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

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Goddamn, I squandered my budget for donations on Wasteland 2... Maybe next month...

$60k so far.

I wish the developers would show more love for Richard's William animation. Top notch animator and director. But the art is really nice, nonetheless.

Sincerely:

The Frian Bargo.

The thing is that you have a month to do the Kickstarter... once a game is funded it will be pretty hard to not join in when you know they already have the money.

Clearly The Banner Saga will reach well beyond their 100K needs.

If Dead State also goes with Kickstarter I am sure they can raise the 100K quickly, and then even the naysayers will have a hard time staying away in the last few days... $10 is just nothing in the larger scope of our lives.

Going to be hard to regret spending $10 in a year from now. Won't even be an afterthought on that expenditure.

Alright, let's do this. I think it's only fair that if we're going to give hard and fast concrete answers to the questions, we reserve the right to change our minds in the future (for example, losing the dialogue wheel to go with full replies). That said, we're not going to change our minds unless we think it improves gameplay.

Each character has his own initiative and moves in order, similar to FFTactics. We're experimenting with abilities that let you change the initiative for some characters in a tactical way.

Facing does not matter. This is a personal preference that you may not agree with, but we don't feel that it's a fun game mechanic.

Units will get weaker as they take damage. We'll talk more about the exact mechanics of this in the future.

Not all characters have a consistent number of abilities across the board, but all playable characters will have at least 2.

This one gets a little tricky without giving away things that may or may not be a surprise. I can say that combat will never be in the hundreds. We want combat to feel more personal like FFTatics, but we've come up with a way that let's you make use of all your characters without having to bench anyone. Sorry if this is still vague and mysterious.

See above.

Battlefields in the single player campaign will be unique to the combat and the image shown in our video/screenshots is the smallest it will get. We can also make them any shape we want. The player will be able to pan around the screen and the camera will automatically return to whichever character is currently active. It's unlikely they'll ever get to huge sizes like 100x100 but they'll never be smaller than a chess board.

We are very interested in doing this. It was a feature that we had to cut due to scope reasons but the Kickstarter campaign may change that. Don't hold me to it, it's very much up in the air right now.

Some characters will be melee, some will be ranged, some will be area or utility. We're trying not to lean in any one direction but in our early free release most characters will lean towards melee. For the most part they will stick to one of these roles because we want to encourage building a team with complementary skills.

The tiles can often be affected by abilities that change their properties in ways such as causing damage, changing movement distance or blocking movement, amongst others that we're currently testing. As for biomes, we'll definitely have more than just snow.

In the single player campaign, combat can often have special objectives such as get all your characters to a certain location or survive a certain number of rounds. In multiplayer matches we will have have last man standing for now, with plans to roll out new modes over time.

This all relates to the single-player campaign: in battle, health if your primary resource. You won't instantly heal up after battle, it will take time, which can be a problem if you have wounded characters jumping back into battle too soon. Outside of combat, time is an important resource. You can camp and rest, healing your characters but spending too much time may cause events in the world to change. As you travel, your caravan will consume supplies and the morale of your caravan will affect its speed. There aren't a lot of very specific resources such as metal ingots but the resources you do have to manage all wrap back into other gameplay systems. It's up to the player to decide what their top priority is based on how they want to play the game. For example, I may choose to move slow and steady but stay in good health and good spirits, and have to deal with tougher events. On a second playthrough, I may move at breakneck pace but have to deal with characters who are exhausted and an angry caravan. Some players may find a good balance.

Thanks for answering those questions.

Sounds interesting.

I hope the Kickstarter money liberates you to pursue your goals.

Damn, it seems there's suddenly a lot of promising games coming up. And this is only half a year from the planned release (of the singleplayer), how long has this been in development so far?

Thanks for the answers! Although I know that some things are on flux, and prone to change, I appreciate that you took your time to answer most of them. There are some harsh words in this thread Chewbot, just don't take this too personally, as this is a site were you could get a lot of good feedback in several parts of the game. Just take the criticism like a Viking!

Sincerely:

The Frian Bargo.

Yeah, I've never see it work correctly, in most games you end up going to the enemy back, attacking, and them he goes to your back and attacks...every goddamn turn.

I hope then that you get a good chunk of money out of kickstarter and implement this, as it would really make all the diffence IMHO.

Crooked Bee

you should totally make this your avatar

I definitely shall pledge something for the banner saga bros. however, the wasteland kickstarter has bled me dry and I still have to drop something for the kkk fund.


is that how I should mention another user in a post? how the fuck do you do it?

$81k -- nice to see they'll hit their mark early.

Seriously that's that simple? FUCK! I always did that whole [ USER=bro number] bro name [/USER]...*sigh*

Viking rape is always tasteful.



Chewbot: I have to admit, every time I see you comment, I get more excited for the game. You're certainly doing a good job in talking the talk. Particularly excited about units losing effectiveness the closer to death they are.

I do have a question of my own if you've got the time to answer (assuming you're able to):

From what I can gather, the premise of the game seems to be gathering a group of people, assuming them under a common banner and travelling in what is essentially a nomadic adventure. Will there be other such travelling bands controlled by the AI as dynamic entities like you'd see in STALKER faction wars or even as more static story based entities? If so, what kind of interactions would the player be able to have with them?

The pitch video for this one stinks. Even more so when you read what the money is for.

To me it is very clear that the target is set low for one reason: if you don't get to your target, you don't get any of the money. They are using this as a way to sell pre-orders, not to get a project off the ground. Even Braid cost more than $100,000 and it was far more limited in scope than this proposal. That might be fine, if they were honest about it. The buzz words and name dropping used in the promotion of this one makes me sick. It would have been nice if kickstarter worked for more than a month before people started corrupting it.

Exaclty! Besides, it's better for everyone to give the developers money during development so they can make a better game. If we give $100k now, they are using it on the game I we to play. If we give them $100k after release, we are giving them money for the next project, which I may or may not enjoy, or just plain profit that will go to their pockets.

Gaaargh, why do I have to be so broke this month? This looks really promising, so far.

You missed my question on the last page about how the main character is done..

Really? I've never found death spirals to be particularly exiting in tactical combat. All they do is to make front-loaded damage and spamming ranged attacks even more important than usual.

I think it could be interesting if the effects of injury were different for different characters. i.e. some guys are all

Raargh!!!
While other guys are all "Ouch, I have sprained my ankle, -5 damage!"