![the banner saga 1 controlls the banner saga 1 controlls](https://images.pushsquare.com/screenshots/74090/large.jpg)
Other stats are equally valuable, such as Break, which determines how much damage a character can do to Armor, and Willpower, which can be spent during a battle to increase movement speed, activate abilities, or provide a one-time boost to an attack. Almost every attack and skill in the game can target one of those two main scores, making each strike an important decision: Do you weaken their attack power while bringing them closer to death, or help a teammate set up an even more powerful strike in the future? Each combatant has a Strength stat, which serves as their attack power as well as their health and an Armor stat, which mitigates damage done to Strength. The combat which serves as the game's centerpiece is deceptively simple. When you're in the room, you feel totally embedded in The Banner Saga, as the entirety of the game's development - storyboards, concept art, milestone calendars - is plastered across its cardboard-thin walls. It's a unique place for a team to operate out of, but they could be onto something. The three founders of Stoic Games (Thomas, Jorgensen, and technical director John Watson) ran me through the intricacies of The Banner Saga during a visit to their studio a one-room, retrofitted goat shack, sandwiched between a beer garden and farmer's market on the north side of Austin. "So we said, 'Let's focus on combat first.' As we were tackling it, we thought, 'This is a blast, let's offer this to people while we continue making it.' The Factions game is basically our attempt to roll in content, art content and combat that will be in Chapter 1, into the game early so people get used to our world.
![the banner saga 1 controlls the banner saga 1 controlls](https://images.pushsquare.com/screenshots/74089/large.jpg)
"This combat was the most delicate system we had to put in the game," Jorgensen added.
![the banner saga 1 controlls the banner saga 1 controlls](https://i.ytimg.com/vi/V-ZiKCaZ0aw/maxresdefault.jpg)
"When we formed the company, I don't think we planned on doing multiplayer at all," Thomas said. The focus on competitive combat was not in the initial design for Banner Saga, Stoic creative directors Arnie Jorgensen and Alex Thomas told Polygon. This mode allows players to collect troops, create six-strong battle parties, and duel against an opposing army. Instead, the initial, November launch will only include a free-to-play competitive version of the title called The Banner Saga: Factions. When Banner Saga launches later this year, it won't include a single-player campaign - that mode will be in development until early next year. That much is evident at first blush just by looking at the game's stark, bright characters and backdrops - an art style inspired by Eyvind Earle's work on the original Sleeping Beauty - you can tell that it's not like most other strategy games, which feature busy battlefields and even busier user interfaces.īut when you get down into the guts of Banner Saga, and dissect the brains upon which its strategic battles are precariously built - that's where the real differences lie. Stoic Games' Kickstarter-funded strategy RPG The Banner Saga is cut from a different cloth than its predecessors in the genre.