We haven't heard much about Kickstarter success Banner Saga over the past couple months, but developer Stoic has just come out with some big announcements.

While Banner Saga Chapter 1 (a full game, not an episode) will arrive early 2013, Stoic is taking the combat and assets from it and making a free-to-play multiplayer game called Banner Saga Factions, which will arrive on PC and Mac in early November. iPad and Ouya releases will follow.

"Basically we are developing the single-player game, and we realized we are doing all this work on the combat and it's really fun to play!" Art Director Arnie Jorgensen said. "Why not just release the combat as we develop the full game?"

I got the chance to play Factions and was surprised by how polished and fun it was. You can expect a full preview early next week.

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