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The Banner Saga Kickstarter project by Stoic [Ended, 723K funded]

Alexios

Alexios

Cores, shaders and BIOS oh my!
Kickstarter link

The Banner Saga stretch goals:

graph3.jpg


We've gotten a lot of questions about what we're going to do with extra funding, now that we're so far over our goal. First and foremost, we want you to know that, as you can probably tell, we are overjoyed to have gotten this far and beyond happy to make the game with what we've got. There are a handful of things that we never thought we'd get close to and if you agree that they're worth the extra push we'd be ecstatic to make it happen! Here's the chart:


Here's more info on each of these:

The Orchestra (at $600k)
Austin Wintory is currently working on the soundtrack and hiring on musicians but due to the cost of a full orchestra is still working with a combination of digital and live music. If we hit this goal we'll be able to have a full, honest-to-goodness orchestral score, each instrument played by a real musician in a high-quality recording studio used by film legends like John Williams.

Then what are the promotional music prizes for?
Prizes like the score and the signature have helped us get this far and also double as a way to guarantee that your personal donation goes directly into funding the music for the game.

The Most Content on the Most Platforms (at $650k)
Like the port to iPad and Linux, if we hit this goal we'll be able to make the game available on Xbox Live Arcade and Playstation Network. The funding will allow us to have additonal developers port the game, leaving us to focus on content development.

The additional content is just as important. This will give us the ability to add a much wider range of special events that can occur as you travel and really expand the scope of the finale to make it the biggest, most rewarding conclusion we can.

The Player-Owned Cities (at $700k)
If we meet this goal we'll be able to add one of the coolest features we thought was way beyond the scope of our game. In multiplayer, players will control their own city, raising it from a modest village to a bustling city with visual customization and their guild crest flying on the walls. Over time, players can construct buildings that will allow them to recruit new units, trade for powerful items and ultimately fight for territory.

How does extra funding allow you to do this?
These stretch goals will enable us to contract additional work for programming, design and writing, in addition to taking some of the load off of us, allowing the team to focus on expanding the content. The limited hours in a day are our biggest bottleneck at this point!
Click to expand...

Update #6: Ask not what your backers can do for you <- click for link to update w/ pics:

We've gotten a lot of emails saying we should chase more pledges by telling what we will do if you give us this much money or that much money. Having just tipped over to 400% (are you serious?) we'd rather tell you what we've been hard at work to give you, based on your donations.

MUSIC - Austin Wintory
We've teamed up with Austin Wintory, composer of the critically acclaimed 2012 game "Journey", who will bring his incredible talents to The Banner Saga. Yes, for real. Austin won the Hollywood Music Award for "Best New Film Composer" and winner of "Best Original Score - Video Game". If you haven't heard his work before I recommend watching this video as soon as you can.

Guess what? If you've already pledged $25 or more you're getting the soundtrack for free.

SOUND - Kpow Audio
We'll be working closely with the amazing sound studio Kpow Audio to give you the best possible sound quality and ambience. You may know them from their work as the entire sound team on the blockbuster hit L.A. Noire.

ANIMATION AND CINEMATICS - POWERHOUSE ANIMATION
To accomplish the huge number of unique frame-by-frame animations we'll be producing for The Banner Saga, we've enlisted the help of Powerhouse Animation. Powerhouse is made up of animator veterans who have been creating top tier work for games including Epic Mickey, DC Universe and Starhawk.

While they're experts at a whole range of animation styles they're just as excited as we are to produce animation in the classical, traditional style of Sleeping Beauty; one frame at a time. This is a labor of love for both of us!

NEW PRIZE - THE RELIC
Pledge $800 or more:
Immortalize something meaningful to you in The Banner Saga. Send us a photo of your own heirloom, memento or just something you'd like to show your friends and we'll turn it into a relic of value and power. We'll work with you to come up with a unique name and description that could include anything from a mysterious inscription to giving off a certain aura. You'll personalize it and make a coveted piece of gameplay by choosing from a list of rarities and in-game bonuses it provides. Doesn't look very viking-themed you say? That's ok, the marketplaces trade in items pillaged from all over the world. This new prize includes all the other prizes below it!

NEW PLATFORMS - iPad and LINUX
Oh boy, it's finally official. We've heard your massive outpouring of support and will officially be porting to the iPad and Linux. Let's be up front here: the Kickstarter campaign is officially for PC and Mac, and we can't change that now. However, we can now promise that your donations will be used to port the finished game to these new platforms within a reasonable timeframe. We're committed to it.

And that doesn't mean we're done porting. Depending on what amount we end with other platforms are absolutely still on the table.

NEW PROGRESS REPORT
Somehow, production continues to happen!
...
Click to expand...


Update: Trailer!
62689508.png

Stoic was founded by three ex-Bioware developers who are currently making their first indie title.

Scarce information is available but the project seems quite interesting, and promising, to me.
Travel through stunning landscapes straight out of an animated film as your party escapes what could be the end of everything. Battle painstakingly hand-animated foes in strategic, turn-based combat. Make decisions with real consequences in conversations with people you'll actually care about.

The Banner Saga is a mature game aimed at gamers who appreciate art, story and strategy. Hope you'll join the caravan.
Click to expand...

Short interview!
When you watch old Disney stuff like Sleeping Beauty the art style is something you don’t see anymore and it’s so unique you wonder if you’ll ever see it again. The lead artist on that movie was Eyvind Earle and he heavily influenced our style on The Banner Saga. It also influenced our decision to go with a traditional style of animation and right now the game looks and feels like you’re playing an animated film. We’ve even gone so far as to turn the conversation system into a 2D movie and we’re ecstatic about how well it works. It would be almost impossible to duplicate this look in a modern 3D game, and why would you want to anyway? I think we’re onto something there.

As for gameplay, I’m really excited about our combat system. I’ve been a die-hard fan of games like Final Fantasy Tactics and Shining Force since I was a kid and I think we captured that feeling while also adding a really unique dynamic I’ve never seen in turn-based strategy before. I can’t talk about that much now but we’ll be putting out more info on that pretty soon.
Click to expand...

Another one!
Our first priority has always been to make a real, story-based, single player campaign with The Banner Saga just like you’re saying. As we developed our combat system we felt that we have something really unique and fun and figured why not release it as a standalone? As a result, the game will have a single player and multiplayer component. We’ll release the multiplayer combat for free later this year and release the single-player campaign soon after that. Rest assured, the single player campaign is our primary focus.
Click to expand...
24231578.png
99025657.png

Sorry if old, google searching neogaf for stoic, banner saga, etc, came up with nothing. I don't think a platform has been mentioned but that site that interviewed them filed it under "PC game" for whatever reason. And there's their background with TOR. Who knows?
 
Jibbajabbawockky

Jibbajabbawockky

Member
Definitely looking forward to this. Its good to see Indie developers picking up the slack with more old school party based RPGs since the big developers aren't doing them anymore.

I like this quote from that second linked interview:
Shooters, MMOs, big sandbox games and casual little games are all great but there are plenty of amazing options already out there. Nobody is begging for another game on that pile. We definitely think there is a hole forming around the role-playing genre and strategy games are drying up. Publishers would say that there aren&#8217;t enough people to support it, but unlike a huge development team we don&#8217;t need to sell tens of millions and we think there are plenty of people who want what we&#8217;re making, including us.
Click to expand...
 
D

Deleted member 17706

Unconfirmed Member
Sounds awesome. I hope this comes out on PC.
 
C

CrunchyFrog

Member
Anteater said:
Keanu is that you
4jdui.jpg




Sounds interesting, will keep an eye on this
Click to expand...

lol my first though as well

and if by "sounds interesting" you mean "sounds like what most RPG devs promise and fail to deliver in any significant way" then yes.

I do like the art style, but I'm hoping the choppiness in the vid is just the YT encoding and not the actual framerate.
 
Alexios

Alexios

Cores, shaders and BIOS oh my!
I didn't see anything choppy. Unless you mean that the more hand drawing based animations which don't just have flash-like limbs smoothly moving about didn't have a million frames. That's probably all you're going to get.
 
T

Thores

Member
Welp, this game is gorgeous. Definitely wanna see some more gameplay before I whip out my wallet for it, but color me interested.
 
Alexios

Alexios

Cores, shaders and BIOS oh my!
As long as people don't imagine a Baldur's Gate epic from this game I think we'll be pleased... It's probably something simple and low budget friendly like say, watching your viking tribe moving about the land as they do in that side view, encountering events you can influence with your choices in the animated dialogue scenes, and also encountering enemies which you battlle in those arena scenes... And of course since it's episodic you probably end up going through all the same places regardless of choices with only the discussions in the animated scenes and other such events being altered to match your personal progression... Just a guess. I could be way off and all that stuff is just the intro and you actually get control of a traveling party yourself or something, I dunno.
 
T

The Abominable Snowman

Member
heckmanimation said:
that one yellow haired viking jsut screams bland vector art flash game at me...

looks nice though overall. dat landscape!
Click to expand...

Gryzz? Great taste, man. "You lie like the plants... After the snow!"

Two of my favorite genres mashed together wrapped in a delicious ADVenture shell which i absolutely adore.

This could be the Reese's crunchy big cup of videogames.
 
Sentenza

Sentenza

Member
That's just barely related, but I'm not sure where I could post it and I'm not allowed to open new threads (beside the fact that probably it doesn't deserve one yet):

The co-founders of Big Blue Box and creators of the Fable franchise have formed a new development studio, Another Place Productions.

Dene and Simon Carter sold Big Blue Box to Lionhead and Microsoft, and led the award-winning Xbox franchise to more than 12 million sales.

The pair left Lionhead last year, and are now joined in the new venture by former Fable art director John McCormack, Lionhead's technical director Guillaume Portes and the studios' executive producer Jeremie Texier.

The team said it intends to "create high-quality, meaningful experiences that will inspire audiences worldwide" and it focusing on digital formats - PSN, XBLA, Steam and mobile.
Click to expand...

http://www.gamesindustry.biz/articl...ans-form-new-studio-another-place-productions

Former Lionhead members doing pretty much the same thing these guys did, and forming a new studio focused on small products for digital distribution (Steam/XBL/PSN and mobile).
Apparently this is becoming a trend.
 
D

Deleted member 17706

Unconfirmed Member
Backed $100! Maybe we should start a new thread for the Kickstarter.
 
V

Victrix

*beard*
"A copy of THE BANNER SAGA with all the Chapter 1 content,"

Huh? I'm not clear, it's episodic or what?

edit: Really not liking this, I can't find mention of this being an episodic game anywhere else, but it's right there on one of the kickstarter funding levels. They need to clear this up pronto.
 
Alexios

Alexios

Cores, shaders and BIOS oh my!
Huh, I thought this one was well on track before they announced anything about kickstarting or similar. They were gonna launch a free multiplayer version of the combat system and everything soon. Plus, it's episodic, how's that going to work out? New funds for every episode? Since no pledge amount mentions getting all of them, only Chapter 1. I hope this is not just them seeing a chance they didn't actually need to get it off the ground thanks to the other projects or something. I guess they're not asking for all that much but still. I'll probably wait for the game/episodes to be released on this one. I am still looking forward to it but it's kinda unproven right now, at first I hoped for something epic, now it seems like it's gonna be Viking Oregon Trail, which could still be awesome, but yeah, it could be weird. I'm also not very fond of episodes, but at least it's a "mini" series. Still, lovely art.
 
P

Pikma

Banned
Looks quite awesome, the art style is amazing! And it does help that I love vikings, I will contribute as soon as possible :)
 
B

Butulino

Member
Interview with Alex Thomas, Creative Director of Banner Saga:

Sure, one of the most exciting parts of the making this game to us was the chance to create new ideas based on the Norse culture. We've gotten a lot of emails from people worried that we're going to give our vikings horned helmets but I can definitely say we're going for a more realistic approach to the setting, a lot more low-fantasy. No horned helmets. We do have our own fiction that isn't actual Norse mythology with Odin and Loki but we're definitely heavily influenced by the viking culture, themes and literature.
Click to expand...

One of the reasons we keep describing The Banner Saga as an adventure mini-series is that we want it to really feel like you're playing an interactive, high-quality tv mini-series, where it's about the characters and their development over time. You aren't the only one with plans in the world and other people have their own motivations and actions. Characters may live or die, join or leave the caravan based on the decisions you make. In that regard, we've already created a lot of the dialogue for the game and it always comes back to conversation with other characters and how do you handle things that are out of your control? The RPG part of gameplay is somewhere between Final Fantasy Tactics and Shining Force. We want players to have a lot of character options but also have some control over their development over time. Our customization is focused on creating a team of characters who have unique abilities that work well together.
Click to expand...

http://www.everyeye.it/pc/articoli/the-banner-saga_intervista_16412?pagina=2
 
S

Sinatar

Official GAF Bottom Feeder
While they are from "Bioware", they are all from Bioware Austin, the MMO branch. Not sure I want to back guys whose resume is Star Wars Galaxies, SWTOR and Shadowblade.

*shrug* We'll see I guess.
 
S

Sir_Crocodile

Member
So I guess the questions (for me at least) is how substantial the "chapter one" content is, since that's all this seems to be covering single player wise.

Does steam do drm free? Spit out an executable that doesn't phone home(basically does steam have the ability to do what gog does in its framework)?
 
E

epmode

Member
Steam can do DRM-free releases. Sort of. DRM-free stuff can be launched without Steam running in the background. The problem is installing the game in the first place.

It's sometimes possible to just copy the game folder from an existing installation onto a different computer but this will cause trouble if registry information is required. So for newer DRM-free Steam releases, you still need Steam to actually install the game.
 
M

MushroomSamba

Member
Is this an SRPG? That's the impression I got from "turn-based" then seeing those grids on the screen. If so, then I like it.

EDIT: Nevermind, I should've read the OP more thoroughly.
 
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