Codex Interview RPG Codex Interview: The Banner Saga, 2D Turn-Based Strategy RPG

[Multi-headed Cow]

Hmm. Depending on how the Kickstarter pans out I might chip in a bit. Especially if the price for a Steam key is cheap. Still has some Bioware stink around it but the interview was surprisingly decent and bumped my interest in the game a bit. Was surprised to see Dark Legions get namedropped too, have my jewelcase of that sitting right in sight.

 

[villain of the story]

At this point, that stinky BioWare heritage is a major cause for concern to me. Besides the other things.

But I love the art so I'd support a fellow artist making a game. But he's really dumb for dropping out of college if you ask me.

 

[MMXI]

I understand what you're saying here. I admittedly short-handed to "role-playing" to mean exploration, conversation and story. As for Bard's Tale, it always felt to me like the ratio of exploring to combat was equal. Mapping each level on grid paper and finding clues or the various stores and review board were just as prominent to me as the combat. I see what you mean though.

I understand that. It's just that so many people these days seem to think that RPGs are all about clicking dialogue options to express their character's personality instead of actually doing things that best suit their character's statistics. If RPGs do entail role-playing then the role-playing should be ingrained in every action you take, including those within a combat scenario. So basically, combat and role-playing should be one.

I suppose I should have said "it was the first game I had played...". In a game like Shining Force you knew the scope of the gameplay within the first few fights. It was greatly enjoyable but didn't change much aside from certain gimmick levels. In FFT as you unlocked new characters and learned new skills the gameplay would change, and the flow of combat changed as the enemies adopted new strategies, in addition to some variation in the gameplay like the deep dungeon. While I love both games, one stays fairly unchanging at a very surface level and the other has some depth that takes time to uncover. For the record, I understand most western strategy games had a lot of depth from the start but as I said we've often compared our gameplay to two games in particular: Shining Force and FFTactics.

Thanks for clarifying this. I do understand what you mean and I can agree with you that combat in Final Fantasy Tactics felt like it was constantly evolving throughout the game. I think that this was partly down to the fact that you gained combat options steadily. In many JRPGs each of your characters, regardless of class, learn more abilities as you go through the game. In traditional western RPGs the abilities are dumped heavily on to spell casters while the rest of the characters are left with a couple of basic attacks. I think this is down to the heritage of the two genres. Traditional western RPGs were rooted heavily in wargames, with the "realism" of magic giving more options than a sword and shield, thus making spell casters more important, powerful and versatile than "ordinary" soldiers. This remained in western games up until Diablo/MMORPGs started influenced everything, where each character type needed to stand on their own feet.

Unfortunately we didn't cover this in the interview. The Banner Saga will be released (on PC and Mac) first as a free multiplayer game while we continue to develop the single player campaign. You can't play the single player campaign cooperatively or trade characters back and forth with the multiplayer mode. The multiplayer version will let you fight other players and build up unique teams. There will also be a narrative mode which lets you play by yourself and build up your characters solo before taking them into a competitive game. We decided to release the combat as a free standalone because we think it'll be fun and we'd love to get some early feedback on the combat system. Plus, why not?

Sounds like a good idea. Hopefully for you guys it helps with publicity and gets people excited and invested in the game to increase interest in the single player game. So who does the player play as in the single player? Will they be given a protagonist to play (such as in Mass Effect and Dragon Age II) or will they forge their own (such as in Fallout)? How much freedom does the player have in expressing the protagonist and which existing game would best compare to your game in this aspect?

In the single player campaign each character has a name and their own abilities, and are not defined by a class. In the multiplayer game you make your own character who has a class defined by what they do, and you give them whatever name you want. This system made the most sense to us.

So the single player has a classless system then? Sounds good. But when you say that characters have their "own abilities", does this mean they have unique abilities that no one else can get? In other words, will you see characters cast spells and do moves that you have no clue about? Because the disadvantage of this is that it's difficult for the player to work out how to counter them.

 

[hiver]

The Banner Saga will be released (on PC and Mac) first as a free multiplayer game while we continue to develop the single player campaign.

Smart move.

 

[Crooked Bee]

King of Dragon Pass. Final Fantasy Tactics. (Which isn't the same as "regular" FF, just FYI.) All that sounds really good to me. So I'm definitely in.

Plus, it isn't really fair to say Alex's answers didn't cover the mechanics at all -- the flow of combat, the travel mechanics, the resource management and the choices involved in it, it's all there. I didn't get the feeling the interview was about feeling. It looks like the team has some solid concepts and goals already. Naturally, I'd love them to elaborate on the uniqueness of the combat system they've come up with, but if they only want to reveal it later, it's their call. Nevertheless, I believe the answers did a good job of introducing us to the way the game as a whole is going to work, and if they deliver, this is shaping up to be a very good SRPG.

I also enjoyed the following bit quite a lot, but couldn't cram it into the OP:

The game's description says the player will be able to "make decisions with real consequences." What kind of choices and consequences are you aiming for? Will they go deeper than Bioware's typical consequences that may affect the way the story is presented, but do not have any significant effect on the gameplay or the game world, and in what ways? Could you share some examples with us?

AT: Absolutely, I'd love to talk about this and oddly enough this is the first interview where it has explicitly come up. One thing we know as developers from BioWare is how expensive it can be to create real choices in dialogue and in the story. Just one branch can double the content you create and only half the audience will see it, so it becomes extremely expensive.

When we designed The Banner Saga we created it based on this idea of changing the direction of the story. The lynch pin to our plan is that the world is coming into ruin and certain things are going to happen whether you're there to witness it or not. Whether you can change the course of the story depends on our core gameplay. How many people do you save in the caravan? How many fighters are with you when a city is besieged? That may affect whether the combat is just tricky or outright impossible, but the game doesn't end just because you lost or saved a town. You keep going. How do you respond when one of your main characters wants to leave the party? That may change not just your combat team but whether a whole group of people is willing to follow you or not, which later affects what happens at a critical point in the story. By making decisions for not just one character, not just one small party or even one town but an entire society we're really opening up the number of ways the story can change. An ultimately that's what it comes down to- what happens to the people around you, not faceless strangers in a generic kingdom.

We're tying this all together in our gameplay systems. Things that happen in dialogue can affect the morale of the caravan, or change the amount of supplies you have. Your caravan may travel at a slower speed and instead of coming across a particular event may discover it in a different state. This new event may alter the difficulty of your next combat, and how you do in battle may come back to the morale of the caravan, and whether civilians remain safe or are driven off. You may come to another event and find that you don't have the people you need to succeed. So on and so forth. It was our foremost goal to make sure each system feeds into the next in a meaningful way.

All in all, I feel it has turned out to be a pretty great interview. Way to go, me. (And Alex Thomas, of course. )

 

[Crooked Bee]

UPDATE: The Banner Saga Kickstarter is now live: http://www.kickstarter.com/projects/stoic/the-banner-saga

Check it out.

(I've also edited the OP accordingly.)

 

[DarkUnderlord]

Start the Banner Saga fund drive~

$2,500: The gods may be dead but they're not forgotten. BECOME A VIKING GOD in the actual game. We'll create a unique deity with your likeness and work with you on a great name and backstory for him or her. You'll appear in the game in various forms of effigy and be written into the lore, where all may see. Includes all previous rewards. Email us for more info.​

We need a Viking God version.

 

[villain of the story]

King of Dragon Pass. Final Fantasy Tactics. (Which isn't the same as "regular" FF, just FYI.) All that sounds really good to me. So I'm definitely in.

Plus, it isn't really fair to say Alex's answers didn't cover the mechanics at all -- the flow of combat, the travel mechanics, the resource management and the choices involved in it, it's all there. I didn't get the feeling the interview was about feeling. It looks like the team has some solid concepts and goals already. Naturally, I'd love them to elaborate on the uniqueness of the combat system they've come up with, but if they only want to reveal it later, it's their call. Nevertheless, I believe the answers did a good job of introducing us to the way the game as a whole is going to work, and if they deliver, this is shaping up to be a very good SRPG.

I also enjoyed the following bit quite a lot, but couldn't cram it into the OP:

The game's description says the player will be able to "make decisions with real consequences." What kind of choices and consequences are you aiming for? Will they go deeper than Bioware's typical consequences that may affect the way the story is presented, but do not have any significant effect on the gameplay or the game world, and in what ways? Could you share some examples with us?

AT: Absolutely, I'd love to talk about this and oddly enough this is the first interview where it has explicitly come up. One thing we know as developers from BioWare is how expensive it can be to create real choices in dialogue and in the story. Just one branch can double the content you create and only half the audience will see it, so it becomes extremely expensive.

When we designed The Banner Saga we created it based on this idea of changing the direction of the story. The lynch pin to our plan is that the world is coming into ruin and certain things are going to happen whether you're there to witness it or not. Whether you can change the course of the story depends on our core gameplay. How many people do you save in the caravan? How many fighters are with you when a city is besieged? That may affect whether the combat is just tricky or outright impossible, but the game doesn't end just because you lost or saved a town. You keep going. How do you respond when one of your main characters wants to leave the party? That may change not just your combat team but whether a whole group of people is willing to follow you or not, which later affects what happens at a critical point in the story. By making decisions for not just one character, not just one small party or even one town but an entire society we're really opening up the number of ways the story can change. An ultimately that's what it comes down to- what happens to the people around you, not faceless strangers in a generic kingdom.

We're tying this all together in our gameplay systems. Things that happen in dialogue can affect the morale of the caravan, or change the amount of supplies you have. Your caravan may travel at a slower speed and instead of coming across a particular event may discover it in a different state. This new event may alter the difficulty of your next combat, and how you do in battle may come back to the morale of the caravan, and whether civilians remain safe or are driven off. You may come to another event and find that you don't have the people you need to succeed. So on and so forth. It was our foremost goal to make sure each system feeds into the next in a meaningful way.

They told us about the concepts, it's hard to say it says anything about mechanics at all. I'm extra skeptical because of their BioWare heritage, because of mentioning combat and roleplaying seperately which is a strong indicator of the former, and all of those concepts fall in line with it also. Believe it or not, there are people out there who would expect a 2D TB Dragon Age complete with romances from their descriptions. You have a camp in DA which is in theory a caravan too and the developers are already ex-BW.

But anyway.

 

[Crooked Bee]

They told us about the concepts, it's hard to say it says anything about mechanics at all.

I assume you mean combat and resource management mechanics specifically. Well, they said it's going to be FFT + KoDP at its basis + a bunch of other inspirations. Does that sound like Dragon Age to you? Also, DA's camp wasn't about resource management at all. Sure, you may think they're just making shit up and throwing names around, but I don't think so. They seem to be quite passionate about SRPGs, and DA definitely isn't one. They've also explained what "tactics" means to them, and what the flow of combat (and character progression) in the vein of FFT means to them, and while you're free to disagree of course, that doesn't resemble DA in the slightest.

Personally I'd love to see another take on the SRPG genre that promises at least some depth to combat and even takes resource management and some C&C into account.

 

[Metro]

Start the Banner Saga fund drive~

$2,500: The gods may be dead but they're not forgotten. BECOME A VIKING GOD in the actual game. We'll create a unique deity with your likeness and work with you on a great name and backstory for him or her. You'll appear in the game in various forms of effigy and be written into the lore, where all may see. Includes all previous rewards. Email us for more info.​

We need a Viking God version.

You read my mind. Just add a hornet helmet... well... he already has horns...

 

[Aeschylus]

I have to say, that's a really nice poster. I probably won't get it, but still. I'll definitely pledge what I can later.

 

[Metro]

This is sweet. $600 tier, though. At $250 I'd probably get it.

 

[Krraloth]

Personally I'd love to see another take on the SRPG genre that promises at least some depth to combat and even takes resource management and some C&C into account.

This.
If you mix and match all of the above tastefully you can get a very deep and interesting game.
I personally feel the use of resources in strategy games a bit unrealistic. It's just a matter of gathering them, there is no real possibility of having less resources and having consequences because of it, or because you chose to give different priorities.

I like the idea of being able to keep playing even if you fail to save a town.
Will pledge.

 

[Angthoron]

BECOME A VIKING GOD in the actual game. We'll create a unique deity with your likeness and work with you on a great name and backstory for him or her. You'll appear in the game in various forms of effigy and be written into the lore, where all may see. Includes all previous rewards. Email us for more info.

VIKING GOD CODEX. Hm, that'd be interesting.

 

[Crooked Bee]

I'm going to donate at least a $50, so we'll be able to submit our own crest design into the game for a Codexian faction symbol to represent our multiplayer and singleplayer team:

Be a real part of The Banner Saga! At this tier we'll provide you a template and you provide us with YOUR OWN CREST DESIGN which we'll put into the actual game. In both single and multiplayer, players will choose a family crest that represent them; this is your chance to get your family or guild symbol into the Banner Saga (must meet a few reasonable decency guidelines - see the FAQ). Includes all previous rewards.​

(I'm pretty sure we will be playing this game in multiplayer, after all. But even in a SP campaign it'd be fun to have.)

I'll create a separate thread for it after the Kickstarter ends (and hopefully reaches its goal). After all, we have some artists here, so we should be able to come up with something appropriate for The Banner Saga's gameworld.

 

[Angthoron]

I'm going to donate at least a $50, so we'll be able to submit our own crest design into the game for a Codexian faction symbol to represent our multiplayer and singleplayer team:

Be a real part of The Banner Saga! At this tier we'll provide you a template and you provide us with YOUR OWN CREST DESIGN which we'll put into the actual game. In both single and multiplayer, players will choose a family crest that represent them; this is your chance to get your family or guild symbol into the Banner Saga (must meet a few reasonable decency guidelines - see the FAQ). Includes all previous rewards.​

:p

I'll create a separate thread for it after the Kickstarter ends (and hopefully reaches its goal). After all, we have some artists here, so we should be able to come up with something appropriate for The Banner Saga's gameworld.

Really, Bee? Really?

 

[Crooked Bee]

Really, Bee? Really?

YES WE CAN

I trust you guys

 

[Metro]

Their goal is pretty low at $100k (I'm assuming they completed a lot of the game already) so I think they shouldn't have much trouble doubling their goal.

 

[Ulminati]

Hahaha, wooooow guys. Classy.

Welcome to the Codex. We call most things [noun]-fag around here. Just ignore it, it's part of our rustic charm.

Heck, if someone doesn't call you a faggot around here, you're not trying hard enough. If it turns out you really are one, we'll promote you to staff!

Anyway, the game looks promising. I chipped in for one of the lower tiers. If a detailed walkthrough of the combat mechanics surfaces before the kickstarter is over (and I like what I see) I'll probably bump it up to $50 and see if I can talk a fellow artfaggotry friend into drawing a badass crest to submit.

So. Combat mechanics, go! I want to see a complete game turn, a summary of unit statistics, an attack resolved with modifiers and example(s) of a special ability in use! :D

 

[Angthoron]

Really, Bee? Really? :p

YES WE CAN

I trust you guys :p

Well if we'll have a Codex drive for it, I'm game.

 

[Spectacle]

They told us about the concepts, it's hard to say it says anything about mechanics at all. I'm extra skeptical because of their BioWare heritage, because of mentioning combat and roleplaying seperately which is a strong indicator of the former, and all of those concepts fall in line with it also. Believe it or not, there are people out there who would expect a 2D TB Dragon Age complete with romances from their descriptions. You have a camp in DA which is in theory a caravan too and the developers are already ex-BW.

What do you want from them? The exact formula for calculating follower loyalty? There's as much info about the mechanics in this interview as in any other game dev interview I've read.

Also, Dragon Age with turnbased tactical combat would probably have been a rather good game, despite the faggy romances.

 

[Crooked Bee]

Well if we'll have a Codex drive for it, I'm game.

The cool thing is, that's just the $50 tier, so we don't even need a donation drive for that. My own individual donation will cover it. I'm not an artist myself and don't really care about having my personal crest in the game, but having a Codex crest would be nice.

Too early to discuss that in detail now, though.

 

[Commissar Draco]

The End of the Word is near indeed if 3 games worth playing are being developed... Will look if Donek and Bronek will leave me some Potatoes to spend.

 

[Krraloth]

Yeah, the era's changing and all that.
Better games.

 

[Ulminati]

Chewbot

Perhaps you could be pesuaded to answer some concrete questions about combat mechanics? Inquiring minds wish to know.


Is the turns initiative, side or Phase based?
For clarification, an initiative-based turn, every unit has an initiative and move in initiative order. For concrete examples, see most rigid d&d implementations, such as Knights of the Chalice or Temple of Elemental Evil. In a side-based TBS, each side moves all of their units in turn, but the specific order in which they move their units can change. An example of this would be the old XCOM games. finally, in a phase-based game, every units actiosn are planned, then resolved simultaneously before the game pauses again and a new set of commands are inuput. The most recent example I can think of is Frozen synapse.

Do units have a facing? Will it matter?
Will units have different defense/ability values depending on what side you attack them from? will it cost action points to rotate your unit? Will d&d-style flanking, where having a unit on either side of an enemy to get bonusses be in effect?

Will units get weaker as they take damage?
Most games have no mechanical defference in the offensive/defensive values of a unit at full health and a unit at 1hp. I was rather fond of shadowrun 4Es (pen&paper) mechanic of a cumultative penalty to all actions for every 3 wounds received.

How many fancy special abilities can we expect on our units?
None? (Poo ) 1 ability on some units? 1-3 abilities on most units? spellcasters with half a dozen utility spells?

In an average, late-game large battle, how many units will each side deploy?
Are we talking 5-10? dozens? Full regiments of hundreds?

Will there be any mechanics in place to encourage not bringing the same 5-6 guys on every mission or taking as many units as you possibly can along?
Will there be any incentive to try for a harder mission with fewer, less experienced people?

How large will the battlefields get?
10x10 squares? 20x20? 50x50? 100x100?

Will units be able to equip items/runes/doodads/whatever to modify their stats/grant new/different attacks/abilities?
If so, will every unit be able to do this or only some? Can you give a concrete, statted item that might be in-game?

Will there be a lot of aura/AoE/ranged attacks, or is the game mostly melee?

How many types of terrain will there be?
Will standing on/moving through them alter a units offense/defense stats or movement cost? Or will they just be cosmetic?

Will there be any in-combat objectives to claim, or is this strictly last man standing wins?
If there are on-map objectives, will they give any bonusses/penalties while held?

What resources will the player have to manage?
You already mentioned people in the caravan. How about food? Weapons? Supplies? Morale? Mead? Metal ingots? Which of these can be gained/lost in combat?