1) The Orchestra: This is something that we feel is extremely important to the whole mood of the game. It's not every day you get to work with a composer like Austin and we felt we really needed to take as much advantage of that talent as we possibly could. *Aside from that, music is not something we can simply 'add' as we become more profitable.* The music we start with in chapter 1 is what we'll live with for, hopefully, years to come. The game is already in a great state from your support and music was the final nail we feel needs to be hammered home.
2) The Most Content on the Most Platforms: There are some people who are commenting that they will raise their pledge since we're taking the game to XBLA and PSN, but there are others who say that they are't interested in a port to a console that they don't plan on having. Please notice that we started the title with "The Most Content...". This is a 'content' goal with a nice side effect of porting. This much money would afford us the ability to hire programming help for the extra quest related content AND the ports. To be clear, the story and design for the game would be great as-is (better than we were initially hoping for!), but we have some ideas on how we'd like to add to it if possible.
*As above, this is not something we can shoehorn in after we ship chapter 1*. You will not find any extra purchasable DLC in this game, we want whatever we can put in available to whoever who buys the game, period. We'd like the release to have as much polish and content as we can develop, then we'll be moving on and concentrating on Chapter 2.
3) The Player Owned Upgradeable Cities: Now we're talking! As excited as you all are for this feature it barely scratches the surface of how much we want to get it in the game. It's been a big idea for where we've wanted to go with the multiplayer game since we first started designing the Banner Saga. The idea was too big to hope for even a week ago. There are people asking 'how does this fit into a story where your caravan is on the move during a horrible time of destruction?' The multiplayer and single player games take part in the same world at the exact same time. The single player game has to do with the story of how a father and daughter along with their kin, friends and countrymen do their best to get through a very trying time (understatement). The single player game will, in very interesting ways, effect the multiplayer experience (not offering spoilers right now). The multiplayer game will be centered around a group of characters that you recruit, upgrade and name and the fact that they're located in a city will make perfect sense to the larger story. Now, here's the thing, *as much as we love this idea it IS something that we can add as we get more funding from Chapter 1*. We have it in a stretch goal because we'd LOVE to ship chapter 1 with it already hooked up and in the multiplayer game, but if we can't get there at this time then it's something we'll just have to save up for and hopefully add at some future date.
The way the Banner Saga was developed was we started with a story, then we worked on gameplay and lastly we decided on an art style. I've said this before, but if you like the art style I can only imagine that you'll love the story and gameplay, which is what got us all excited about the endeavor in the first place.