The Banner Saga

Who's got 2 thumbs and just finished another Indie RPG? This Guy.
Who may or may not have 2 thumbs and is about to hear This Guy recommend it in a rant? You Guy.

So, The Banner Saga is a trilogy of strategy RPGs which basically comprise a single, ongoing story, less 3 games than it is a a single tale split into 3 parts, separated at good intermission spots. While I didn’t play them all at once, I did experience them roughly close together, which was a great benefit of having waited to get started on the series--I daresay it was probably quite difficult for contemporary fans to wait for each installment to come out, because it’s a pretty compelling tale overall. The saga has several earthly draws to it, such as numerous rather inventive characteristics to its battle system, and an art and animation style very much in the spirit of the works of Don Bluth, Ralph Bakshi, and Eyvind Earl (in fact, 1 of the most important characters in The Banner Saga is named Eyvind in homage to Mr. Earl). To me, however, such qualities are nice extras, but not capable of swaying my opinion on whether an RPG is good or bad. For me, that’s a determination dependent entirely on its story, its characters, its theme and purpose...all the juicy food-for-thought stuff.

And happily, The Banner Saga is solid on those points. It’s got a good plot (if admittedly one that feels no particular rush to tell itself), one that’s very much its own as a story more of survival than of heroism for most of its cast, and it’s quite creative in both its premise and its execution. I certainly can’t think of another RPG like it, myself. It’s also got a solid cast, whose main characters are often compelling and developed well. They’re not all winners, mind you--I never had much interest in the Ravens and found even less appeal in their leader Bolverk, despite the games seeming to want me to--but it’s a good spread of personalities overall, be they static or dynamic. I especially like the fact that minor party members (there’s many characters who can be recruited) will occasionally, unexpectedly have a part to play or a conversation to witness here and there during the games’ course, sometimes even a very significant one. Considering how many variables there are to whether they were able to be recruited, whether they might have been killed or had cause to leave the party permanently, and so on, it’s pretty neat that these tiny, mostly-overlooked characters can come out of nowhere and do or say something major. Such instances exemplify just how much the choices you make throughout the course of The Banner Saga have consequences, whether for good or ill--if you’re the type of RPG player who wants to feel the weight and significance of every decision a game offers you, you’ll find very few RPGs more suited to your taste than The Banner Saga.

In addition to being a concretely good RPG series overall, The Banner Saga also has 2 elements in which it truly shines. The first is its basis in Norse mythology. Now, The Banner Saga certainly isn’t the first Norse-themed RPG out there--the famous Valkyrie Profile 1, and its successors, base themselves around the pantheon and general religious beliefs of Norse mythology. Odin, Valkyries, Freya, Midgard and Yggdrasil and all that jazz, it’s all there.

...At least, it all was there, until SquareEnix decided to clumsily, mindlessly retcon half of it at the end of Valkyrie Profile 2, because they’re fucking morons.

Nonetheless, The Banner Saga fulfills a very different, and perhaps more important function in using a Norse foundation. All the jazz that Valkyrie Profile utilizes with the gods and the afterlife and so on, that’s all fine and fun stuff, but it’s the...flashy part of Norse mythology, if that makes any sense. It’s the go-to stuff that everyone always uses if they’re looking to include Viking stuff in their product, the popular (admittedly with good reason) part of the beliefs and stories of Norse mythology that we’re all used to. I mean, it’s such an easy, accessible crowd-pleaser that Marvel Comics just basically stole 1 of the mythology’s leading gods and said “Yeah, he’s totally our guy now.” The Banner Saga, on the other hand, is more concerned with the...perhaps the best way to describe it is the down-to-Midgard parts of Norse mythology. Rather than revel in the lofty rainbow bridges and deities drinking mead in golden halls and all that flashy junk, The Banner Saga builds itself upon the grit and grime of giants, hard-fought battles, beings of iron clashing against bearded berserkers bearing basic axes and bulky bulwarks of wood. It’s inspired by and an homage to Norse mythology in a way that a game like Valkyrie Profile, which for all its laudable qualities is still in many ways a distinct JRPG simply adopting the trappings of a western culture for its own purposes, can’t be. And more than that, The Banner Saga is also, in its style and approach, based in Norse culture as much as in Norse mythology, and in the modern mythology of vikings that we’ve created about what that culture was like.

Basically what I'm saying is that if you are in any way big on Norse mythology and the whole viking thing, The Banner Saga will give you tingly feelings in your pants, and probably to a way greater degree than most other games on the subject can.

The other quality of The Banner Saga that really stands out to me is its long and realistic portrayal of a fantasy end-of-world scenario. Sure, worlds on the brink of destruction are fairly frequent in RPGs, without a doubt. I’d say at least 4 out of 5 times, the stakes of any given RPG you play are going to be of a saving-the-world variety, or possibly even higher. But it’s fairly rare that you get to really see the gravity of a world in its stages of collapse, isn’t it? Most of the time, all you’re gonna get on this matter are perhaps a few scenes of the sky darkening, or an earthquake or two, during the last moments of the game, which are really only there to prompt some NPCs to join hands and sing Kumbaya so that this can (somehow) empower the heroes during their final battle. On the rare occasion that an RPG draws out its world-ending circumstances to any degree, you still don’t usually get a very strong feel for them, or the desperation of the global population over them. Remember in Final Fantasy 5, when the elements that govern the world’s natural forces begin to wane and die, creating a world of stagnant air, machines that can’t function because fire can’t power them any longer, and so on and so forth? That is some terrifying, Armageddon-level shit right there, and yet the game just kind of presents it in a tone like it’s an inconvenience to the world more than anything else, obviously a problem in need of a solution but only one for the heroes to worry about in the backs of their minds. There’s no real focus on the reaction to this world-ending loss of elemental function, nothing in NPCs’ dialogue that comes across as more than a moderate worry about what is a cataclysm!

The Banner Saga, on the other hand, makes you feel every despairing, desperate step of the world’s slide into destruction. You’re not some flashy handful of colorful destined heroes soaring above the people’s problems on an airship. The characters you follow are refugees, trekking across lands embroiled in war and panic as armies of steel-clad monsters from the inner earth pour by the millions across unprepared lands and communities, a titanic serpent born to swallow the world splits mountains and poisons the oceans, and an all-consuming, corruptive darkness continues to spread unabated. The circumstances for your heroes are desperate from the beginning and only become worse with every stop on their journey to escape their world’s end. Panic, hatred, paranoia, mistrust, and worst of all, ambition: these are the everyday facts of the people of an actively disintegrating world, and The Banner Saga displays them all in harsh reality as the caravan of its heroes faces 1 catastrophe after another, and marches more and more desperately in an attempt to survive and find a safe haven whose existence becomes more doubtful with each step taken.

Not to say that The Banner Saga’s an ugly or depressing series, or anything like that. It doesn’t pull punches with showing the end of the world and the plight of a community of refugees, but there’s always just enough bits and pieces of determination, enough opportunities for its main characters to show heroism, generosity, and solidarity, enough small victories even as the war of attrition is slowly lost, to keep you going along without falling into the same despair as the characters themselves repeatedly must fight against. The Banner Saga isn’t an inspiring, good-feelings adventure, but it’s not a downer RPG, either. It just is what it is--and that’s a pretty cool story that lets you feel the long struggle with an apocalypse that no other RPG I can immediately think of can provide. The closest you can get normally is the retrospective viewpoint of a good post-apocalyptic setting, like Fallout, Fragile Dreams: Farewell Ruins of the Moon, or Chrono Trigger’s 2300 AD. The Banner Saga’s the first time I’ve seen an in-depth look at humanity’s fall as it happens in an RPG.

And yeah, that’s about it. The 3 installments of The Banner Saga are a solid buy, in my opinion, if you’re looking for a good story and characters in general, particularly if you’re interested in making some choices that’ll have consequences, both immediate and far-reaching. But where it really shines, what I’d most recommend it for, is its great and dedicated use of Norse mythology and culture for its setting and style, and its portrayal of a world’s end from the perspective of everyday men, women, and heroes trying to survive it, 1 catastrophe at a time. If any of that sounds cool to you, then I recommend you check out The Banner Saga.