Hello, PlayStation.Blog! Banner Saga 2 will be launching on July 5! We originally planned to launch later in the month. However, because of the combined effort of our friends at Sony and the hard work by the team at Shiny Shoe, we are able to bring this to you much sooner. Stoic wanted people to kickstart their Summer off right and jumped at the chance to get the second game in the hands of PS4 owners.

We’re also happy to announce that PlayStation owners get a unique in-game item that gives Banner Saga 2 players a passive ability bonus. The “Playful Hilt of Arnr” will be in your inventory once you start the game. For those of you that care about the detail of such things, here’s a little more info about this item. The hilt of this unique sword is said to provide comfort in extended battles. Equipable at level 10, this item will give you a +3 all talent rank and a +20% double strength damage.

The community has been sending us some questions so we got the good fellas from Stoic, John and Arnie, to answer them for you folks!

Can we still play Banner Saga 2 if we haven’t played Banner Saga 1?

Arnie: Yes! There’s no downside if you’re jumping into this from scratch. To help those of you that didn’t play Banner Saga 1, we’ve included a recap video that gives you a quick low down of events that happened before Banner Saga 2 and we’ve also given you two default characters to choose from in the starting options if you haven’t imported your save game from Banner Saga 1.

Does the save game from Banner Saga 1 automatically import into Banner Saga 2 once I’ve downloaded it?

John: Nope. You are given the option to choose what you would like to do — either import a saved game or choose one of the default starting options.

Can I play Banner Saga 2 before Banner Saga 1?

Arnie: Yes you can of course, but if you are interested in playing from the start of the story, we’d suggest you play it in order starting with Banner Saga 1. We are offering all PlayStation owners a 25% discount on the first game at the launch of Banner Saga 2 and there’s also a bundle offer for both games, so now’s the time if you are interested!

Is Banner Saga 1 still coming to PS Vita?

John: Development for PS Vita is still underway and largely being handled by our friends at Sony.

How long will we have to wait until Banner Saga 3?

Arnie: Banner Saga 3 will conclude this trilogy and we are working hard to try and make it ship simultaneously on all platforms, so console owners won’t have to wait to get to play the final part of this story. We haven’t even started on Banner Saga 3 yet, but we will be kicking that off very soon.

Thank you all for supporting us and other indie developers. Working with PlayStation and the PlayStation community is exciting for us and we can’t wait to deliver you more great content.

Do you have any questions? Ask in the comments below and we’ll do our best to get you some answers!