The biggest promise developer Stoic is making about Banner Saga 3 is that it will provide players with a feeling of “closure and accomplishment”, a fitting goal for the finale of a trilogy. Decisions you’ve made that date back to the original’s 2014 release have implications here, both in how this final act evolves and which characters are involved in it.

The Banner Saga 3 - Screenshots 9 IMAGES

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The Banner Saga 3 - Art 4 IMAGES

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“We’re former Bioware, that’s how Stoic got together, and we talk about Mass Effect 3 sometimes and what it was that players thought was lacking in the ending that was provided,” explains Banner Saga 3 producer Zeb West, expanding on his desire to provide players with “closure”.“Recently we were talking about the changes made to the Mass Effect 3 ending and how they were about delivering closure to elements of the story that weren’t shown at the end. We have tried to take that to heart with Banner Saga 3 and work out a way that we can deliver those details so that people aren’t left wondering what happened to their favourite characters.”Talking to Stoic, it’s clear that rounding out the narrative is the single most important element in their approach here. Changes to the core of the game - its unyielding strategy combat, text adventure decision-making, and dark-Disney looks - are being kept to a minimum in order to provide a consistency of interactions across the entire series, allowing its audience to focus on the fates of characters old and new.You have a dual role in determining those fates, with your time spent evenly between managing two different parties. One of those parties, led by the returning Juno (playable in combat for the first time) is travelling the world in search of the cause of ‘The Darkness’ that is consuming the planet and threatening its existence by corrupting everyone caught within it. The other side of the playable coin is focused on the city of Aberrang and tasks you with keeping as many of its inhabitants alive as possible.With Juno you’re in constant motion on a journey to solve a mystery, whilst in Aberrang you’re working hard to manage a high-pressure situation as best you can. The longer it takes Juno’s caravan to uncover and extinguish the cause of The Darkness the more people are going to suffer within Aberrang given a lack of resources, food, and the combined presence of The Darkness and the returning enemy Dredge at the walls.“Particularly with the Juno caravan, the fate of the world is in your hands and you’re trying to stop the destruction of everything you know,” says technical director John Watson.“The variety of outcomes you can obtain in Banner Saga 3 are as dramatically different from each other as you can imagine on a mythological scope and we’re really making an effort to put agency in the player’s hands. We want to end the story with a satisfying conclusion, whether you get a catastrophic or triumphant ending.”If you’ve not played the previous two games then you’ll be without the benefits of context and pre-existing emotional attachments to characters, but you will still be able to jump in here if you desire. As with other games featuring decisions that carry over between releases, including the aforementioned Mass Effect, you have the option of making some of the important choices that you missed before beginning Banner Saga 3.However, you won’t be asked to make very many and Stoic is upfront regarding the reality that you’ll be comparatively lost as to what’s going on in the early going compared to those who have played the two existing parts.“We are trying to keep the numbers of decisions we ask new players to make to a minimum and instead give you a canon story, but you will make some of those decisions,” explains Watkins.“Right now we haven’t decided exactly which choices we’re going to ask you to make, but I’d say that we won’t be giving you more than two choices in order to set up the story. We’ll fill in the choices for you based on what we think is fun. I think it can be just as fun to be thrown into the story and asked to figure out what is going on.”For those coming to this third game having played the previous two, your prior decisions impact which friendly characters you might come across and where, which enemies are alive and dead and how the lives of the key cast have so far played out.Eirik, for instance, a key figure in the first game, returns here. You might see him on your travels with Juno’s caravan or he might appear as one of the guardians of Aberrang – it all depends on what you elected to do with him in the original.Your understanding of Eirik and how his story pans out, then, has already been dramatically affected by choices made prior to the opening scenes here, so it pays to have a good memory regarding previous decisions. This also rings true for hitherto non-playable factions and individuals, including the very same Dredge who are trying to kill your party stationed in Aberrang.A selection of Dredge is playable this time around, the global destruction being caused by The Darkness triggering a number of the seemingly malevolent race to join your cause.“The fact that you can work with the Dredge demonstrates your maturing understanding of them and what they are,” says Watkins. “In the first game they seem like nameless, faceless beasts coming out of the earth but you now come to realise that they have a whole culture and set of concerns and they are fleeing The Darkness and are afraid of it just like you are.”Those caught within The Darkness are transformed into Warped, enemies that made a fleeting appearance in Banner Saga 2 but play a much greater role here. Given the nature of their role as adventurers, you’re more likely to have to face-off against the Warped when playing as Juno and her followers, their formidable skills in battle representing a great danger to your safety.Combat itself is largely unchanged and follows the same turn-based rules that will be familiar to returning players. However, characters can be progressed five levels further than before and have been given the opportunity to take ownership of an extra passive ability in the form of a ‘Heroic Title’.More interactive objects are also promised for the battlefield, allowing you to cut off avenues by, for example, smashing flaming elements to create a wall of damaging fire.This should add to the potential to employ creative, tactical thinking, and come in handy against enemy AI that is promised to be more savvy in their decisions about which of your party members to attack and when.Stoic’s goal with the combat is to make small enhancements without altering the underlying form that players are already familiar with, the idea being that all three games should be able to be played back-to-back and with a feeling that they are all one big, seamless experience.One of the greatest hurdles that any game featuring player choice has to overcome is how to balance the provision of player agency alongside the desire to deliver a tense, dramatic narrative. If you give full control to the player then it’s not possible to author a high stakes story and, as such, the player decisions can lack weight and importance. Take away too much control and the sense of individual ownership is lost.This balance is even harder to achieve with a game that comes with the history of two previous releases, and so Stoic is smart to leave the combat largely untouched and focus its efforts on story and plot interaction. Get the balance right and Banner Saga 3 could perhaps succeed, on its first attempt, where so many thought Mass Effect 3 failed.

John Robertson is a writer and photographer and the author of Independent By Design: Art & Stories of Indie Game Creation. You can find him on Twitter.