American is an immediate plus in my book (no offence to American English, I just want variety in my fantasy voices).

In conclusion, The Banner Saga can best be described as THE emotional roller coaster game. It can be equal parts stressful and fun, tragic and triumphant. The artwork and music is some of the finest I've ever seen and heard, and the story and world are fascinating to behold. All I ask of you, is that you play the game relatively blind and make choices based on you feel in the moment is the right call, and just roll with whatever tomfoolery the game throws at you. Now, if you already finished the game before and just want to see the alternate routes (or if you're determined to keep Egil alive as long as possible), feel free to look up a walkthrough. But for me, the real magic comes from trying to salvage a situation that perhaps could have gone better if I was smarter or paid closer attention. Which reflects the main focus of the story. A group of people trying their best the make the most of a post-apocalyptic world. And as I said, I've become emotionally invested in the characters. With that being said, Banner Saga gets a "Oh, this? This is Beautiful!" rank from me.