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And the fact that the story can continue when a fight is lost is wonderful. The threat of running out of food or a safe place to stay feels much more pressing and motivating than winning a fight ever does.Īdam: Agreed. It's the latter that's the strongest, the refugee tale filled with difficult decisions and terrible consequences. Or is it?Īlec: Well, this raises probably the central issue, which we'll get to later no doubt, which is that it's trying to be simultaneously a game about a colossal war at the end of the world and The Walking Dead. It's a game about running away from overwhelming forces. The pursuit, the constant threat of decline and need for shelter.
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He turned into a big chap with horns and then.events occurred.Īlec: He smashed the very sun, plunging the whole world into ice.Īdam: But what IS The Banner Saga about? I claimed it was about refugees rather than war, which I think is sort of correct.
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It's the tale of what happened when an unlucky scientist got caught in the explosion of a gamma bomb.Īdam: Ha ha. And they have a right old natter about Stoic's recently released, uncommonly beautiful, Viking-inspired roleplaying/strategy/giants'n'conversation game The Banner Saga.Īlec: Well then, The Banner Saga.
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They dream of old gods, they think of roads not taken, they mourn for the lost. Separated from all else by a great storm that ripped the land asunder, Alec and Adam huddle on a fragile, knife-shaped peninsula to watch the world freeze and die.
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